Tag Archives: History

In My Hands Today…

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Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States – John Zubrzycki

On 25 July 1947, India’s last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, stood before the Chamber of Princes in New Delhi and prepared to deliver the most important speech of his career. He had just three weeks to convince more than 550 sovereign princely states–some the size of Britain, some so small that cartographers had trouble locating them–to become part of a free India. Once Britain’s most faithful allies, the princes could choose between joining India or Pakistan, or declaring their independence.

This is a saga of promises and betrayals, of brinkmanship and intrigue. Mountbatten worked with two of independent India’s founding fathers–the country’s most senior civil servant, V.P. Menon, and Congress strongman Vallabhbhai Patel–to save the subcontinent from self-destruction. What India’s architects described as a ‘bloodless revolution’ was anything but, as violence engulfed Kashmir and Indian troops put an end to Hyderabad’s dreams of independence.

Most states accepted the inevitable, giving up their kingdoms in exchange for guarantees that their privileges and titles would be preserved in perpetuity. Instead, they were led to their extinction–not by the sword, but by political expediency, leaving them with little more than fading memories of a glorified past.

In My Hands Today…

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The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice – Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The extraordinary story of the women who took on the Islamic State and won.

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women’s rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States. In the process, these women would spread their own political vision, determined to make women’s equality a reality by fighting—house by house, street by street, city by city—the men who bought and sold women.

Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world’s best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, bestselling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace. In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide. In the process, they earned the respect—and significant military support—of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

Rigorously reported and powerfully told, The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women’s lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond.

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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – Bettany Hughes

Their names still echo down the ages: The Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Temple of Artemis. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. The mausoleum of Halikarnassos. The Colossus at Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases of the reaches of human imagination. Now only the pyramid remains, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today.

In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time; on a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A majestic work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting, and nourishing, notion that humans can make the impossible happen.

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Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age – Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough

Imagine a Viking, and a certain image springs to a nameless, faceless warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorise the hapless local population of a northern European country.

Yet while such characters define the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. This is the history of all the other people – children, enslaved people, seers, artisans, travellers, writers – who inhabited the medieval Nordic world. Encompassing not just Norway, Denmark and Sweden, but also Iceland, Greenland, parts of the British Isles, Continental Europe and Russia, this is a history of a Viking Age filled with real people of different ages, genders and ethnicities, as told through the traces that they left behind, from hairstyles to place names, love-notes to gravestones.

For the first time, you can immerse yourself in the day-to-day lives of extraordinary culture which spanned centuries and spread from the edge of the North American continent to the Russian steppes, from the Arctic wastelands to the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphate.

In My Hands Today…

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Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King – Dan Jones

Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt, he is remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. For one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, “the greatest man who ever ruled England.”

For Dan Jones, Henry V is one of the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down. He was a hardened, sometimes brutal warrior, yet he was also creative and artistic, with a bookish temperament. He was a leader who made many mistakes, who misjudged his friends and family, but he always seemed to triumph when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, put down rebellions, and secured England’s borders; in foreign diplomacy, he made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for three generations of calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses.

Henry V is a historical titan whose legacy has become a complicated one. To understand the man behind the legend, Jones first examines Henry’s years of apprenticeship, when he saw the downfall of one king and the turbulent reign of another. Upon his accession in 1413, he had already been politically and militarily active for years, and his extraordinary achievements as king would come shortly after, earning him an unparalleled historical reputation. Writing with his characteristic wit and style, Jones delivers a thrilling and unmissable life of England’s greatest king.