David Gibbins – A history of the world in twelve shipwrecks
In particular, the retracing connections and trade routes in prehistoric times through chemical analysis is impressive.
David Gibbins – A history of the world in twelve shipwrecks
In particular, the retracing connections and trade routes in prehistoric times through chemical analysis is impressive.
The personal stories of individual actors are a bit over-done, but fascinating references to original sources ensure the whole is sufficiently balanced.
Adam Frank – The blind spot
Delightfully broad perspective, although with a far too anthropocentric perspective on intelligence and consciousness.
Martin Wolf – The crisis of Democratic Capitalism
After a slow start, the book provides interesting analyses, which after the 2024 US elections is more relevant than ever.
Jonathan Clement – A brief history of Japan
The broad strokes and accessible style help to create a basic understanding of Japan – although necessarily with major simplifications.
Niccolo Machiavelli – The prince
In theory Machiavelli had it all figured out,
Helena Attlee – The land where the lemons grow
A juicy tale of culture and food in Itlay.
Vince Houghton – Nuking the moon
The overly jolly style of writing can be a bit tiresome, but one cannot help to be fascinated by the outlandish stories..
The story is, appears heavily romanticized, but provides a nice insider perspective on many quirks of Japanese culture.
Chris Wickham – Medieval Europe
Rich and fascinating deep-dive into an under-estimated millennium.
Mike Pitts – How to build Stonehenge
The book reads as a detective, exploring what we know and what we can reasonably conjecture about the creation of Stonehenge based on the archeological record and examples from indigenous civilizations.
Malcolm Hislop – How to build a cathedral
Fascinating in the thorough treatment of technical details of architecture and construction.
Claire Maingon and Hélène Rochette – Le grand guide de la Normandie (in French)
Charming take on a tourist guide, revisiting the favorite spots of impressionist painters to recreate their magic.
Theo Mulder – De hersenverzamelaar (The brain collector, read in Dutch)
The book is mostly written from the historical perspective free from contemporary judgements, which allows the writer to tell a nuanced story on a sensitive topic.
The author underplays the role of religious power structures in suppressing novel scientific ideas that go against traditionalist dogmas, which makes the book read more like a christian apology than a balanced historical narrative.
David Abulafia – The great sea
The best parts are the details (e.g. on laws governing responsibilities at sea in medieval times), but these facts buried in a thorough, impressively complete historical overview.
Jamie Kreiner – The wandering mind
The book loses a lot of specificity and power due to the suppression of differences in denomination and gender and even more because the writer does not really seem to have a clear point to make.
Balaji Srinivasan – The Network state
Some fair nuggets of socio-economical diagnosis mixed with personal pet-peeves and drained in a techno-utopian rant.
Lucy Worsely – Agatha Christie
The book over-indexes a bit on the domestic context, which does not help in de-mystifying the genius of its subject.
Richard Feyneman – Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman
Not all anecdotes have aged well but there are enough gems to make the book worthwhile.