England Books

The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British

Sarah Lyall

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dispatches from the new Britain: a slyly funny and compulsively readable portrait of a nation finally refurbished for the twenty-first century.

Sarah Lyall, a reporter for the New York Times, moved to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for her amusing and incisive dispatches on her adopted country. As she came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), she found that she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life. The roller-coaster decade of Tony Blair's New Labor government was an increasingly materialistic time when old-world symbols of aristocratic privilege and stiff-upper-lip sensibility collided with modern consumerism, overwrought emotion, and a new (but still unsuccessful) effort to make the trains run on time. Appearing a half-century after Nancy Mitford's classic Noblesse Oblige, Lyall's book is a brilliantly witty account of twenty-first-century Britain that will be recognized as a contemporary classic.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book (as described by previous reviewers and the product description) details what the men in the Nazi Reserve Police Battalion 101 went through, specifically during the SS Invasion of Poland.

Browning describes in detail the process of dehumanizing the Jews, and writes at length on the style of execution that the Germans refined and perfected in Poland, prior to the widespread use of gas chambers: the person to be killed forced to lie down flat on their face, and then shot at a particular spot in their neck. The accounts of these executions is not just gratuitous violence -- graphic gore for the sake of shock or horror -- but rather, demonstrates that over time, the police officers involved in the executions worked to make the process of mass killing more humane (an idea that was at the root of the gas chambers, as ironic as that seems). It also serves to drive home the point that after so many hundreds of people were shot, the officers were able to completely dehumanize the people they were killing.

What is unique about this book is that it is not just another historical account; the author takes into consideration what the Nazis themselves had to go through, psychologically and emotionally, in order to carry out their orders. Many other historians have analyzed historical events during WWII while still demonizing the Nazi forces ~ but Browning shows us that the troops really were Ordinary Men, and these men suffered tremendous emotional tolls as a result.

And herein lies the Truth that makes this book so chilling: any one of us could have found ourselves in the very same position, carrying out the very same orders, as the German troops in WWII.

Browning describes the various social conditions and governmental policies that effected how the Nazis were able to so completely dehumanize their enemy and rationalize their own involvement -- in part, because the men were assuaged of their sense of responsibility for their actions, and also in part due to the tremendous number of times that the actions had to be carried out. Repetition bred a sense of normalcy.

In the Afterword, Browning addresses another author who has critiqued Browning's work -- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen -- whose work I feel compelled to mention since it directly relates to this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is studying modern history, sociology / psychology, or WWII, but keep in mind that it is extremely graphic and very, very hard to read -- not because of the language used, but because of the events that Browning so meticulously describes.

Editorial Review:

Shocking as it is, this book--a crucial source of original research used for the bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners--gives evidence to suggest the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but that they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes. Browning, a thorough historian who lets no one off the moral hook nor fails to weigh any contributing factor--cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each viewed as an excruciating duty--interviewed hundreds of the killers, who simply could not explain how they had sunken into savagery under Hitler. A good book to read along with Ron Rosenbaum's comparably excellent study Explaining Hitler. --Tim Appelo

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

Simon Winchester

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.

No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair.

He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people.

After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.

Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great—related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

Patrick J. Buchanan

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Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.

Among the British and Churchillian blunders were:

• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler
• The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War
• Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions.

Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Kate Summerscale

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Steven Johnson

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Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Can We See the Actual Map? 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Steven Johnson's book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of how a doctor, John Snow, and a local minister, Henry Whitehead, worked together to combat an outbreak of cholera in their London neighborhood. They did so by conducting on the spot investigation which allowed them to demonstrate that the cholera was being transmitted through the water supply at the Broad Street pump. This demonstration was illustrated through the famous "ghost map" that showed the cluster of illness around the pump which, in turn, famously, led to the removal of the pump handle to combat the outbreak.

Mr. Johnson does a fair job of telling this story. The strength of his telling lies in how he reminds us how far our understanding of disease has come in the past couple centuries. In an era where disease is so much better controlled through hygiene and treatment, it is so easy to forget how diseases like cholera, plague and smallpox would periodically devastate populations--diseases that are now essentially unknown in the developed world.

