William Smith Map of England and Wales - History Study Group (HSG)

The Rothchilds: The Dynasty And The Legacy by Michael W. Simmons

8/30/2021

January 20, 2022

Led by Bob Rosen

ho are the Rothchilds? Still making headlines today, their fascinating history stretches back to the Jewish ghetto in Frankfort Germany, where the first Rothchild ancestors lived in the House of the Red Shield. There one man and his five brilliant sons made their fortune as court agents to a prince.

It would take Napoleon's earth-shattering quest to conquer Europe to scatter the five brothers to the four winds, but when the dust settled, there was a Rothschild brother and a Rothchild bank in five cities: London, Paris, Frankfort, Naples, and Vikenna. The era of haute finance had begun, and the legond of a banking empire mor epowerful than any royal family in history was established.

In this book, you will follow the progress of the Rochchild family through the centuries. Their ranks included not only bankers and financiers but doctors, scientists, bomb experts, and collector who amassed not only some of the finest art collections in Europe, but also one of the finest bug collections.

Find out for yourself how the Rothschilds prevented wars, crowned and uncrowned kings, helped win the Battle of Waterloo, looked down their noses at the Nazis, and established a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33943515-the-rothschilds

https://www.amazon.com/Rothschild-Dynasty-Dr-John-Coleman/dp/096340198X

The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain's Wars for America by Julie Flavell

8/6/2021

October 21, 2021

Led by Alan Rubin

Finally revealing the family’s indefatigable women among its legendary military figures, The Howe Dynasty recasts the British side of the American Revolution.

In December 1774, Benjamin Franklin met Caroline Howe, the sister of British General Sir William Howe and Richard Admiral Lord Howe, in a London drawing room for “half a dozen Games of Chess.” But as historian Julie Flavell reveals, these meetings were about much more than board games: they were cover for a last-ditch attempt to forestall the outbreak of the American War of Independence.

Aware that the distinguished Howe family, both the men and the women, have been known solely for the military exploits of the brothers, Flavell investigated the letters of Caroline Howe, which have been blatantly overlooked since the nineteenth century. Using revelatory documents and this correspondence, The Howe Dynasty provides a groundbreaking reinterpretation of one of England’s most famous military families across four wars.

Contemporaries considered the Howes impenetrable and intensely private—or, as Horace Walpole called them, “brave and silent.” Flavell traces their roots to modest beginnings at Langar Hall in rural Nottinghamshire and highlights the Georgian phenomenon of the politically involved aristocratic woman. In fact, the early careers of the brothers—George, Richard, and William—can be credited not to the maneuverings of their father, Scrope Lord Howe, but to those of their aunt, the savvy Mary Herbert Countess Pembroke. When eldest sister Caroline came of age during the reign of King George III, she too used her intimacy with the royal inner circle to promote her brothers, moving smoothly between a straitlaced court and an increasingly scandalous London high life.

With genuine suspense, Flavell skillfully recounts the most notable episodes of the brothers’ military campaigns: how Richard, commanding the HMS Dunkirk in 1755, fired the first shot signaling the beginning of the Seven Years’ War at sea; how George won the devotion of the American fighters he commanded at Fort Ticonderoga just three years later; and how youngest brother General William Howe, his sympathies torn, nonetheless commanded his troops to a bitter Pyrrhic victory in the Battle of Bunker Hill, only to be vilified for his failure as British commander-in-chief to subdue Washington’s Continental Army.

Britain’s desperate battles to guard its most vaunted colonial possession are here told in tandem with London parlor-room intrigues, where Caroline bravely fought to protect the Howe reputation in a gossipy aristocratic milieu. A riveting narrative and long overdue reassessment of the entire family, The Howe Dynasty forces us to reimagine the Revolutionary War in ways that would have been previously inconceivable.

https://julieflavell.com/the-howe-dynasty
Reviews:
https://julieflavell.com/reviews

Another Julie Favell book:
https://julieflavell.com/when-london-was-capital-of-america-reviews

The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past by Meave Leakey and Samira

7/20/2021

August 15, 2021

Led by Stacy Wallach

"Extraordinary . . . This inspirational autobiography stands among the finest scientist memoirs."
--New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

Meave Leakey’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field.

In The Sediments of Time, preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors.

Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, the result of likely sabotage, Meave steps in.

The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey’s efforts; it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope.

"A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far off time when we emerged from our ape-like ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget."
—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute

Hitler: A Biography by Peter Longrich

7/5/2021

July 15, 2021

Read by Stan Applebaum

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0peufc4xeldp8e7/Hitler.%20PwrPnt%2014d.pdf?dl=0

From one of the most prominent biographers of the Nazi period, a new and provocative portrait of the figure behind the century's worst crimes

Acclaimed historian Peter Longerich, author of Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler now turns his attention to Adolf Hitler in this new biography. While many previous portraits have speculated about Hitler's formative years, Longerich focuses on his central role as the driving force of Nazism itself. You cannot separate the man from the monstrous movement he came to embody.

From his ascendance through the party's ranks to his final hours as Fuhrer in April 1945, Longerich shows just how ruthless Hitler was in his path to power. He emphasizes Hitler's political skills as Germany gained prominence on the world's stage. Hitler's rise to, and ultimate hold on, power was more than merely a matter of charisma; rather, it was due to his ability to control the structure he created. His was an image constructed by his regime - an essential piece self-created of propaganda. This comprehensive biography is the culmination of Longerich's life-long pursuit to understand the man behind the century's worst crimes.

Too many books are written about Hitler. Many are amateur efforts, and even those that aren’t rarely add anything new. Yet this vivid and painstakingly researched volume revises fundamentally how historians ought to view the geopolitical motivations of the Nazi leader. Simms argues that Hitler did not see the Soviet Union as the primary obstacle to his expansionist ambitions. From the start, his real enemies were the United Kingdom and the United States, the victors of World War I, the conflict that had decisively shaped his worldview. These countries were (from Hitler’s perspective) racially pure “Anglo-Saxon” superpowers that possessed significant air and naval power, lorded over colonies, and molded the “plutocratic” system of international finance. Hitler’s supposedly controversial strategic choices—such as diverting military resources to the Balkans, declaring an apparently needless war on the United States, launching a brutal attack on the Soviet Union, and even attempting to exterminate the Jews—were far more rational than most critics allow, given his often idiosyncratic assumptions. All these actions were part of a larger mobilization of resources and popular support for an inevitable war of attrition against the Anglo-Saxons. Some will dispute this thesis. Nevertheless, the book is engaging and essential reading for anyone interested in Hitler’s policy-making.

History Shock: When History Collides with Foreign Relations" by John Dickson

5/23/2021

June 17, 2021

Discussion led by John Dickson

John Dickson draws on more than a quarter century of experience as a US diplomat to paint a disturbing picture of how and why America's international relations are often derailed by a lack of historical knowledge and understanding on the part of the nation's foreign policy officials.

For over twenty-five years John Dickson served the United States as a Foreign Service officer in North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In Hist01y Shock: When History Collides with Foreign Relations Dickson offers valuable insights into the daily life of a Foreign Service officer and the work of representing the United States. Dickson organizes History Shock around a country by-country series of lively personal experience vignettes followed by compelling historical analyses of the ways in which an inadequate understanding of the host country's history, particularly its prior history with the United States, combined with incomplete knowledge of his own nation's history lead to history shock: where dramatically different inter-interpretations of history blocked diplomatic understanding and cooperation.

John Dickson offers these "stories with HISTORY SHOCK When History Collides with Foreign Relations.

JOHN DICKSON www.kansaspress.ku.edu a history" to highlight the interaction between history and foreign relations and to underscore the costs of not knowing the history of our partners and adversaries, much less our own.

In both Mexico and Canada in particular our lack of knowledge and understanding of how our long history of military interventions continues to complicate our efforts at developing mutually beneficial relationships with our two closest neighbors.

In Nigeria and South Africa, Dickson experienced firsthand how the history of racism in the United States plays out on a world stage and clouds our ability to effectively work with key African nations.

Perhaps the starkest example of history shock, of two nations with deeply conflicted views of their own histories and their shared history, is another country near at hand, Cuba. Not all of the gaps are too wide for bridge building; in Peru, Dickson provides an example of how history can be deployed to mutual advantage. The Foreign Service has long sought to improve its training, to provide some form of "playbook" or "operating manual" with systematic case studies for its officers.

In History Shock, Dickson provides not only a model for such case studies but also a unique contribution of an interpretive framework for how to remedy this deficit, including recommendations for strengthening historical literacy in the Foreign Service.

