No comments about Dundee: A Short History.

No comments about The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325-1520.

1 comments about The Highland Clearances Trail.

1. The Highland Clearances are one of the great blots on British history. I have often wonder why there is such a Scottish antipathy to the Conservative party. Reading of the Clearances shows why any group associated with the Establishment would not be esteemed in Scotland, especially in the Highlands and Islands which suffered from a hundred years when unfeeling landowners evicted their tenants for sheep or deer. I read this account while on holiday in the Hebrides. Driving down the Golden Road on Harris, seeing where the crofters complained they had been given land with not even enough soil to bury their dead, one shudders at the inhumanity of it all. The Highlands have for me a sad, empty beauty. Read this and see why. It is a great guide for travelling the sites of man's inhumanity to man.

No comments about The Faithful Few: Worcestershire's Fighter Boys.

4 comments about Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune.

1. Rupert Christiansen really brings the Commune alive through a combination of research, archived interview, old news clips, and photos. The commune's ascendancy and collapse is related as a compelling chronology. His fine writing brings out the french pompousness that lead to the franco- prussian war; the siege of Paris; the state of denial that held to the last days among the upper class; the state of terror and famine of the lower class; and the ultimate collapse of the commune and eventual slaughter of the communards. As one who has lived in Paris, I highly recommend it even if you don't traditionally read history books.



2. Rupert Christiansen has written an historical account that is also a "great read"; hard to put down and very enlightening. I had just finished reading a novel that was set (partially) in Paris around the time of the Franco-Prussian war and wanted to find out more. Surprisingly, this is the only book I could find that dealt with this utterly fascinating time and place. The title of the book says it's "the story of the Paris Commune". This is incorrect; only a relatively small part of the book deals with the Commune, while the major part describes life in the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon and the Siege of Paris during the war. I couldn't help but draw parallels to current Western culture while reading about Paris in the 1860s: creation of incredible wealth and its ostentatious display, pioneering techniques of entrepreneurship, rapid developments in transportation and communication, rampant cynicism among the intellectuals, popular fascination by the news media with private lives and notorious murders, and a very public decline in sexual morality. The author covers the sociology, the history, and the politics in a very smooth combination of original sources and his own narrative. It never gets bogged down on detail, but still presents a very complete description. This is a book that could be enjoyed by anyone, even those who have little knowlege of the 19th century and little interest in history.



3. Rupert Christiansen has written an historical account that is also a "great read"; hard to put down and very enlightening. I had just finished reading a novel that was set (partially) in Paris around the time of the Franco-Prussian war and wanted to find out more. Surprisingly, this is the only book I could find that dealt with this utterly fascinating time and place. The title of the book says it's "the story of the Paris Commune". This is incorrect; only a relatively small part of the book deals with the Commune, while the major part describes life in the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon and the Siege of Paris during the war. I couldn't help but draw parallels to current Western culture while reading about Paris in the 1860s: creation of incredible wealth and its ostentatious display, pioneering techniques of entrepreneurship, rapid developments in transportation and communication, rampant cynicism among the intellectuals, popular fascination by the news media with private lives and notorious murders, and a very public decline in sexual morality. The author covers the sociology, the history, and the politics in a very smooth combination of original sources and his own narrative. It never gets bogged down on detail, but still presents a very complete description. This is a book that could be enjoyed by anyone, even those who have little knowlege of the 19th century and little interest in history.



4. March 18th every year is the anniversary of the establishment of the Paris Commune in 1871. That event rightly takes its place in an honored position in the revolutionary pantheon and is commemorated, especially in Paris, as such. Why? As the founder of scientific socialism, Karl Marx, noted in his spirited defense of the Commune against the raging reaction of capitalist Europe and the faint-hearted in the international labor movement at the time this was the first, trembling expression of the `dictatorship of the proletariat'-the time of working class rule. That it was crushed quickly by that same capitalist Europe and repressed thoroughly does not take away from the grandeur of the experience. Historians have rightly taken it as a seminal event in late 19th century European history. The book under review takes up the narrative around the establishment of the Commune in an interesting way.
   
   The study of history like other major scholarly disciplines goes through cycles and, frankly, fads concerning the important lessons of any period and about what and who to emphasize or not emphasize. This book belongs in the camp of the social micro-history school where setting up the milieu is decisive for interpreting the sequence of events. The author has done a creditable job of setting the milieu of the Second Empire in France under the dyspeptic Louis Bonaparte and his entourage, including his demanding and, at times, bizarre wife. Moreover he sets the scene by a rather vivid, and perhaps too vivid, detailing of Parisian manners, mores, cuisine, architecture and other cultural phenomena which point menacingly to the disastrous military overconfidence and woeful under preparedness that was about to occur in 1870 when confronted by the Prussians.
   
   Less satisfactory is his analysis of the enigmatic but politically clever Louis Bonaparte and the social base on which his regime rested. Karl Marx did a much more thorough, if more polemical, analysis on that base of mainly rural farmers and their political dependents who stuck by Bonaparte to the end in his classic exposition of historical materialism, the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Also the author's narrative of the establishment and crushing of the Paris Commune does not lend itself to drawing any lessons from the experience. While the author is not
   overtly hostile to the Commune he is clearly no friend, and makes no bones about it. Seemingly the Communards got what they deserved, or at least what they should have expected. If you want to get an in-depth analysis of those lessons you must look elsewhere, especially if you are looking for the implications for future revolution strategy for the 20th century Marxist movement. With those shortcomings in mind if you want a good literary Inside Edition-like social travelogue of Paris in the third quarter of the 19th century this is as good a place as any to start.

No comments about Goodbye to Victoria the Last Queen Empress: The Story of Queen Victorias Funeral Train (Series X).

1 comments about Clans and Tartans Map of Scotland (Pictorial Map) (Pictorial Maps).

1. My sister-in-law is very interested in Scotland and her connection. She saw a copy of this map at a highland game and wanted it. I will make it a nice surprise Christmas present. A very nice map, filling all my needs.

No comments about Cotswold Arts and Crafts Architecture.

No comments about Histories of Infamy.

No comments about The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III 1371-1406 (Stewart Dynasty in Scotland series).