100 Books Like Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

This book is an interesting spin on a well-known fairy tale. I really enjoyed this one because the "princess" isn't a damsel in distress and the "charming" isn't always charming. They are written as multi-dimensional characters with character flaws and imperfections. They don't instantly fall in love. They bicker and disagree, but then learn how to work together to free her family from the curse that put her in the middle of the forest. I like the reality of having to learn how to work with someone else and the growth that comes from that learning.

I love The Host because it has two female heroes, but one is a parasite inside the other. When a parasitic alien race, the Souls, invades earth, Wanderer is placed in the body of Melanie Stryder. When implanted, Souls are supposed to completely subsume the host, but Melanie Stryder won’t give up her mind or her body that easily. Melanie is a hero because of her strength and willingness to sacrifice anything to maintain her autonomy. Wanderer is a hero because of her empathy and willingness to defy the construct of her society and forge a new path. The book is the most interesting portrayal of the capacity for sentient beings to develop empathy against all odds that I’ve ever read. It’s also a remarkable portrayal of a most imaginative female bond.

I find H.Rider Haggard's famous tales of adventure (e.g. King Solomon's Mines) pretty disgusting: bunch of white guys in southern Africa, where they can slaughter and loot at will, far from the constraints of “civilised” society.

But “She” is one of a kind. A perilous wilderness, where the people who put pots on the heads of strangers have a very sinister outlook on life (these are cooking pots, and this is a stranded population, desperate for protein). Their immortal goddess (originally Ancient Greek?) lives in a tomb, doesn't seem to eat or drink; talks like a spoilt, entitled Victorian debutante, and fascinates our hero.

I imagine the author, a humble civil servant when not dreaming of glorious gory derring-do, met young ladies of her kind socially, and was snubbed a few times. She pays... and I won't spoil the horror of it for you, but it's pretty bad! A guilty… show more.

I love the entire Dune series, but most readers don't get past the first book. The characters retained the growth and development from the first book and we see how they continue to deal with their differing struggles, like Chani who desperately wants children, while Paul knows that her desire will bring her death. Unable to marry Chani, Paul has taken a wife, in name only, but the woman loves him and desperately wants to be loved by him. I saw myself in these two women who wanted such simple things, but for reasons out of their control, were not able to have them. It made me realize that sometimes we have to let go of what we want and just be grateful for what we have, for as long as we may have it.

There are a handful of books that, upon finishing, I remark with absolute admiration, “I wish I would have written that.” This is one of these select, extraordinary books. Yergin presents an eye-opening, at times uncomfortably shocking, journey through petroleum geopolitics, challenging conventional notions about historical events, the modern world order, and how it came to pass.

I think this book explains why genocide happens under the cover of war. It made me see why both World War I and World War II were marked by genocides. I really liked how the author explained why the Armenian Genocide was a key event of World War I.

Balakian is a poet who turned to history writing to explain the experience of genocide and demonstrate the central importance of the international response to genocide. He uses interesting source material from eyewitnesses and official archives to trace both the humanitarian response and military decisions that brought the US into the war on the side of the Allies in the wake of the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.

Successful amphibious operations are hard to pull off. The Allies failure at Gallipoli is well known.

This book tells the story of Operation Albion, the successful German seizure of the Russian islands in the Baltic. A large part of the German Fleet was involved and had to overcome stubborn resistance by the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of the Russian Fleet to break into the Gulf of Riga.

The Baltic is a little-known theatre of naval operations. The book draws on both Russian and German sources to show how the German Fleet and Army worked hand in hand to achieve a decisive victory in this theatre of the naval war.

Much of my background as a historian focuses on the First World War, and, as a result, I have a particular interest in the ‘invasion literature’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is a particularly fun and interesting example in that it creates newspaper and press reports to help grant a level of tactile reality to the unfolding invasion of England.

Books like this had a significant impact on British popular culture and mindset before 1914, and Le Queux’s decision to make his fictional work appear to be nonfiction where possible works incredibly well and, as it was serialized in the Daily Mail newspaper, he adapted the text to include many locations readers either lived or would recognize!

There are many different vantage points from which to view the road to war in 1914, but an essential one is that which focuses on the ethos, politics, and strategy of one of the constellations of European Great Powers. In the 1980s, Macmillan published a series of books focusing on each of these, written by acknowledged experts (Zara Steiner on Britain, John Keiger on France, Dominic Lieven on Russia, Volker Berghahn on Germany, Richard Bosworth on Italy). The last in the series appeared in 1990, when Samuel Williamson published his study of Austria-Hungary.

It was well worth the wait. Comprehensive in its structure, balanced in its judgments, meticulous in its research, Williamson established a new standard for studies of the Great Powers. His conclusion – that Austria-Hungary was largely responsible for initiating the July Crisis and, ultimately, the war itself – is persuasively argued and the story compellingly told.

This is a collection of a dozen essays allowing us to feel the fun, the drama, the craziness of travel, and the effect it can have on both our personalities and views after the journey. In other words, this book teaches us to feel these stories, which show us the more you risk the more rewards you will gain from your travel adventures.

It also reminds us to worry or at least be concerned for whom you are traveling with. After reading this, I believe it is not what we accomplish by traveling but what we take away from traveling.