Boardroom Scandal by James Taylor – The Criminalization of Company Fraud in Nineteenth-Century Britain – is one of 5 books I received as part of a donation to Oxford made by a lecturer who studied at Oxford and died prematurely. He had thousands of books…
An Underground World by Sylvie Robin – The Catacombs of Paris – written in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gély and Marc Viré – is the second book I read about the Catacombs in Paris, which was bought from their gift shop. On its own, the book…
The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas using photographs by Emmanuel Gaffard. This is one of 2 books I bought from the gift shop of the Catacombs in Paris. I visited the place and it is fascinating. I read this book and the other one…
War in Ukraine by Hal Brands – Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World is a mix of authors writing on the war-in-Ukraine, which could have been more appropriately called “russia’s war on Ukraine” or something similar. As it is a mix of…
Mariupol 2013-2022 by Hana Josticova – Stories of Mobilization and Resistance – is a fascinating book on narratives and how they create a national identity. She looked at Mariupol and the Donbas region from 2013, pre-Maidan and until russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Mariupol was…
A small town in Ukraine by Bernard Wasserstein – Krakowiec and the storm of history – is the history of a small town, from its establishment in 1423 to 2022. Wasserstein’s family lived there and half of the book is about WWII and the Holocaust,…
Fatal silence by Robert Katz was an interesting book, which I would recommend, but which I awarded only 3 stars. Its subtitle is “the Pope, the Resistance and the German occupation of Rome” and the book was mainly about the resistance. Considering that it starts…
Come to This Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler – How the Holocaust Ends – offers interesting views on pro-war attitudes when it came to Nazi crimes. While researching a well-known case in Latvia regarding the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Herberts Cukurs, Kinstler discovered that…
Storehouses of Empire by Colum Giles – Liverpool’s historic warehouses – is a short book, filled with pictures. It tells a fascinating story of the warehouses built in Liverpool. After the end of the British involvement in the Transatlantic slavery in 1807, the port of…
Evil under the sun by Agatha Christie is a Hercule Poirot murder mystery. I am not usually keen on Hercule Poirot, but I enjoyed this one very much, thus I gave it 5 stars. The blurb of the book is simple, a beautiful woman’s body…
Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout – Covering the Human Cost of russia’s War – is one of the many books I read by foreigners going to Ukraine after russia’s full scale invasion. This is different not only because of the natural differences in…
Ukraine 22 by Mark Andryczyk (editor) – Ukrainian Writers Respond to War – is a collection of short essays on everyday life written by various writers. Each chapter is an essay, some only 3 pages long, while others are a bit longer. As I imagined…
The Russo-Ukrainian war by Serhii Plokhy is the second book I read by him. The first one was The Gates of Europe. I had high expectations from this book and not only it met them, but surpassed them too. This book, at 300 pages (excluding…
A small, stubborn town by Andrew Harding – life, death and defiance in Ukraine – is a book on a town in Ukraine, Voznesensk. Just as I finished reading the book and I was searching for details on Voznesensk, I saw the news published less…
Getting out by Jonathan Campion – the Ukrainian cricket team’s last stand on the front lines of war – is a book I borrowed from the library by chance. I was looking for another book and this stood out because of its title. I had…
Democracy by Margaret Atwood – Eleven writers and leaders on what it is – and why it matters – is a book published recently. I saw it while I was on holiday in France and my husband bought it for me. As yesterday was a…