When I chose to read The Last Days of Detroit by Mark Binelli for my 12 in 12 Challenge I was expecting it to be a history of the city and how it became bankrupt. This book covers that issue, although in a lot less detail than I would have liked and without many statistics … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 8

During the Victorian era women who had inconvenient babies, usually out of wedlock, and had no support system were faced with a terrible dilemma. They could keep their child and starve or they could find someone who would look after the baby for a regular sum or an upfront payment. Amelia Dyer and the Baby … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 7

Suzannah Lipscomb’s book 1536 is subtitled The Year that Changed Henry VIII. The historian claims that the Tudor king changed during the course of his reign from a carefree, intelligent, “golden” prince into a tyrant. Her argument is that the events of 1536 are what made the difference. It was certainly a rough year for … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 6

Jeff Guinn’s book Manson is not just a biography of Charles Manson and a look at the “family” he formed in 1960s America and the crimes they committed. It is also an examination of a particular period in time in a certain place which the author argues allowed the crimes to happen as they did. … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 5

In 1518 in Strasbourg a peculiar plague broke out. Suddenly members of the public were dancing for days and couldn’t stop. In fact, as John Waller says in his fascinating history A Time to Dance, A Time to Die, this was not the first time that this happened in Europe and nor was it the … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 4

Quite a lot of the history books I have on my to-be-read pile are about WW2 – in fact, there were so many that I spent a whole month just reading WW2 books and didn’t exhaust the supply. East West Street by Philippe Sands is a memoir and history book all in one concentrating on … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 3

Globe by Catharine Arnold is not just a book about Shakespeare’s theatre but is actually a wider look at the beginning of established theatres, theatre companies and commercial theatre in London in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It’s a period that I know something about, I have read/seen many of the plays she … Continue reading My 12 in 12 Challenge – October – History – Book 2

A fascinating look at the history of rock lighthouses

Moving house may have a detrimental effect on my reading

A gripping thriller where all is not what it seems