Book Summaries - listed by subject
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(not to be confused with my bibliography or all the books I've read)
ANTIQUITY
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Old Way: a Story of the First People
Burns, Thomas S., Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C. – A.D. 400
Dever, William G. What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It
Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did they Come From
Jahoda, Gustav, Images of Savages
Kagan, Donald, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace
Otterbain, Keith, How Wars Began
Tougher, Shaun, ed., Eunuchs in Antiquity & Beyond
MIDDLE AGES
Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Huizinga, Johan, The Autumn of the Middle Ages
Secher, Reynald, A French Genocide
Zagorin, Perez, How the Idea of Religious Toleration came to the West
EAST ASIA, MODERN
Bix, Herbert P., Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Cheng, Nien, Life and Death in Shanghai
Takemae, Eiji, The Allied Occupation of Japan
Watanabe, Kiyoshi, Shattered God (Kudakareta Kami)
GERMANY
Clark, Christopher, Kaiser Wilhelm II
Machtan, Lothar, The Hidden Hitler
Meisner, Hans-Otto, Magda Goebbels
Mombauer, Annika, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War
Rinderle and Norling, Nazi Impact on a German Village
Scheck, Raffael, Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-win Politics, 1914-1930
Steger, Manfred B., The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism
MIDDLE EAST
Berkey, Jonathan P., The Formation of Islam [600 to 1800]
Kimmerling and Migdal, The Palestinians: A History
Oren, Michael B., Six Days of War
Rosen, Nir, In the Belly of the Green Bird: the Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq.
Trofimov, Yaroslav, The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising ... and the Birth of al Qaeda
Trofimov, Yaroslav, A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu
SOVIET UNION AND RUSSIA
Breslauer, George W., Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
Gorbachev, Mikael, Gorbachev: On My Country and the World
SPAIN
Ashford Hodges, Gabrielle, Franco: a Concise Biography
UNITED KINGDOM
UNITED STATES
Berkin, Carol, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution
Bradley, James, Flags of Our Fathers
Carlson, Lewis H., Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War
Crier, Catherine, Contempt: How the Right is Wronging American Justice
Divine, Robert, Eisenhower and the Cold War
Fukuyama, Francis, The Great Disruption
Jacoby, Susan, The Age of American Unreason
Livingston and Groden, High Treason
Margolich, David, Beyond Glory: Joe Lewis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink
Rabe, Stephen G., Eisenhower, the Foreign Policy of Anti-communism and Latin America
Regnery, Alfred S., Upstream: the Ascedance of American Conservatism
Scalia, Antonin, A Matter of Interpretation
Speer, Lonnie, War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation against Civil War POWs
Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-five
VIETNAM
GENERAL
Bobbitt, Philip, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History
Boot, Max, War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History, 1500 to Today
Burnham and Phelan, Mean Genes: Taming Our Primal Instincts
Chua, Amy, Day of Empire: Why Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall
Clark, Gregory, A Farewell to Alms: a Brief Economic History of the World
Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War: A New History
Honderich, Ted, How Free Are You?
Maalouf, Amin, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
Neiman, Susan, Evil in Modern Thought
TERRORISM
Richardson, Louise, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat