What Are You Reading?

[Running4Borders]

Rereading Foundation by Peter Ackroyd



Last time I read it couldn't have been more than 5-6 years ago but I didn't know anything about paleogenomics at the time.  Starts with a chapter on prehistoric Britain that argues there's been strong ancestral continuity in England since the Mesolithic.  Remember being fascinated by the content on the first read, now it's fascinating for a different reason.  Nice document for marking how much has been learned and revealed about the past in the last 10-20 years or however long this field's existed (Foundation came out in 2011).  Rocky start to an otherwise great early English history overview though.

Peter Ackroyd also wrote an excellent mini-biography of Isaac Newton and a long biography of London.  Which reminds me of an audiobook I listened to recently.  Can't remember if it was recommended in the thread back on AG, but it's called Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson.  Would recommend.  Newton was a very interesting man, and so was Chaloner (the counterfeiter).

[JMcB]

Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart's Path to the God Within
by Joel F. Harringto





The life and times of the 14th-century German spiritual leader Meister Eckhart, whose theory of a personal path to the divine-inspired thinkers from Jean Paul Sartre to Thomas Merton

[…]

Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In the modern era, Eckhart's writings have struck a chord with thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and the current Dalai Lama.

[…]

Meister Eckhart preached a personal, internal path to God at a time when the Church could not have been more hierarchical and ritualistic. Then and now, Eckhart’s revolutionary method of direct access to ultimate reality offers a profoundly subjective approach that is at once intuitive and pragmatic, philosophical yet non-rational, and, above all, universally accessible. This "dangerous mystic’s" teachings challenge the very nature of religion, yet the man himself never directly challenged the Church.

Eckhart was one of the most learned theologians of his day, but he was also a man of the world who had worked as an administrator for his religious order and taught for years at the University of Paris. His personal path from conventional friar to professor to lay preacher culminated in a spiritual philosophy that combined the teachings of an array of pagan and Christian writers, as well as Muslim and Jewish philosophers. His revolutionary decision to take his approach to the common people garnered him many enthusiastic followers as well as powerful enemies. After Eckhart’s death and papal censure, many religious women and clerical supporters, known as the Friends of God, kept his legacy alive through the centuries, albeit underground until the master’s dramatic rediscovery by modern Protestants and Catholics.

Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien. In the midst of this medieval society, a few decades before the Black Death, Eckhart boldly preached to captivated crowds a timeless method, a "wayless way", of directly experiencing the divine.

[Piquerobi]

"Firearms: A Global History to 1700"
by Kenneth Chase

Kenneth Chase traces the history of firearms from their invention in China in the 1100s to the 1700s, when European firearms had become clearly superior. In Firearms, Chase asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms, not the Chinese, and answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world. Early firearms were restricted to infantry and siege warfare, limiting their use outside of Europe and Japan. Steppe and desert nomads imposed a different style of warfare on the Middle East, India, and China--a style incompatible with firearms. By the time that better firearms allowed these regions to turn the tables on the nomads, Japan's self-imposed isolation left Europe with no rival in firearms design, production, or use, with lasting consequences. After earning his doctorate from Harvard in the area of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and traveling extensively in Asia, Kenneth Chase pursued a career in the law. His interest in history endures unabated, however, and after nine years of research on firearms, he is now working on a history of international trade in the Indian Ocean region in the 1300s and 1400s.

https://www.amazon.com.br/gp/product/052...UTF8&psc=1

[JonikW]

I often read books on the Reformation in England and Germany and am halfway through "Heretics and Believers" by Peter Marshall at the moment. It's a deeply fascinating book, scholarly but with a light and readable touch. One of the most enjoyable reads I've had on the subject, which is why I'm posting it here. Here's the cover and Yale blurb:



Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. Peter Marshall’s sweeping new history—the first major overview for general readers in a generation—argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of “reform” in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora’s Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life.
 
With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, Marshall frames the perceptions and actions of people great and small, from monarchs and bishops to ordinary families and ecclesiastics, against a backdrop of profound change that altered the meanings of “religion” itself. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the English Church.

I'm also dipping back into Eamon Duffy's classic work "The Voices of Morebath." If you don't know this book but have any interest in the all-too-sparse genre of Medieval microhistory and/or how the Reformation affected the lives of real historical everyday individual parishioners and their priests, then you should read it. I finally managed to visit Morebath a few years ago and the book is in my all-time top five. This is the cover and blurb, also by Yale:



In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath’s conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath’s only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-Reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village.

[Jalisciense]

It has been a while since I read books, now I read almost exclusively PDFs/Studies/Papers.

The last one was this:

Biomolecular insights into North African-related ancestry, mobility and diet in eleventh-century Al-Andalus

Link
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34518562/

[JMcB]

Just beginning:




In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable.

The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated special agents. Having fled to Britain on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into occupied Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa, and was later parachuted behind enemy lines into France, where an agent's life expectancy was only six weeks. Her courage, quick wit, and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and saved the lives of several fellow officers―including one of her many lovers―just hours before their execution by the Gestapo. More importantly, the intelligence she gathered in her espionage was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort, and she was awarded the George Medal, the OBE, and the Croix de Guerre.

