Latest reviews

Modern slave by Gaia Cooper

Modern slave by Gaia Cooper

Modern slave by Gaia Cooper – A shocking true crime story of survival and resilience in the face of child criminal exploitation and sexual abuse – is about one of the girls abused by the Rochdale child sex abuse ring. For those who don’t know…

Hallowe’en party by Agatha Christie

Hallowe’en party by Agatha Christie

Hallowe’en party by Agatha Christie was a book I saw reviewed on Kelly’s blog and decided to read it in the run-up to Halloween. While the book has very little connection to Halloween, which is a shame, it is still a murder mystery, so suitable…

Ukraine by Yaroslav Hrytsak

Ukraine by Yaroslav Hrytsak

Ukraine by Yaroslav Hrytsak – the forging of a nation – is the second book I read by this author. The first one was a lovely book about Christmas in Ukraine. This is a history book, but with a difference. While it has all the…

A Swiss Soldier In Ukraine by Jona Neidhart

A Swiss Soldier In Ukraine by Jona Neidhart

A Swiss Soldier In Ukraine by Jona Neidhart is a must-read. It is a £1 as an e-book on amazon and it’s not long either at around 100 pages. Neidhart wrote in the first few pages of his book: “As a believing Christian, I regard…

The picnic by Matthew Longo

The picnic by Matthew Longo

The picnic by Matthew Longo – an escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain – was a book I wanted to read because of the great reviews it received and a book I found lacking in analysis. Also, he mentioned Hannah Arendt…

Maria Merian’s Butterflies by Kate Heard

Maria Merian’s Butterflies by Kate Heard

I found Maria Merian’s Butterflies by Kate Heard as a free to download pdf on Royal Collection Trust’s website. See the link at the end of the post. I loved the book. It’s not long and most of it are reproductions of beautiful artwork made…

Boardroom Scandal by James Taylor

Boardroom Scandal by James Taylor

Boardroom Scandal by James Taylor – The Criminalization of Company Fraud in Nineteenth-Century Britain – is one of 5 books I received as part of a donation to Oxford made by a lecturer who studied at Oxford and died prematurely. He had thousands of books…

An Underground World by Sylvie Robin

An Underground World by Sylvie Robin

An Underground World by Sylvie Robin – The Catacombs of Paris – written in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gély and Marc Viré – is the second book I read about the Catacombs in Paris, which was bought from their gift shop. On its own, the book…

The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas

The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas

The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas using photographs by Emmanuel Gaffard. This is one of 2 books I bought from the gift shop of the Catacombs in Paris. I visited the place and it is fascinating. I read this book and the other one…

War in Ukraine by Hal Brands

War in Ukraine by Hal Brands

War in Ukraine by Hal Brands – Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World is a mix of authors writing on the war-in-Ukraine, which could have been more appropriately called “russia’s war on Ukraine” or something similar. As it is a mix of…

Mariupol 2013-2022 by Hana Josticova

Mariupol 2013-2022 by Hana Josticova

Mariupol 2013-2022 by Hana Josticova – Stories of Mobilization and Resistance – is a fascinating book on narratives and how they create a national identity. She looked at Mariupol and the Donbas region from 2013, pre-Maidan and until russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Mariupol was…

A small town in Ukraine by Bernard Wasserstein

A small town in Ukraine by Bernard Wasserstein

A small town in Ukraine by Bernard Wasserstein – Krakowiec and the storm of history – is the history of a small town, from its establishment in 1423 to 2022. Wasserstein’s family lived there and half of the book is about WWII and the Holocaust,…

Fatal silence by Robert Katz

Fatal silence by Robert Katz

Fatal silence by Robert Katz was an interesting book, which I would recommend, but which I awarded only 3 stars. Its subtitle is “the Pope, the Resistance and the German occupation of Rome” and the book was mainly about the resistance. Considering that it starts…

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler

Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler – How the Holocaust Ends – offers interesting views on pro-war attitudes when it came to Nazi crimes. While researching a well-known case in Latvia regarding the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Herberts Cukurs, Kinstler discovered that…

Storehouses of Empire by Colum Giles

Storehouses of Empire by Colum Giles

Storehouses of Empire by Colum Giles – Liverpool’s historic warehouses – is a short book, filled with pictures. It tells a fascinating story of the warehouses built in Liverpool. After the end of the British involvement in the Transatlantic slavery in 1807, the port of…

Evil under the sun by Agatha Christie

Evil under the sun by Agatha Christie

Evil under the sun by Agatha Christie is a Hercule Poirot murder mystery. I am not usually keen on Hercule Poirot, but I enjoyed this one very much, thus I gave it 5 stars. The blurb of the book is simple, a beautiful woman’s body…