January
1. The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston - one of the very best works of narrative non-fiction I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. It is a brilliant combination of adventure travel, Meso-American history, contemporary Honduran politics, jungle archaeology, a precis upon tropical diseases, as well as a look about the work and politics of modern archaeology.
2. Caeser:Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy- 2006 - 583 Pages
3. South to America : A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry. - 2022 - 410 pages
National Book Award Winner for Non-Fiction -2022
4. This Torrent of Indians: War on the Southern Frontiers by Larry Ivers - 2016 - 266 Pages
February
1. And There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meachem- 2022- 1268 pages
2. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meachem- 2012- 1196 Pages-
March
1. THE APPRENTICE OF BUCHENWALD THE TRUE STORY OF THE TEENAGE BOY WHO SABOTAGED HITLER’S WAR MACHINE by Oren Schneider- 2023 - 212 Pages
2. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn- 2006- 530 Pages
3. The 1619 Project : A New Origin Story - created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine. - 2021 - 559 Pages
4. War Diary by Yevgenia Beloruset - 2022- translated from the German by Gregg Nissan offers an explication of this deeply moving memoir of the first 41 days of Russia's attack on The Ukraine.
5. Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racism in America by Ibram X. Kendi - 2016- 582 Pages
April
1. Mr. B : George Balanchine’s 20th century by Jennifer Homans. -2022 - 1234 Pages
On Saturday, May 20, winner of this year's Plutarch Award, presented to the best biography of the year. One of my favourite works of 2023. This book is a masterpiece. If you have been into ballet all your life you will treasure it, if like me, you have never seen a ballet you will be overwhelmed by the extreme cultural depth of the world Jennifer Homans has presented. The cast of characters is immense, fascinating. The story begins in pre-revoluntunary Russia,suffers through the fall of the Tsar,with young George eating rats, lingers for a while then proceeds to Paris, travels in Weimer Germany, spends a bit of time in London then settles in New York City with some interludes in Hollywood.
2. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisted by Vladimir Nabokov - 1947 - 352 pages
"THE present work is a systematically correlated assemblage of personal recollections ranging geographically geographically from St. Petersburg to St. Nazaire, and covering thirty-seven years, from August 1903 to May 1940, with only a few sallies into later space-time." From the Preface
3. How to hide an empire: a history of the greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr.- 2019 - 517 pages
4. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow - 2021- 674 Pages - an instant classic- The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
6. Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
By Siddharth Kara -January 31, 2023 - 288 Pages
This powerful account of how and why cobalt especially along with other minerals like uranium found almost exclusively in the Congo brought great misery to millions of Congo residents and great wealth to international corporations like Apple and Tesla will shock anyone of integrity who reads it.
May
1. Insurgent Empire : Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopa - 2019 - 628 Pages
2. In the Forest of No Joy : The Congo-Océan Railroad and the tragedy of French Colonialism by J. P. Daughton. -2021- 368 Pages
3. Apollo’s Angels : A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans- 2010- 1103 Pages
4. The Frequent Troubles of Our Days-The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner - 2021 - 577 Pages - Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
5. Vilna, The End of the Road by Sarah Shimonovitz -2021- 158 Pages - Vilna, the End of the Road is the story of the survival of a mother and daughter from a large Jewish family firmly established in Vilna, who, with the rest of the family, were also destined to be murdered and thrown into the pits at Ponar. The path of suffering began with the deportation of the Jews from their homes to the ghetto, and from there to the killing forest and the death camps. In the dead of the night, the writer boldly and with determination, jumps from the death train into the unknown, into the surrounding horror.
June
1. The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel - 2023 - 624 Pages
The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature.. De Hame details their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge.
The Manuscripts Club provides details about men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years
2. Travellers Through Time- A Gypsy History by Jeremy Harte -2022- 320 This is the only work that focuses on the history of the Gypsies in England. It is a very valuable addition to Romi literature.
3. The World Is Blue:How Our Fates and the Ocean's Are One by Sylvia Earle - 2010- 320 Pages
4.Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze - 2008- 829 Pages - must reading
5. The Ruling Familiies of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom by Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski - 2023- 300 Pages - Pre-Romanav Russian History
July
1. DOCTORS AT WAR:THE CLANDESTINE BATTLE AGAINST THE NAZI OCCUPATION OF FRANCE:by Ellen Hampton-2023
2. The Ruble: A Political History by Ekaterina Anatolʹevna Pravilova -2023- 435 pages - I highly recommend this work to anyone with a serious interest in pre-revoluntunary Russian History.
3. Paper Bullets - Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis - 2021 - 326 Pages by Jeffrey Jackson is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey. Devising their own PSYOPS campaign, they slipped their notes into soldier’s pockets or tucked them inside newsstand magazines.
4. The Written World : the Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization by Martin Puchner.- 2017 - 567 Pages
This is a wonderful book for anyone who wishes to increase their understanding of how, from the days of Gilgamesh up to Harry Potter, literature has shaped society as much as the reverse.
1 comment:
Wow, quite a year. You have learned a LOT! And I'm sure you'll learn every bit as much in the coming year, too.
Cobalt Red really stood out for me too. Such an important story. I wish I had posted on it myself too.
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