Inside GMT Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsThe subtitle “James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent” is on point. This primarily about Polk, and takes the view from the White House for the bulk of the book. After that in importance[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Platt’s book is really about the relationship between Britain and China before the Opium War, and shows why a conflict was unexpected, almost right up to when it did happen. The two had a stable trading relationship for about two[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s book on the northwest of British India covers from the appointment of Lord Auckland as Governor-General of India, and goes to the end of British India. In general, this is your usual good Osprey treatment of the subject, with[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is a scholarly look at American politics from roughly 1818 to 1832. Maybe a bit too scholarly for me. Many parts of the book are very finely argued, and I tended to lose track of what the argument was.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
For a long time, waterways were the only meaningful passages from one place to another. Roads might do in a pinch, but water was much faster and easier. Canals have been used throughout history to get this fact to work[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
There’s a few things Miller’s book is about. Most centrally, it is about the Gag Rule, or really, the series of Gag Rules about slavery in the US House of Representatives in the 1830s. It is also about the birth[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I had thought Zamoyski’s book was just on the Congress of Vienna, but I should have taken a better look at the subtitle, which is accurate. Zamoyski starts the action in December 1812, with Napoleon racing into the Tuileries just[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
For most of the series, “English-speaking peoples” means “English”, but for Churchill’s final volume this really widens the scope, with the United States being an ever more important entity through out the time period of the book. However, the first[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Dealing with the other battle on the 16th of June 1815, Osprey’s second Campaign book on Waterloo is more of a companion than a sequel. Interestingly, while having to cover some of the same ground, the introductory sections are quite[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The Battle of Waterloo is a much-discussed bit of military history for many reasons, so it was a logical choice for Ospery’s Campaign series. Really, the surprise is that it didn’t appear until book number 15. It is much less[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…