Tag Archives: History

In My Hands Today…

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All the Single Ladies – Rebecca Traister

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.

But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.

In My Hands Today…

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Lords of the Deccan : Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas – Anirudh Kanisetti

The history of the vast Indian subcontinent is usually told as a series of ephemeral moments when a large part of modern-day India was ruled by a single sovereign. There is an obsession with foreign invasions and the polities of the Gangetic plains, while the histories of the rest of the subcontinent have been reduced to little more than dry footnotes. Now, in this brilliant and critically acclaimed debut book, Anirudh Kanisetti shines a light into the darkness, bringing alive for the lay reader the early medieval Deccan, from the sixth century CE to the twelfth century CE, in all its splendour and riotous glory.

Kanisetti takes us back in time to witness the birth of the Chalukyas, a dynasty that shaped southern India for centuries. Beginning at a time when Hinduism was still establishing itself through the Deccan, when the landscape was bereft of temples, he explores the extraordinary transformation of the peninsula over half a millennium. In vivid and colourful detail, Kanisetti describes how the mighty empires of medieval India were made: how temple-building and language manipulation were used as political tools; how royals involved themselves in religious struggles between Jains and Buddhists, Shaivas and Vaishnavas; and how awe-inspiring rituals were used to elevate kings over their rivals and subjects. In doing so, he transforms medieval Indian royals, merchants, and commoners from obscure figures to complex, vibrant people. Kanisetti takes us into the minds of powerful rulers of the Chalukya, Pallava, Rashtrakuta, and Chola dynasties and animates them and their world with humanity and depth.

It is a world of bloody elephant warfare and brutal military stratagems, of alliances and betrayals, where a broken king commits ritual suicide and a shrewd, hunchbacked prince founds his own kingdom under his powerful brother’s nose. This is a world where a king writes a bawdy play that is a parable for religious contestation; where the might of India’s rulers and the wealth of its cities were talked of from Arabia to Southeast Asia; and where south Indian kingdoms serially invaded and defeated those of the north. This painstakingly researched, forgotten history of India will keep you riveted and enthralled. You will never see the history of the subcontinent the same way again.

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The Almighty Dollar: Follow the Incredible Journey of a Single Dollar to See How the Global Economy Really Works – Dharshini David

Have you ever wondered why we can afford to buy far more clothes than our grandparents ever could . . . but may be less likely to own a home in which to keep them all? Why your petrol bill can double in a matter of months, but it never falls as fast?

Behind all of this lies economics.

It’s not always easy to grasp the complex forces that are shaping our lives. But by following a dollar on its journey around the globe, we can start to piece it all together.

The dollar is the lifeblood of globalisation. Greenbacks, singles, bucks or dead presidents: call them what you will, they are keeping the global economy going. Half of the notes in circulation are actually outside of the USA – and many of the world’s dollars are owned by China.

But what is really happening as our cash moves around the world every day, and how does it affect our lives? By following $1 from a shopping trip in suburban Texas, via China’s central bank, Nigerian railroads, the oilfields of Iraq and beyond, The Almighty Dollar reveals the economic truths behind what we see on the news every day. Why is China the world’s biggest manufacturer – and the USA its biggest customer? Is free trade really a good thing? Why would a nation build a bridge on the other side of the planet?

In this illuminating read, economist Dharshini David lays bare these complex relationships to get to the heart of how our new globalised world works, showing who really holds the power, and what that means for us all.

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Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain – Sathnam Sanghera

In his brilliantly illuminating new book, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of what we consider to be modern Britain is actually rooted in our imperial past.

In prose that is, at once, both clear-eyed and full of acerbic wit, Sanghera shows how our past is everywhere: from how we live to how we think, from the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism, from our distrust of intellectuals in public life to the exceptionalism that imbued the campaign for Brexit and the government’s early response to the COVID crisis. And yet empire is a subject, weirdly hidden from view.

The British Empire ran for centuries and covered vast swathes of the world. It is, as Sanghera reveals, fundamental to understanding Britain. However, even among those who celebrate the empire, there seems to be a desire not to look at it too closely – not to include the subject in our school history books, not to emphasize it too much in our favourite museums.

At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Sanghera’s book urges us to address this bewildering contradiction. It is only by stepping back and seeing where we really come from, that we can begin to understand who we are, and what unites us.

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The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World – Tim Marshall

In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and Space.

Find out why Europe’s next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the twenty-first century; and why the Earth’s atmosphere is set to become the world’s next battleground.