William L. Shirer (1960)

Undoubtedly still the definitive single-volume history of the period, still a classic in every sense.

Some parts of the narrative haven’t aged well and show signs of the times when Shirer was writing in the late 50s; other parts have been exploded by new scholarship; and still others ignited controversies that still rage (for example Shirer’s basing the roots of National Socialism in thew mainstream German philosophical tradition). But bearing all that in mind, it’s easy to feel the immediacy of his connection with the events he describes. If that clouds his objectivity in some case it’s worth it for the sense of place and time that this book provides, differently to all the other varied histories of the Third Reich.

5/5. Finished Saturday 9 May, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)

When you consider that half of this book is about a generation starship while the other half is written from the perspective of spiders, you get some idea of the breadth of ideas that have gone into it. The fact that it holds together is nothing short of remarkable, as is that it – without spoiling the plot – sets up for a “dark forest”-type ending that it then deftly avoids.

4/5. Finished Tuesday 28 April, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Patrick Radden Keefe (2018)

As good a narrative history of the Troubles as any you’ll find. It skips the broad brush in favour of the effects on three groups of people: the children of Jean McConville, the best-known of the “disappeared”; the coterie around Gerry Adams and Dolours Price; and the authors and interviewers of the Boston College project that captured (and partially revealed) the activities of many of the protagonists on both sides of the divide.

From one perspective this is the right level. The terror campaign – Republican and Loyalist – has had a lot of exposure in terms of the events, but less in terms of the victims (and perpetrators). It’s important to realise how many of those intimately involved came to regard “the struggle” as purposeless in retrospect, and to renounce the violence they had once embraced. Martin McGuinness is the best-known example of this, but there are surprisingly many more.

From another perspective, however, it’s less satisfactory in that there’s a lack of closure, a continuing lack of agreement about who did what, knew what, and decided what. It will probably need another twenty years before there’s a consensus, and in the meantime this is the most illuminating exploration.

4/5. Finished Friday 3 April, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Simon Winchester (2018)

An engaging history of engineering through the the lens of ever-increasing precision. starting with more efficient steam engines and ending with spacecraft and microprocessors.

Until about two-thirds of the way through I had a criticism that the book focused on precision solely as a means to mass production the need to components that are exactly the same to facilitate easy replacement, as contrasted against craft-made items. I was contrasting this against one-off, hand-made, but nonetheless precise artefacts such as the turbulence experiment described by James Gleick in Chaos: Making a New Science: a tiny fluid chamber with embedded sensors, still regarded as one of the finest experiments ever crafted. But the discussions of watches more than remedied the omission.

The chapter on Japan as a contrast to the “cult” of precision feels a bit forced. Yes, the Japanese have a sensitivity (wabi sabi) for the imperfect in art while maintaining a reverence for high-precision machines – but so do other cultures and art forms, not least jazz and abstract impressionism, that render the contrast a bit superficial.

4/5. Finished Sunday 29 March, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Tom Mole (2019)

3/5. Finished Sunday 8 March, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)