The History Book Club discussion

That is a good accomplishment Jeff.

AMEN, Jeff to your Message #2707!!!!
Regards,
Andrea

dang!! I get the more famous/infamous presidents, plenty of bio's, but the more obscure ones too?? I am impressed! I'd guess Harrison's bio is pretty short (like his tenure!!)... Tyler? I guess maybe with 15 kids, maybe not quite so short a bio (unlike his tenure). Taft might be a bit interesting, well, maybe just the bathtub incident... ;-) sorry, couldn't resist!

Marc wrote: "dang!! I get the more famous/infamous presidents, plenty of bio's, but the more obscure ones too??..."

Marc, you would be surprised. There are fair-length biographies out there on just about everybody except Zack Taylor. WHHarrison's was actually quite good, but ended as abruptly as his presidency.

Anyway... back to the point of this thread: What I'm reading now, started today: Bill Clinton's biography of himself.

by Bill Clinton

by Freeman Cleaves [No photo]

We discussed that book - it was terrific (first one).

Gentlemen, there’s a veritable cottage industry out there for biographies of Presidents. I trip over myself reading bio’s of founding fathers (including John Quincy Adams as the “Lost Founding Father”). And our current “fearless Leader” is no exception either!
Regards,
Andrea

by William J. Cooper Jr.

Bob Woodward

Thank you Andrea for your adds.

Archie Brown
The Rise and Fall of Communism

Roberto wrote: "Archie Brown
The Rise and Fall of Communism"

Roberto, here is the correct form for book citations.

by Archie Brown

It looks pretty interesting.

I just started this book Sunday morning. Benjamin Rush was a pivotal and revolutionary figure in the American Revolution.. He was a figure whom history seems to have forgotten in the context of the Revolution. However, as I’m seeing early on he was one of the more important people in that era and were it not for him perhaps the Revolution would not have been successful. Like so many of his contemporaries, his politics were quite revolutionary at the time. Rush was also a doctor and the positions he took in medicine were also revolutionary at the time like his political viewpoints. Hopefully, in this time of coronavirus we have some doctors in the world who are just as brilliant in our time as he was in his time.
by Stephen Fried

Jeff, that book on Benjamin Rush sounds like an excellent companion to the Atkinson book that we just finished. My TBR List thanks you. For myself, I just began an excellent book on the poet William Wordsworth. He was a grand Romantic poet in his youth, but, outliving all his fellow Romantics, he turned into a prosaic bore. Grand stuff!
Regards,
Andrea

by Stephen Fried
by Jonathan Bate (no photo)
by Rick Atkinson

I finished Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic last night (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) and plan on moving straight to Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar tonight.

by Tom Holland

I’ve also put a nice dent into The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I, just starting Chapter VII now.

by Edward Gibbon

Most everything else on my Currently Reading shelf has been put on the back burner for now.

I just started this book the other day. I'm very early on in the book; but from the looks of things, this is how the book proceeds. It starts with a look at how the battle plays out without a lot of analysis of prior events in that time period. After that, it would appear that the author goes onto describe the sights and smells of carnage that the battle left in its wake as one would presume from seeing the title of the book.
by Paul O'Keeffe

Jeff wrote: "I just started this book the other day. I'm very early on in the book; but from the looks of things, this is how the book proceeds. It starts with a look at how the battle plays out without a lot o..."

Your citation needs a bit of work, Jeff. If there's no author photo, just post the link followed by "(no photo)".

by Paul O'Keeffe (no photo)

The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott

Hayley wrote: "The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott"

Hayley, please use our standard for citations of books, like so -

by Karen Abbott

This standard is described in our Mechanic of the Board thread here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Sorry, I'm on my phone and I don't know how to post links on mobile.

Good Morning, Everyone!. Given the current state of affairs in the US of A, each of us should be reading a book on racism. There are several good ones out there. My favorites so far are as follows.
Regards,
Andrea

by Drew G.I. Hart
by Bryan Stevenson
by Ibram X. Kendi (no photo)

This is a dangerous thread: too many good books for the TBR list!

I recently picked up by Rebecca West, which has been languishing on my bookshelf for a few years.

Mary Ellen, is this the Rebecca West that was a close friend of H. G. Wells?
Regards,
Andrea

Thank you Vicki for your assistance to Hayley.

Andrea, thank you for your recommendations. Of course, it is up to our members to decide which books and on what subjects they would like to read - but all three you posted are very good selections. This thread is to post what everybody is actually reading right now.

Hi all, currently reading:
Defeat in Victory actual book
and the following audiobooks
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933
and
Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II

The Eternal City: A History of Rome

Very in detail about history of rome, remus & romulus the battlss with hannibal. The influence by greecd. For sure recommended if you dont mind a long read

Alexander Hamilton from Ron Chernow.

Arthur, thank you for letting us know what you are currently reading. However, to be consistent with our guidelines the books you mention should have the book cover followed by the author's photo and link, like so:

by Jan M. Ciechanowski (no photo)
by Anne Applebaum
by Charles B. MacDonald

Thank you.