John Dickson is a retired Foreign Service officer with the US Information Agency from 1984-1999 and with the US State Department from 1999-2010. He lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

John is also one of us. He resides in the Berkshires and is an active member of the History Study Group.

This book was just released and there is not yet much review on the internet.

"Hitler, a Biography" by Peter Longerich

5/17/2021

July 15, 2021

Led by Stan Applebaum

From one of the most prominent biographers of the Nazi period, a new and provocative portrait of the figure behind the century's worst crimes

Acclaimed historian Peter Longerich, author of Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler now turns his attention to Adolf Hitler in this new biography. While many previous portraits have speculated about Hitler's formative years, Longerich focuses on his central role as the driving force of Nazism itself. You cannot separate the man from the monstrous movement he came to embody.

From his ascendance through the party's ranks to his final hours as F�hrer in April 1945, Longerich shows just how ruthless Hitler was in his path to power. He emphasizes Hitler's political skills as Germany gained prominence on the world's stage. Hitler's rise to, and ultimate hold on, power was more than merely a matter of charisma; rather, it was due to his ability to control the structure he created. His was an image constructed by his regime - an essential piece self-created of propaganda. This comprehensive biography is the culmination of Longerich's life-long pursuit to understand the man behind the century's worst crimes.

Carneigie by Peter Kruss

3/1/2021

May 20, 2021

Discussion led by Ben Lipzen

One of the major figures in American history, Andrew Carnegie was a ruthless businessman who made his fortune in the steel industry and ultimately gave most of it away. He used his wealth to ascend the world's political stage, influencing the presidencies of Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. In retirement, Carnegie became an avid promoter of world peace, only to be crushed emotionally by World War I.
In this compelling biography, Peter Krass reconstructs the complicated life of this titan who came to power in America's Gilded Age. He transports the reader to Carnegie's Pittsburgh, where hundreds of smoking furnaces belched smoke into the sky and the air was filled with acrid fumes . . . and mill workers worked seven-day weeks while Carnegie spent months traveling across Europe.
Carnegie explores the contradictions in the life of the man who rose from lowly bobbin boy to build the largest and most profitable steel company in the world. Krass examines how Carnegie became one of the greatest philanthropists ever known-and earned a notorious reputation that history has yet to fully reconcile with his remarkable accomplishments.

A very even-handed, but critical review.

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1185/Carnegie.htm

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Henry Clay Frick a partner with Carnegie
https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1000597

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Charles Schwab--known for his management skills.

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/charles-m-schwab-137.php

God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World by Alan Mikhail

1/18/2021

April 15, 2021

Discussion led by Joel Wolk

Coming down to Mexico’s Pacific shore one summer day in 1573, a merchant named Pero Ximénez saw something remarkable — “ships,” he told Spanish colonial officials, “of Turks or Moors.” Surely there was some mistake. But just weeks later, a report came of “seven vassals of the Great Turk, all men of the sea, the spies of the princes,” walking as bold as brass around the plaza of the town of Purificación. Sent to investigate, Spain’s Crown Agent concluded that “Turks or Moors” were indeed plotting with Native Americans to overthrow Christian rule.

What sounds foolish today — Turks invading Mexico — did not seem so in 1573. When Spaniards sailed the 13,000 miles from Cadiz to Java, they found Muslims all along the way. Was it really so silly to suspect that Islam had crossed the Pacific too? Today we know that the only Muslims in the Americas were the West African slaves Spain had been importing since 1501, but the conquistadors were never quite sure. Hernan Cortés claimed to have seen over 400 mosques while making war on the Aztecs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/books/review/gods-shadow-alan-mikhail.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gods-shadow-review-sword-of-the-caliph-11599837430

https://spectator.us/book-and-art/selim-i-became-gods-shadow-alan-mikhail/

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Johnathan Parshall, Tony Tully

11/23/2020

March 18, 2021

Discussion led by Jim Schaefer

Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. The authors examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading WWII naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword will become an indispensable part of any military buff’s library. Winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and cited by Proceedings as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23vL8AvqbDc

https://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/372.asp
http://www.shatteredswordbook.com/

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

11/15/2020

February 18, 2021

Discussion led by Karen O'Donnell

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slaves

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/the-half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-e-baptist.html

https://www.douglasdecelle.net/the-half-has-never-been-told-summary-and-notes/