A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900

Book Description

In 1900, where Churchill ended the fourth volume of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, the United States had not yet emerged onto the world scene as a great power. Meanwhile, the British Empire was in decline but did not yet know it. Any number of other powers might have won primacy in the twentieth century and beyond, including Germany, Russia, possibly even France. Yet the coming century was to belong to the English-speaking peoples, who successively and successfully fought the Kaiser's Germany, Axis aggression and Soviet Communism, and who are now struggling against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Andrew Roberts brilliantly reveals what made the English-speaking people the preeminent political culture since 1900, and how they have defended their primacy from the many assaults upon them. What connects those countries where the majority of the population speaks English as a first language—the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Ireland—is far greater than what separates them, and the development of their history since 1900 has been a phenomenal success story.

Authoritative and engrossing, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 is an enthralling account of the century in which the political culture of one linguistic world-grouping comprehensively triumphed over all others. Roberts's History proves especially invaluable as the United States today looks to other parts of the English-speaking world as its best, closest and most dependable allies.

Customer Reviews:

HEY! GOOD BOOK!.......2007-10-13

BASED ON PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY'S CRITICAL REVIEW OF THIS BOOK, I'M GETTING IT!
SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT BOOK!

Water For Elephants.......2007-09-09

This 648 page book is a synopsis of historical events which have had impact by the English speaking peoples of America, Great Britian, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand from 1900 to present. Major events include WWI, WWII, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, The War on Terror, and the Iraq War. Andrew Roberts is a Londonite and neoconcervative apologist who gives a fresh perspective of these historical events that, unlike liberal revisionist history, portrays the the English speaking people in a light they deserve with recognition of their accomplishments, their sacrifices, their fortitude, their benevolence, and their leadership in protecting the world from fascism, communism, and Islamic radicalism. This refreshing perspective, which is a rare find amongst history books, along with an enticing writing style and brilliant diction made this book very enjoyable. I will frequently reference this work and re-read portions of it. Looking forward to more from this author.

It's about dang time.......2007-07-24

I finally got my hands on this book, and I will tell you all that it is glorious. None of the wishy-washy anti-British hollywood diatribe that was force fed to the globe in the nineteen nineties by Hollywood's anti-Protestant elite. If you want a book that tries to justify Irish nationalist baby murderers in Ulster or sympathizes with the claims of the openly fascist Argentine government of the early nineteen eighties, than look somewhere else. It's about time somebody stood up for John Bull and Uncle Sam, and I for one am proud to say this book lays a giant red, white and blue smackdown on all the nay-sayers, or anglophobes who would like to shoot it down.
Furthermore, many of the critics of this book love hyping on the fact that many Americans aren't of English or Scottish or Welsh decent. Well, no, many are not, but I am. My ancestry is Southern, and they got here from England four hundred years ago. This may not be the case for ALL Americans, but it is for those of us who were here making a country before all sorts of Johnny-come-latelies decided to show up and slander the Mother Country with all of their stereotyping and leftist bashing of England's international acheivements. This book does not gloss over the glory of any of the the Sister Nations to which it refers, it does not make apologies or exceptions, and frankly, it is about dang time that a book like this came out. God Bless America and God Bless England.

Roberts updates Churchill, masterfully.......2007-06-19

The conception of this book, Roberts tells us, was born from a desire to see Churchill's H.O.T.E.S.P's updated. Roberts haughtily delegated the task to himself, then improbably pulled it off with consummate skill.

One of the things I tend to dislike about big general histories--lovable things in themselves--is that they skimp on analysis and thus, notwithstanding their lovely narratives, fail to explode those specious counter-narratives that give all who care about historical accuracy and sound judgment the shakes. This book has both the proper narrative and the analytical explosiveness, making it a ripping read as well as a veritable artillery barrage of insight, a new weapon for sane souls and a new devastation for adversaries. Willmoore Kendall, after reading Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, nominated him for "the captaincy of the anti-liberal team." In this age of obsessions with minutiae, where arguments tend to boil down to fabricating ingenious connections between detail-dots, it is very important to have another captain who can play the detail game and play it better and more honorably. Roberts is hereby nominated for captaincy of the anti-barbarism team.

Many people will be fooled by the stridency of people like myself and those opposite me who loudly hail or denounce this book. Don't let either of us confuse you. Roberts is no demagogue, and he is eminently fair to people who deserve fairness--for example, he concludes of FDR's social experimentation, "the New Deal worked;" and his re-interpretation of Wilson as not-half-as-deluded-as-Paul-Johnson-and-most-other-conservatives-would-have-us-think should be refreshing to anyone; his evaluation of the Churchill-could-have-stopped-Hitler-had-the-appeasers-not-bollocksed-it-up line is unsettling but eye-opening, as is his measured judgment of Chamberlain; his unwillingness to bow to rabid anti-imperialism could be said to be merely a willingness to examine the facts, and he is not, despite what his critics sometimes charge, a risible "triumphalist;" and alas, his reading of the policies that got us into the (now proverbial) "Situation-In-Iraq" as rooted in old traditions is not a fanatical "neocon" chestnut, as Josef Joffe (realist) and John Lewis Gaddis (liberal), among others, have made substantially the same case. Overall, Roberts' argument is simple and modest: that the English-Speaking Peoples have, taken as a collective whole, done better (not PERFECTLY, not FLAWLESSLY, not BLAMELESSLY) for the world than any other great power, and that this is demonstrable so far as such things can be demonstrated. It is up to the reader whether he wants to apply a normative criterion as goofy as Chomsky's quasi-Kantianism or Zinn's (let's be honest) inept Marxism to the study of history, but Roberts applies a more tangible standard: material improvements coupled with preservation of and respect for, as Thomas Sowell likes to say, "the intangibles without which the tangibles don't work" (virtue, freedom, honor, prestige, etc.). Truth is not always stranger than fiction--Zinn's "People's Histories" are surely way-out-there compared to real histories--nonetheless, truth is often more exciting and bracing than fiction. Thus Roberts' book blows your hair back; Zinn's is a sedative by comparison.

It ought to be said, in conclusion, that there is nothing "triumphalist" about not obsessively citing ten debits for every one credit given to the English speaking peoples, which method of moral accounting is today called "balance." Orwell would have a field day with this nonsense, but Roberts holds his own and handles it with grace and not a shred of bitterness. That used to be called magnanimity. Churchill had it. Roberts has it. The English speaking peoples have it, oftener than not. With this book, we continue to ensure that it stays that way.

Excellent Book.......2007-06-17

This is an excellent book. I also bought a copy for a friend, something that I do less often anymore. If you like history and want a good synopsis of the 20th century, try this. Yes, it is somewhat opinionated, but it isn't blatant about it. It is a larger book than it might appear to be -- it might take some time to finish. Although it does have some more difficult words, it is easy to gather their meaning from the context. It certainly generates an enlightened appreciation for those that protect us. Worth reading.

In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents

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Fascinating, but remember the regime he served
Insightful

In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents
Anatoly Dobrynin
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0295980818

Book Description

Anatoly Dobrynin arrived in Washington in 1962--at age 43 the youngest man ever to serve as Soviet Ambassador to the United States--and remained through the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Dobrynin became the main channel for the White House and the Kremlin to exchange ideas, negotiate in secret, and arrange summit meetings. Dobrynin writes vividly of Moscow from inside the Politburo, but In Confidence is mainly a story of Washington at the highest levels.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating, but remember the regime he served.......2004-01-17

Prior to the Gorbachev era Soviet memoirs were stultifying party-line tomes that were virtually unreadable as serious history. Now we can read what Soviet diplomats really thought. Dobrynin's memoirs are fascinating because I have always wondered what he thought of Soviet/American relations and his American adversaries. Dobrynin thinks Bobby Kennedy was an immature alarmist. He has sympathy for Dean Rusk's despair over Viet Nam and Richard Nixon's fall over Watergate. He is amused by a pathetic attempt at a summit by a lame duck LBJ. He is frustrated by Carter and Reagan and bemused by Brezezinski's tough guy act towards the Soviet Union. Great stuff.
Dobrynin clearly loved being Soviet Ambassador to the US, particularly during the Nixon administation when Dobrynin had his famous "back channel" with Kissinger. Dobrynin could attend lavish embassy parties and enjoy freedom and celebrity status in the US. He is clearly bitter when Gorbachev recalled him and kicked him upstairs to a powerless post in the USSR. Dobrynin blames Gorbachev for diplomatic blunders that led to the fall of the Soviet Union. Dobynin's tone in his memoir is smooth and his book is well-written. He seems more like an ambassador from Britain and therein lies the greatest unstated paradox of Dobrynin's memoir: He represented the Soviet Union, not a democracy. Unlike Dobrynin, the people of the Soviet Union could not attend lavish parties, read, travel or speak freely. The nation that he repesented was a closed society that erected the Berlin Wall, indoctrinated its citizens in Marxist dogma and abused psychology and any science to keep its citizens obediant. The secret police used torture and imprisonment to enforce Communist rule. Dobrynin was a pillar of that system. This is why - despite all the anecdotes and bon mots - the most disturbing implication of Dobrynin's memoirs for me is that intelligent, cultured people like Dobrynin allow themselves to ammorally deny the humanity of others in the name of self-serving ambition.

Insightful.......2001-04-13

This book is an incredibly insightful and very balanced view of the Cold War and the warriors themselves, both in the USSR and the US. Dobrynin gives a balanced view of the mistakes that people in both countries made, as well as where they succeeded. I especially found the description of the Cuban Missile Crisis fascinating, as well as Moscow's reaction to Watergate and the resignation of Nixon.

Furthermore, this book helped me understand Andrei Gromyko and ---Brezhnev, two people whose names I've heard but I know little about. By reading this book, you will understand more about how the former Soviet government worked, the influence the Politburo had, and how they viewed the US.

What I liked best about this book was that it was balanced. Dobrynin never portrays a bias towards his country, indeed he often points out the errors that they make, and how he disagrees with them. Similarly, he is not at all "out to get" the US as the media portrays USSR/US relations. On the contrary, it is clear that he has much respect and affection for our country, which was his home for nearly 30 years.

The only reason for 4 stars instead of 5, is at times the subject matter would get slightly tedious. I understand that the main issue between the US and the USSR was nuclear arms treaties, however reading about them for 700 pages did tend to get me bogged down periodically.

I highly recommend reading this book for a first hand account of all the behind the scenes machinations between the man who was repeatedly the "confidential channel" between Washington and the Kremlin. Dobrynin was the only player from either country to be present at all summits between the US and the USSR during the Cold War, and was the Ambassador to the US during most of that time. As Presidents changed, and Party Secretaries in Moscow, Dobrynin was a constant. Read all about it here.

England in Conflict, 1603-1660: Kingdom, Community, Commonwealth
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From the Publisher

England in Conflict, 1603-1660: Kingdom, Community, Commonwealth
Derek Hirst
Manufacturer: A Hodder Arnold Publication
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0340625015

Book Description

England in Conflict 1603-1660 tells the story of the disintegration of the early modern polity. By questioning the meanings of the body politic it is able to bridge not only the high and low but also divergent approaches to the period. The book's opening explorations of the practices and assumptions of politics, of religious life in center and locality, of social relationships and of economic patterns, are followed by a turn to narrative. The drama of the slide from royal peace into civil war and revolution, and the trauma of the failure of that revolution, are caught with a clarity that does not come at the price of distortion. Derek Hirst has blended his own continuing researches with more than a decade of challenging scholarship that appeared since his Authority and Conflict (from which this book is descended). The result is a wholly fresh work. Centered around ambiguities of community in early modern England--the community of the realm embodied in the king, the local communities with all their strengths and subversions, the political community as an autonomous agent--the text enlivens such debates as those over revisionism, Puritanism, the church, and witchcraft while at the same time making sense of the complexities of crisis and continuity.

Customer Reviews:

From the Publisher.......2006-12-28

England in Conflict 1603-1660 tells the story of the disintegration of the early modern polity. By questioning the meanings of the body politic it is able to bridge not only the high and low but also divergent approaches to the period. The book's opening explorations of the practices and assumptions of politics, of religious life in centre and locality, of social relationships and of economic patterns, are followed by a turn to narrative. The drama of the slide from royal peace into civil war and revolution, and the trauma of the failure of that revolution, are caught with a clarity that does not come at the price of distortion.

Table of Contents
Foreword
1 The body politic 1
2 The holy and the unholy 32
3 The politic society 52
4 Peaceable kingdoms, 1603-1620 79
5 Peace and war in masquerade, 1621-1629 103
6 Renewal and recalcitrance, 1629-1638 130
7 Crisis in three kingdoms, 1638-1642 156
8 Taking sides 191
9 Civil war, 1642-1646 202
10 Reaction and revolution, 1646-1649 233
11 The English Commonwealth, 1649-1653 255
12 Oliver Protector, 1653-1658 283
13 Republicans, royalists and others, 1658-1660 316
Afterword 328
Bibliographical essay 333
Index 344

The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963

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The Charismatics
As engrossing as any Clancy novel!
Useful
Complex period in history made "readable"...
Comprehensive Study of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Relationship

The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963
Michael R. Beschloss
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060164549

Customer Reviews:

The Charismatics.......2005-08-31

This book rescued me from the recent Taubman biography of Khruschev. Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy Taubman...up until the point that Kennedy was assassinated. Somehow, without Kennedy to reflect off of, or react off of, or bark at, or explode at, Khruschev became rather dull.

This book, winding as it does completely around the relationship between the leaders of the two superpowers, their mistrusts of each other, their odd affection for each other, their correspondence, and their dangerous, global risk-taking flare-ups, proves far more interesting. Beschloss creates characters full of life and vigor, sympathetic and sometimes frightening, as when Khruschev threatens war over Berlin, or when we learn the details of the narcotics the President required to manage his back pain.

The book also manages to set the stage for years and years of politics to come, in space policy, in cold war strategy, and in the Vietnam war.

As engrossing as any Clancy novel!.......2004-07-31

Michael R. Beschloss' 1991 book, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khruschev 1960-1963, is a literary rarity: a history book about a complex and critical period in the 20th Century that is so well-written that it reads like a novel.

Beschloss describes the dramatic events of the period that began shortly before the Presidential election of 1960 and ended with the dreadful events of November 22, 1963, focusing on the interplay between President John F. Kennedy and Chairman Nikita S. Khruschev. These two men from vastly different worlds -- one the son of a self-made millionaire from Boston, the other the son of Russian peasants who had been semiliterate until his thirties -- held the fate of the world in their hands.

The Crisis Years discusses in great detail the most dramatic events of the Cold War, including JFK's first meeting with the Soviet leader in Vienna, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the building of the Berlin Wall (including a photo capturing the only time American tanks and Soviet tanks faced off), the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that marked the first thaw in the frosty relations between the superpowers.

This book is sadly out of print, but it's definitely a must-read for readers who want to know more about this critical period in world history.

Useful.......2002-01-28

Interesting to note that Castro came to the UN after the Cuban revolution in the hope of normalising relations with the US but was rebuffed. There then followed the Bay of Pigs. If cooler heads had prevailed and approachement made at that point, we may have been living in a totally different world today. A banal observation, admitedly. Certainly, US intransigence led to a more absolutist and repressive Castro.
Kennedy indeed felt that Khrushchev had outclassed him when it came to discussing political ideology on first meeting, but Kennedy did focus on the crux of the whole matter. The nation that could provide best materially for it's people would be the winner of the cold war. Krushchev ended up in a hut in the country somewhere, an 'expendable hero' as Harry Palmer once joked to an old Bolschevic in the film 'Funeral In Berlin'.

Complex period in history made "readable"..........2001-04-27

Michael Beschloss has done what every history writer should aspire to...make complex history telling "readable". Even though this book is very long, it flows very smoothly without missing any of the details of that "Crisis" era. I love books on the Cuban Missile Crisis and have found very few that would be characterized above the "textbook" level, but this one surely meets that tough standard. This book should be included in every "Crisis" historians library.

Comprehensive Study of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Relationship.......2001-04-13

This is a massive (700 page), comprehensive, if not especially analytic, study of the United States' relationship with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, told from the perspectives of the superpowers' leaders, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. At the beginning of his administration, Kennedy may have had sincere desire to improve relations with the Soviets, but his famous inaugural address was interpreted by many as a committed cold warrior's call to arms, and, as Beschloss's title implies, a series of foreign policy crises followed. Often in minute detail, Beschloss discusses the disastrous invasion of Cuba by opponents of Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the Cuban missile crisis. For those who enjoy narrative history liberally sprinkled with portraits of colorful personalities, this is a fascinating book.

There is little in this book which is new, but much of it bears repeating, especially for readers too young to remember the early 1960s. However odious Castro's dictatorship was to become, the attempt to topple it in the spring of 1961 was destined to fail. According to Beschloss, one of Kennedy's advisers warned him that "he could not recall a single case in history when refugees returned and successfully overthrew a revolutionary regime." The Berlin crisis that summer did not escalate into a nuclear confrontation because, as Kennedy observed: "A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war." And Beschloss writes about the missile crisis that the 39 hours' warning of the naval quarantine that Kennedy gave Khrushchev "demonstrated the President's wisdom in starting his response not with an irreversible air strike but with milder pressures that gave Khrushchev time to ponder his move."

Some of Beschloss's observations about the leaders border on gossip. He lends credence to reports that Khrushchev could be a buffoon who occasionally drank too much and that Kennedy's enthusiastic womanizing continued while he was president. But personal traits and predilections often could not be separated from matters of substance. For instance, the author reports that Kennedy was regularly treated by a medical practitioner with "vitamin shots" which "also contained amphetamines, steroids, hormones, and animal organ cells." Beschloss proceeds to explain the importance of this revelation: "Even in small doses, amphetamines cause side effects such as nervousness, garrulousness, impaired judgment, overconfidence, and, when the drug wears off, depression." Beschloss implies that Kennedy may have been under the influence of amphetamines at his summit meeting with Khrushchev in the spring of 1961, when the Soviet leader, by Kennedy's own admission, "just beat hell out of me." Beschloss concludes that Kennedy "should have been vastly more careful in pursuing his medical experimentation than he had been as a Senator. The stakes now were not one political career but literally the fate of the world."

This book is not without its limitations. As I implied above, it is much stronger on narrative than analysis, and some passages give the impression that Beschloss was more interested in the personalities of Kennedy and Khrushchev than in the substance of the policies they devised and pursued. Beschloss's discussion of Kennedy's approach to the growing conflict in Vietnam is brief and generally superficial. The book's organization is quirky: The role of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the development of Kennedy's national-security policy is barely mentioned until page 400. And the index is not entirely reliable. (For instance, the index's listing for Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, inexplicably omits reference to Beschloss's description of a critical briefing Lemnitzer gave to the President in September 1961 in which the "bottom line" was that "the United States enjoyed vast nuclear superiority.")

While I was preparing this review, I discovered that this book, which was published in 1991, is already out of print, and that surprised me a bit. Some aspects of it clearly have been superceded by more recent scholarship, such as Lawrence Freedman's Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, which I reviewed here shortly after it was published last November, but I believe that Beschloss's book continues to be of value. The magnificent 19th-century English historian Thomas Carlyle once wrote: "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." Few eras provide more validation for Carlyle's perspective than the crisis years of 1961 and 1962, dominated as they were by the intensely personal diplomacy of Kennedy and Khrushchev. Beschloss's coverage of that aspect of U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations during this period is superb.

Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution
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Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution
Jonathan Scott
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Examining works which supported the abolition of monarchy and its replacement with a republic, Jonathan Scott ventures beyond existing studies of individual authors or specific themes to offer the first general account of an influential body of writing. Poets such as John Milton as well as journalists, political leaders, theorists and whig martyrs were among those contributing to the cultural ferment. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of seventeenth-century England, from one of its foremost historians.

Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity

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Entertaining history with a thesis.
Entertaining history with a thesis.

Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Garth Fowden
Manufacturer: Princeton Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691069891

Book Description

In this bold approach to late antiquity, Garth Fowden shows how, from the second-century peak of Rome's prosperity to the ninth-century onset of the Islamic Empire's decline, powerful beliefs in One God were used to justify and strengthen "world empires." But tensions between orthodoxy and heresy that were inherent in monotheism broke the unitary empires of Byzantium and Baghdad into the looser, more pluralistic commonwealths of Eastern Christendom and Islam. With rare breadth of vision, Fowden traces this transition from empire to commonwealth, and in the process exposes the sources of major cultural contours that still play a determining role in Europe and southwest Asia. In this bold approach to late antiquity, Garth Fowden shows how, from the second-century peak of Rome's prosperity to the ninth-century onset of the Islamic Empire's decline, powerful beliefs in One God were used to justify and strengthen "world empires." But tensions between orthodoxy and heresy that were inherent in monotheism broke the unitary empires of Byzantium and Baghdad into the looser, more pluralistic commonwealths of Eastern Christendom and Islam. With rare breadth of vision, Fowden traces this transition from empire to commonwealth, and in the process exposes the sources of major cultural contours that still play a determining role in Europe and southwest Asia.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining history with a thesis........1997-04-30

Styles in historiography come and go. For the classical Greek historians, history was partly the clever strategies of great generals, partly the well-cadenced speeches that should have been made, some descriptions of strange cultures, some geography. For the medieval chroniclers, history was melodrama: great battles, duels between heroes, treacherous murders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Enlightenment, history was the progressive improvement of forms of government. For a while in the 1980s, history was a counterpoint between the psychology of the Chosen Figure and a description of his social milieu. Later came the history of attitudes of women to housework and the detailed history of underwear (no, I'm not kidding).

Ideas about the forces controlling history also change. Caesar was certain that Roman military strategy and tactics brought about the conquest of Gaul. Josephus probably really believed what he repeatedly wrote, that God determines the details of history as reward and punishment for people's actions. Most readers today probably believe that history is determined by material facts, mainly economic facts. Probably this is another aspect of our Enlightenment heritage.

Garth Fowden has returned to two older ideas, that a history book should have a thesis, and that beliefs have a powerful influence on history. In Empire to Commonwealth, his main thesis is that universalist, monotheistic religions helped bring about world conquest in late antiquity, and that their opposite had the opposite effect. Who are the monotheistic universalists? For example, the Byzantine Christians and the Muslims. Who are not? The Achaemenids, the particularist Jews.

On the way, he discusses several other interesting questions in the history of ideas. The question of whether only the saintly are the chosen of God, or whether the highest levels of religion are open even to sinners by virtue of their chosen position, was an important question in early Christianity. Mr. Fowden could have pointed out that the Jews were arguing the same question at about the same time (see Berachot 28a, 34a).

Mr. Fowden has great knowledge of cultures which even people well educated in the Western tradition know little about, e. g., the ancient Iranian religions and the monophysite Christianity of medieval Ethiopia. As in all good histories, there are also diversions along the way, discussions of the moral one-upmanship among the Romans and Iranians in respecting the chastity of each other's harems, and of the amazemant caused by a royal progress of the Black Christian king of Aksum among the oppressed Christians of neighboring lands. And who but Mr. Fowden knows about the synod of monophysite Christians called in 1965 by the Emperor of Ethiopia and the Metropolitan of Aksum.

Entertaining history with a thesis........1997-04-30

Book Description

A master storyteller delivers an historical novel with a twist-what will become of a modern American woman in Cromwell's England?

Returning home to West Virginia after her beloved Uncle John's death, Lydde finds that he has left her an odd legacy: a note with instructions that lead her to a remote mountain cave. When she falls into a crevasse, she finds she has followed her uncle farther than she thought-to Norchester, England, in 1657. Times are dark: the ruling Puritans have beheaded the king and prohibited song, dance, and even Christmas. Though she passes as a boy with her short hair and pants, local official Noah Fallam is still suspicious of her strange clothing and outspokenness. Luckily, she soon finds her uncle, and another man: the Raven, a bandit who provides for the poor through smuggling and robbery. The unlikely couple fall in love, and Lydde must decide where-and when-she belongs. This captivating story brings us close to Denise Giardina's signature concerns of faith and the way we treat the earth.

Customer Reviews:

Half good but half bad.......2006-08-25

I finished this book and the only reason that I finished it was because my library was closed. This book waivers across too many genres. It is about time travel and explores the ideas of paradox, wormholes, and the math involved. But I have just gone as deep as the book did in these areas. Then it changes to a fantasy book, then a 18th century religious-political book, then finally a love book. At no point does this book really suck, but at no point does it really stand out.
I found that it read really slow and at the end of the book it sounded like Ms. Giardina got tired of the characters and finished the book.
I am not angry that I read the book but I also cannot suggest the book to anyone.

Fallam's Secret.......2005-07-18

I stumbled onto this book quite by accident. Boy am I glad I did! What an excellent book! Good plot, story line, believable characters and an interesting fleshing out of theories involving time/space continuum! The story line ended in such a way that a sequel is a possibility! Being that it was published in 2003, maybe there's still hope for a follow up; she can't leave it with the skeleton still in the cave!!! I just can't imagine them getting so close and then failing. On the edge of your seat page turner! ENJOY

AMAZING THOUGHT.......2005-05-02

Yes - this book is like The Outlander series in the theory of "falling through stones" into another era - but the writing is different, the story line different - and both are imaginative and fun. Read The Outlander series first - and then read this with the idea of having a fun read. Yes - she left it open for a sequel when, at the end, the skeleton hides something other than the celtic cross - but isn't that what good books do - take you down more paths and leave story lines open? Take a chance and read this - even if you get it at the library. It is worth the time and you will be rewarded with wishing time travel were a possibility for yourself.

Another Compelling Story by Ms. Giardina.......2004-05-25

I liked Ms. Giardina's story. Set in south-central West Virginia, Ms. Giardina weave the history of the area with the local roadside tourist attractions and creates an entertaining story. Lyddie, with her obscure beginnings, returns home when her beloved uncle (and guardian) dies. While going through his belongings, she finds a key to a red door, located in a local tourist attraction. As she explores the underground cavern, and yes, is transported in time to 17th century England, she unlocks the secrets of her family and her passions.

Appalachia has a mysticism that appeals to many people. Fallam's Secret tells a story that contains the mysticism, the grit, and the integrity of an isolated group of people.

Very Disappointing.......2004-01-21

I am usually a big fan of Denise Giardina..."Storming Heaven", "The Unquiet Earth", and "Saints and Villians" are all among my favorite books. Fallam's Secret appears to be a quickly slapped together story without much of an ending (she appears to be leaving the door open for sequels). Denise also tries to weave in her usual "isms" into the story - Environmentalism, Socialism, Feminism, but their role in the plot is uneven and often forced. For example, as a native West Virginia, I am not a big fan of surface/strip mining...but the inclusion of it in the book did nothing to further the plot or to explore the issue.
Worst of all, her character development is way off this book. Denise's strength in writing has always been great characters: believable, well defined and explored. At the end of the Fallam's Secret, I found myself not caring at all what happened to the characters (and definitely not craving a sequel).
I can't recommend this book (unless perhaps you wait for the paperback and read it at the beach).

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Eclipse of Empire
D. A. Low
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0521457548

Book Description

Eclipse of Empire brings together the work of one of the foremost historians of the recent colonial experience to provide comprehensive outline accounts of the end of the British Empire in India and in Africa, and to assess the many sociopolitical ramifications of this process. No other study has approached the whole twentieth century decolonization process so comprehensively.

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