Jsaa, thank you for telling us about the book you are currently reading. However, to be consistent with our guidelines regarding the posting of our books, your post should be as follows:

by Ferdinand Addis (no photo)

Thank you. This enables the Goodreads software to pick it up.

Roberto wrote: "Alexander Hamilton from Ron Chernow."

Roberto, thank you for your post about the book you are currently reading. However, to be consistent with our guidelines, your post should be as follows:

by Ron Chernow

Thank you, this is a book I hope to read soon as well.

Thank you Lorna for all of your assists to our new members.

All, we are delighted to hear about what you are reading now.

I started reading this a little while ago after visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The book chronicles the subject's early years, followed by his baseball career. For most of his baseball career he was a third string catcher, or a second string catcher at. best. With the advent of World War 2, he eventually got work at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Here he excelled at gathering information of which the United States made use of during the war. The subject of the book, Moe Berg, was a highly intelligent and very peculiar individual. He was fluent in 12 languages at varying levels across each language. There is also a corresponding movie to complement this book. I'm nearly done with the book and would recommend it to those amongst us who are both sports fans and history buffs. Even those who are not sports fans might still find the book enjoyable.


by Nicholas Dawidoff (no photo)

I don't know how to post a picture of the book I'm reading.

Roberto, in the top right of the comment box, click on "add book/author" and type in the name of the book you want, with the "cover" button selected. Then when you've found the right one, click the "add" button.

Jeff thank you for your write up and your add. I did not know that much about Moe Berg. It sounds like an interesting read. You also did a great job with the citation. Thank you.

Andrea wrote: "Mary Ellen, is this the Rebecca West that was a close friend of H. G. Wells?
Regards,
Andrea"

Sorry not to have replied earlier. Yes, you could say close friend - he was the father of her son Anthony West and they remained friends till Welles' death. In a "meet cute" worthy of Hollywood, their relationship began after she wrote a negative review of one of his novels! (All this per Wikipedia...it's on the internet, so it must be true, lol!)

(no image)Richard GoldhurstThe Midnight War: The American Intervention In Russia, 1918 1920(no photo) This book is about the little known American expeditions to Russia at the end of WW1 to try to start a counter-revolution in hopes of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. BTW- no photos were available of either the book cover or the author.

Thank you for your interesting add, Gary. However, when there are no images available, your post should look like so:

(no image) The Midnight War: The American Intervention In Russia, 1918 1920 by Richard Goldhurst (no photo)

I have read countless books on American revolutionary figures.
The usual suspects: Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et al.
This time I thought I would do something completely different and read about George Washington's mother. It's early in the book, but I can tell you this much so far. Don't think that just because Washington was in favor of revolution against England , that his mother felt the same way. She certainly did not as the author has begun to uncover some interesting family dynamics in the situation.

by Craig Shirley no photo

Just started reading this book today, far to0 early to tell how good it is just yet.

by Ian W. Toll

Jeff that looks like a good one.

I'm reading Thomas Jefferson's Education which is an interesting history of the University of Virginia

by Alan Taylor

An era of darkness: The British Empire in India by Sashi Tharoor.

Jeannine hello - That sounds like a great choice

Hello Quirky:

Here is how we cite books so that the goodreads software can cross populate our site -

by Shashi Tharoor

Looks like an interesting read.

Thanks for letting me know. I am trying to add the book cover in my comment, but I guess from goodreads app, that option is not possible. I ll trying to find my way somehow.

I wanted to read that book for a while, but I get stuck i after 3 chapters because of the amount of information that book has. I hope I complete it this time.

Good luck on completing the book.

After seeing a copy of this book in a used book store, I had to pick it up. It's so tough to tell how accurate is, you know you just can't believe everything that you read. However, I will say this. The way that the characters in the book are described as especially brutal. Even more brutal than the way they were depicted in the movie.

by Herbert Asbury

For sure Jeff - I imagine that those times were tough and survival was more on their mind than gentility.

The other day I finished reading
It's the second book I've read by her, the first being
I definitely preferred the latter book, maybe because I prefer Mary Queen of Scots to all of Henry's wives (excluding Anne Boleyn).
Six Wives was split into 5 parts, oddly, and not 6 (Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard were clumped together. I enjoyed Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn's sections but I didn't learn anything new about the last three wives. I still would recommend this, though, if you're a Tudor fan.

and both by Alison Weir

Hello Thulani - thank you for adding the book covers (great start) but you also need to type the word by and then go into the add book/author link and add the author's photo first and then the author's link which is the author's name in linkable text. Please see examples above where I have added both of them together then the word by and then the author's photo and the author's link.

Thank you so much for your recommendations and your thoughtful review and post.

Ah, I see. I'm relieved the book covers worked because I had visions of the post going wrong! Thank you for the tip; I'll put the author's picture and their link, too, next time I make a post.

Thank you Thulani