Yet, in the summer of 1854, the best medical authorities still believed that cholera was an effect of "miasma," the inhalation of foul odors carried through the air. Scientific rigor was becoming part of medicine by this time, however, and Dr. Snow had hypothesized some years before this outbreak that cholera was carried in the water supply. What he was lacking was proof, which the outbreak of 1854 gave him the opportunity to try to supply. And supply his proof he did, despite the fact that it would be some time before his conclusions were accepted even in the face of very convincing evidence, like the "ghost map."

Mr. Johnson relates these pieces of the story very well. What he does less well is bring these people vividly to life. Only Dr. Snow really seems to be fully three-dimensional in Johnson's story. Whitehead, Farr, Chadwick and others flit around the edges of this story like so many ghosts and never seem to be full-bodied people. It was also disappointing that, despite the title, we are not provided with a picture or color reproduction of this revolutionary map. Being able to examine the actual map would have been a nice addition to the text.

Still, there is much of value here. Despite some bells and whistles that would have added energy to the prose, the story of disease and science takes center stage in this book. It is a nice reminder of the good science can do and the struggle that scientists often have to undergo to have new ideas break through.

Editorial Review:

A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year

It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure-garbage removal, clean water, sewers-necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action-and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time.

In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of disease, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Alison Weir

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Total reviews: 136 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Henry the World-class Glutton 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Alison Weir's well-written, easy to read book about the Six Wives of Henry the VIII is an outstanding work of history about England in the 1500s, Henry's six wives, and the role they play in English politics and international relations with Spain, France and Germany. It is definitely a five star work of scholarship and entertainment.

Editorial Review:

The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.

The Tao of Pooh

Benjamin Hoff

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Total reviews: 211 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not the Past, Not the Future, but The Tao........... 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 29 people found this review helpful.

People. It is a beautiful spring day today. The sun is shining, a warm breeze is caressing, the clouds are puffy cotton, the squirrels are scurrying and the birds are chirping. (Which is o.k. as long as they don't fly overhead!). Your Metamorpho decided to take his pen and pad to the ol' babbling brook to get into the reflective mood to write this next review. I sat down against an old oak tree and started to write. However, it was so peaceful I started to doze off. In the middle of envisioning Sondra the Seerest doing her latest belly dance, I felt a furry hand tugging at my white linen cuff.

"Wake up Mr. Metamorpho, wake up!" a voice said. I blinked my eyes open to find Pooh there, face full of honey.

"Oh it's you Pooh," I said with surprise. "Funny you should be here. I was just going to write about you."

"You were?" he said with eyes wide open. "Why?"

"Well, because I'm here writing a review of Benjamin Hoff's book called 'The Tao of Pooh', which is about you."

"It is?" he asked. "Wow!"

"No, Tao Pooh", I corrected.

"What is Tao Mr. Metamorpho?" he asked with a puzzled look.

"Well, I think it is one of the great teachings of China. A philosopy of sorts. Mr. Hoff equates this with how you are. An uncarved block, as he puts it."

"He thinks I'm a blockhead?" Pooh said, as a lone tear started to form.

"No no Pooh. Even though you are a bear of simple brain, Mr. Hoff explains that you are not stupid, but representative of the simplicity one needs to lead a calm and natural life. Go with the flow, if you will."

"That sounds better," he smiled.

"Sure does. The concept of Tao is very interesting, but, essentially the belief is that there is constant evolution in the world. In other words, there is a natural balance in nature and the universe. It is the concept that total harmony will be achieved by letting things be, to run their own course, if you will."

"I ran a course once, along with Kanga and Roo," he said smiling.

"Well, it's not exactly like that," I said. "You see Pooh, he believes in yin and yang. Two energies that, although opposite, are complimentary and needed for harmony. This applies to many facets of life."

"Maybe I should ask owl," he said.

"Well, you could," I said. "But he makes a distinction here between knowledge and true wisdom. The answers don't lie in a book per se, they just are, within yourself, if you are aware of the interconnectivity of all things in the universe."

"You mean I am?" he said with surprise.

"Mr. Hoff seems to thinks so. And I wouldn't apply this to any of your friends. Rabbit never slows himself down long enough to recognize the simple pleasures of life," I said. "Eeyore, well, you know Eeyore, he brays over things he can't control. And Piglet, although very small, is uncertain and afraid to take action."

"I'm hungry. Do you have a jar of honey with you?" he asked.

"No, but I have this," and I handed him a honey graham cracker. "There is much more to this philosophy, but the main thing is that the only constant in the universe is change. If you war against it you will only produce unnatural and artificial results, which could produce much unhappiness because it goes against the natural rythmn and flow of life."

"I don't think I am unhappy Mr. Metamorpho," he said.

"No Pooh, you aren't," I smiled. "You are a living, breathing, stuffed example of Tao."

"Well, Mr. Metamorpho, I'm not stuffed yet. No honey, huh?"

"No, Pooh. But, I have no doubt that you will find it. Tao provides beary nice things for those who follow the path."

"Thanks Mr. Metamorpho. Speaking of path, I should go find Christopher Robin. He should be home about now," he said and then sauntered off.

And people, if you have read this so far, you will know I will take full advantage of the deus ex machina (a popular method in Greece) to tell you that when I woke up, I remembered this meeting word for word, and wrote it here for your amazement. Now, let me get back to my daydream of Sondra. It was a very pleasurable experience, but I wished she would stop fluttering those stupid silk scarfs in my face. The things one puts up with for love. I tell ya.

For the child in all of us -- Metamorpho

Editorial Review:

Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl. Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living.

The Prince (Special Student Edition)

Niccolò Machiavelli

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A guide to gaining and maintaining power 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book was written by the famous Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli in 1531. This book is a classic and I was pleasantly surprised that the content was not dated and the principles translate easily into the modern worlds of business and politics.
The author wrote this book as an instruction guide for governing princes in the 1500's when Italy was divided into city states and were being defeated by many foreign powers. I belive that the work is directed to Lorenzo de Medici by a letter included in the work and because at the end of the writing Machiavelli calls for a prince to unite and lead Italy against its oppressors.
The book is not unethical as I had imagined from my understanding of the ruthlessness of Machiavellian ethics. The author is only explaining tactics to use to maintain power in a kingdom or city state that are pragmatic for his time period.
Here are some examples of principles from the book:
1. When conquering a territory keep the current laws and institutions in place, but eliminate all the family of the defeated prince.
2. When trouble is sensed ahead of time it can be easily remedied, if you wait for it to show itself, it is to late.
3. Whoever is responsible for another becoming powerful, ruins himself.
4. There is no surer way of keeping possesion than by devastation.
5. Men do you are harm either because they hate you or they fear you.
6. Violence must be inflicted once and for all, it must be over quickly.
7. Build your power through the people.
8. Power is maintained through religious institutions.
9. Neglect the art of war and you lose your state.
10. If you act virtuously, you will be undone by those who are not, make use of this or not according to need.
The above is just a small sampling of the lessons in this book. My review can not do this book justice, it is full of wisdom and life lessons. It is a guide book for business leaders and politicians. I strongly suggest adding this book to your home library and referring to it often

Editorial Review:

Special Student Edition has a special margin on each page to allow students to make notations. Complete translated text with an introduction on the life of Machiavelli.

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Amanda Foreman

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Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century It Girl. She came from one of England's richest and most landed families (the late Princess Diana was a Spencer too) and married into another. She was beautiful, sensitive, and extravagant--drugs, drink, high-profile love affairs, and even gambling counted among her favorite leisure-time activities. Nonetheless, she quickly moved from a world dominated by social parties to one focused on political parties. The duchess was an intimate of ministers and princes, and she canvassed assiduously for the Whig cause, most famously in the Westminster election of 1784. By turns she was caricatured and fawned on by the press, and she provided the inspiration for the character of Lady Teazle in Richard Sheridan's famous play The School for Scandal. But her weaknesses marked the last part of her life. By 1784, for one, Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands," and her creditors dogged her until her death.

Biographer Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that surrounded the personal relationships of the aristocratic subculture (Georgiana and the duke engaged for many years in a ménage à trois with Lady Elizabeth Fraser, who inveigled her way into the duke's bed and the duchess's heart). Foreman is, by her own admission, a little in love with her subject, which can lead to occasional lapses of perspective, but generally it adds zest to a narrative built on, rather than burdened by, scholarship, that is at once accessible and learned. An impressive debut, in every sense. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk