Reviews
Dear Abigail
A million years ago, when I had first finished my doctoral dissertation and was tiptoeing toward writing about history for an non-academic audience, I headed off to a week-long writing class in Iowa. Along with the rest of my gear, I packed David McCullough’s then newly released John Adams, on the assumption that it would…
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Re-Run: If You Only Read One Book On Islamic History…
Last year I discovered the best general book on Islamic history I’ve ever read: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tanim Ansary. I underlined as I read. I annotated. I put little Post-It tabs at critical points, the durable ones so I could go back to key arguments in the…
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Samurai: The Last Warrior
John Man combines travelogue, history and social commentary n Samurai: The Last Warrior, using the story of Saigo Takamori, popularly known as the “last samurai”, as his central focus. In 1877, Saigo led a hopeless rebellion against the Japanese government. Six hundred samurai armed with traditional sword and bow fought the government’s newly trained modern…
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