Readings of My Book Club

I have been participating in a book club since December, 2005. These days we tend to choose relatively short histories, thought to be well written, which are recently released in paperback after success as hardbacks, dealing with events that occurred before living memory. The lady leading the club has just supplied a full list of past readings, which is shared below:

List Borders History Book Club selections through March 09

2002

July

Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis

August

World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age by William Manchester

September

The Militant South: 1800-1861 by John Hope Franklin

October

People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present, Howard Zinn

November

Boxer Rebellion, Diana Preston

December

The Great Depression, America 1929-1941, Robert S. McElvaine

2003

January

Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding by Robert Hughes

February

The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy 1400 to the Present by Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik

March

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in it by Arthur Herman

April

Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk

May

The Templars by Piers Paul Read

June

King Leopold’s Ghost: The Hidden Horror in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

July

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt

August

The Middle East:A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years by Bernard Lewis

September

Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation by Donald R. Morris

October

Black Sea by Neal Ascherson

November

Paris – 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret Macmillan

December

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

2004

January

Worldly Philosophers: The lives, times and ideas of the great economic thinkers by Robert Heilbroner

February

Guns of August: When the 19th Century Ended by Barbara Tuchman

March

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America by Nicholas Lemann

April

Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris

May

Realm of Prester John, Robert Silverberg

June

Moorish Spain, Richard Fletcher

July

Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne

August

Age of Jackson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

September

Confusions of Pleasure, Commerce & Culture in Ming, Timothy Brook

October

Lion and the Tiger, Rise and Fall of British Raj, 1600-1947 by Denis Judd

November

Mekong, Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future by Milton Osborne

December

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill

2005

January

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond

NO MEETING - RECESS

June

Genghis Khan & Making of Modern World by Jack Weatherford

July

1968, When all the World Changed by Mark Kurlansky

August

Ornament of the World: How Muslim, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal

September

Brief History of the Great Moguls by Bamber Gasciogne

October

Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March, Adam Zamoyski

November

Balkan Ghosts, A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan

December

The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry

2006

January

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman

February

Collapse by Jared Diamond

March

Blood Feud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England by Richard Fletcher

April

All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.

May

The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky

June

Continent for the Taking: Tragedy and Hope of Africa by Howard French

July

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus by Robert Kaplan

August

Liberators: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence by Robert Harvey

September

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey Kaye

October

Triangle: The Fire that Changed America by David Von Drehle

November

The Devil’s Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy by Frances Stonor Saunders

December Cancelled

2007

January

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann

February

Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orphan Pamuk

March

Modern History of the Kurds by David McDowall

April

Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alastair Horne

May

Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

June

American Gospel: God, The Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham

July

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland

August

Benjamin Franklin by Edmund S. Morgan

September

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergen

October

Sailing from Byzantium by Colin Wells

November

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

December

1776 by David McCullough

2008

January

Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia, by Peter Hopkirk

February

Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich

March

Salt by Mark Kurlansky

April

God’s Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence

May

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to free an Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild

June

Henry VIII, The King and the Court by Alison Weir

July

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin

August

Toussaint Louvertore by Martin Smartt Bell

September

Dogs of War: Columbus, the Inquisition, and Defeat of the Moors by James Reston, Jr.

October

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman

November

All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of the Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer

December

Mysteries of the Middle Ages and the Beginning of the Modern World by Thomas Cahill

2009

January

Commonwealth of Thieves, The Improbable Birth of Australia by Thomas Kenneally

February

Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire by William Rosen

March

Rites of Peace, The Fall of Napolean and the Congress of Vienna by Adam Zamboyski

Comment: I have not read all of the books, even in the three and a half years I have been participating in the club. For the faithful, long term members, the club represents a pretty good education in history. Having a month to read each book, and a couple of hour discussion with 10 to 20 people who have read it works well. It both encourages care in reading and illuminates the content. I have been impressed by the folk who turn up at the local book store each month. JAD