world history Archives – Rebecca Reads

Trapped Behind Nazi Lines by Eric Braun

February 12, 2016 by Rebecca Reid

Trapped Behind Nazi Lines by Eric Brown is a middle grade nonfiction book about a company of medics and nurses that, while flying to Italy during World War II, got lost in the clouds and ended up crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania.

The story tells how upon crash landing their airplane, they were able to find a way to villages and walk from where they landed to the coast, avoiding the Nazis and the Nazi sympathizers that would have killed them upon discovery. Their story was truly amazing. More than 20 people were trapped in Albania in this crash, and yet none of them died and none of them were captured by Nazis. It took a long time to sneak to the coast safely, but all of them were able to return to Italy during the war.Continue Reading

Waterloo by Alan Forrest

January 27, 2016 by Rebecca Reid

I am not an expert in battle history nor even early modern world history. That said, I’ve always been fascinated by Waterloo due to its appearance in many familiar novels that I’ve enjoyed such as Les Miserables and Vanity Fair. Waterloo seems to have been a defining moment for European history, and Waterloo by Alan Forrest does an amazing job of explain just why it has become so.

Alan Forrest’s Waterloo is not a strict history of the battle itself. Rather, Waterloo examines how Napoleon got to Waterloo, what happened during the battle itself, and then what the impact of Waterloo has been since that time. Only one single chapter discussed the battle itself! Because so much of the book was about the impact, I really enjoyed reading the book.Continue Reading

Ten Ships that Rocked the World by Gillian Richardson

September 8, 2015 by Rebecca Reid

I really loved reading the juvenile nonfiction book Ten Rivers that Shaped the World when I reviewed it earlier this year. It seemed to be a history of the world as captured through the rivers of the world! So I was excited to see Ten Ships that Rocked the World by Gillian Richardson (Annick Press, August 2015) added to the “Ten” series as well.

I did not love this one quite as much but I still really enjoyed it. Ten Ships has a different feel to it, partly because, as the title indicated, it focuses on a different “ten” from the history of the world, it is written by a different author, and it about things that influenced the world, not necessarily shaped it. The ships that were highlighted were almost all foreign to me, so by reading the book I felt I was learning much that I had been unfamiliar with: ships and eras and countries that made a difference even though I did not know about them. Continue Reading

The Death of Caesar by Barry Strauss

August 17, 2015 by Rebecca Reid

The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination by Barry Strauss (Simon & Schuster, March 2015) examines the traditions of the assassination of Julius Caesar, clearing up the myths (such as Shakespeare’s play) from reality. Analyzing such an historic event from 44 B.C. is not easy since eyewitness accounts are few and far between and records of supposed eyewitnesses are always questioned. Yet, Strauss’s book provides an entertaining and thorough examination of the most pressing people and events leading up to the assassination, the deed itself, and the immediate result.Continue Reading

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