Annie's comments (member since Aug 23, 2007)

Annie's comments from the Our History group.

I'll be traveling to Mexico City at the end of September and would like to read up a bit on its history. I'm more interested in the internal goings on of the last century and a half or so than I am in American/Mexican relations. Anyone have any suggestions? Historical fiction as well as non-fiction!

Thanks!

Anyone else reading This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust? I'm almost done it. Admittedly, I have never been terribly interested in the US Civil War, but her take on it is pretty fascinating and it is making me want to read more. Any thoughts?

Since you like the older novels that were historical fiction anyway, SIlvana, I would recommend A Tale of Two Cities, definitely my favorite Dickens.

Re: Devil in the White City, I agree that the two stories were pretty interesting in and of themselves, but I don't think the author did a great job connecting them. It would have made more sense to have the two separated completely.

Try the Niccolo series by Dorothy Dunnett. Full of romance and intrigue and set in the latter half of the 15th c. I think there are 6 books all together, starting with Niccolo Rising.

I have dreams of one day going to Cuba, and I like to read as much as I can about a country before going there. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am looking for both pre- and post-Fidel stuff. Thanks!

You must must must read An Instance of the Fingerpost, about a murder of an Oxford don in Restoration England. Pretty weighty but totally compelling. I adore this book. The Name of the Rose is in the same category.

Also by Caleb Carr is The Italian Secretary. He takes on Watson and Holmes as character. It's as entertaining as The Alienist and Angel of Darkness.

I also kind of loved The Historian, which sort of fits the historical crime fiction genre. It's a well done mystery at any rate.

Mark, I definitely agree with you that good biographies, or good biographers, competently contextualize their subject's lives. So while biographies are certainly not exhaustive histories of a time or place, I think that any disdain for a biography (if it is well done, that is) is snobish and shortsighted. After all, one of the best ways to know history is to hear from the people who lived it. Sure, any contemporary historian/biographer has a bias, but as savvy readers, we can hopefully assess that bias and glean a lot of info not only about a person but about what life was like.

With all of that said, I have only recently started reading biographies. I thought that The Orientalist about Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey/Kurban Said was extremely well done. It is not the most academic work you will ever read, but it is an excellent piece of journalism that did much to enlighten me about Weimar Germany, life in the Caucausus just pre- and post- the Russian Revolution, and numerous other bits and pieces on the struggle for identity--cultural, religious and otherwise.

John, for travel writing with a historical twist, I can highly recommend Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City. It is part memoir, part history, and Orhan Pamuk is a great writer. While I liked Snow a great deal, I prefer his non-fiction (see also his Istanbul anecdotes in The New Yorker).

As for the type of history I am into, I have been lately all over the place. Just look at my list of books! As an undergrad, I was a bit of a Francophile, especially in love with the Revolution. Robert Darnton is one of the best scholars of Enlightenment- and Revolution-era France. Darnton is also one of the originators of "book history," which is still a (relatively) new and nebulous field of study, but the literature out there is compelling on both sides of the fence. I can particularly recommend Adrian Johns (his debates with Elizabeth Eisenstein are hilarious and nasty).

If/when I go back to grad school for history, though, I will probably do some sort of gender/labor/immigration in Gilded Age (and thereabouts) US.

I agree with your "'nuff said" comment re: I Claudius and Claudius the God, Rindis. I absolutely adored them and probably breezed through them entirely too quickly b/c I couldn't get enough. I also muddled through Graves's Count Belisarius, which takes patience and doesn't hold a candle to the Claudius books, but worth a read anyway.


My favorite historical novel of late, though, is An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It takes place in Restoration England and deals with some pretty weighty issues, e.g. religion and science and gender and filial loyalty. At its core, though, is a compelling murder mystery told from four different points of view and features a notable cast of supporting characters such as John Locke. Highly highly recommended!