Granville exercised a mesmeric power on those who knew her. In The Spy Who Loved, acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley tells the extraordinary history of this charismatic, difficult, fearless, and altogether extraordinary woman.

[Rober_tce]

I’m reading this: 



In official spanish historiography, 1570 is the year where moorish were expulsed of Granada, and 1610 of general form out of Spain, therefore  it considers that “converted of moors” colective dissapeared in hispanic kingdoms. But, unofficialy not. Thousands and thousands of moorish remained in their lands (and others returned after expulsion), even most of them maintaining their properties and occupations, stablishing a conexion between them. Of course, all of them had to make dissapear their moorish identity, almost of them made it truely, but few of them maintained their costumes in secret. Little by little, all moorish colectives mixed with old christians and some jewish converted, and finally their footprints were totally hidden during centuries, until these moment, where the true is revealing.

The Professor of Córdoba University Enrique Soria Mesa is an erudite and historian, specialized in jewish converted, spanish nobillity, and genealogy. After 2010 he had the proposal with his Team to study “moorish” phenomenon, and their discoveries about thousands of moorish granadine genealogies, even an Faith Auto of Spanish Inquisition where some hundred of moorish where juzged in 1722. A surprising discovery in words of the author of this book. This is the begininig, surely we can dispose of more information of more moorish lineages among spanish lands in a next future.

Synopsis of author:

The process of expulsion of the Moors decreed by Philip III (1609-1614) seemed to have put an end to the secular presence of the Islam in Spain; This is certainly what all specialized historiography has established. This book demonstrates, on the contrary, that this was not the case, and that despite the royal orders, thousands of Moriscos managed to remain hidden in our country, especially in the kingdom of Granada. But what is most surprising is not that, but rather their enormous capacity for economic and social recovery, to the point that they achieved a solid position in a few generations. Part of the group integrated perfectly, dissolving into the old Christian mass, but a high percentage kept its idiosyncrasy almost intact, a fact that is largely due to the systematic use of endogamy. And a good number of them, in turn, preserved religious and cultural attitudes that can be described as heterodox, if not heretical, and were repressed by the Inquisition in 1727. But its history does not end here, since the group maintained part of its identity until the end of the 18th century. This, then, is a new history of Spain that until now remained completely forgotten and that will undoubtedly open future lines of research in the coming decades.

[FionnSneachta]

I'm currently reading this:



A dark, satirical thriller by the bestselling Japanese author, following the perilous train ride of five highly motivated assassins.

Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird—the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world”—boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase—and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, “the Prince,” with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate . . . like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose.

When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear.

A massive bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller that fizzes with an incredible energy and surprising humor as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwind. Award-winning author Kotaro Isaka takes readers on a tension packed journey as the bullet train hurtles toward its final destination. Who will make it off the train alive—and what awaits them at the last stop?
A d

[JMcB]

Just started:




In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes listeners on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that people faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.

Weavers, Scribes, and Kings creates a tapestry of life stories through which listeners will come to know individuals from many walks of life, and to understand their places within the broad history of events and institutions in the ancient Near East. These stories are preserved on ancient clay tablets, which allow us to trace, for example, the career of a weaver as she advanced to become a supervisor of a workshop, listen to a king trying to persuade his generals to prepare for a siege, and feel the pain of a starving couple and their four young children as they suffered through a time of famine. What might seem at first glance to be a remote and inaccessible ancient culture proves to be a comprehensible world, one that bequeathed to the modern world many of our institutions and beliefs, a fascinating place to visit.

[Manofthehour]

Big recommend. A translation of Oswald Spengler's unfinished work before he died in the 1930s. Still almost 500 pages. I'm about 50% in.
Focus is on anthropology, with a philosophical lense. I haven't come across anything quite like it.

He divides the late-prehistoric to early-historic old-world into three main cultural "amoeboids" that of:

"Atlantis" (Western Europe/Ibero-Mauritanian Megalithic, Neolithic Mediterrannean)

"Kash" (Caucasus/Zagros Mesopatamian-Indus)

"Turan" (Hyperborean, Ural-Altaic, Indo-European, Siberian)


The spread, interaction and occasional convergence of these "amoeboids" forming much of the world situation we know today.

[JMcB]

Just starting:





The new book by Sunday Times bestselling author of Ancestors and Buried - the final instalment in Professor Alice Roberts' acclaimed trilogy.

We can unlock secrets from bones preserved for centuries in tombs, graves and crypts.

The history of the Middle Ages is typically the story of the rich and powerful, there’s barely a written note for most people’s lives. Archaeology represents another way of interrogating our history. By using cutting-edge science to examine human remains and burials, it is possible to unearth details about how individuals lived and died that give us a new understanding of the past – one that is more intimate and inclusive than ever before.

The seven stories in Crypt are not comforting tales. We meet the patients at one of the earliest hospitals in England and the victims of the St Brice’s Day Massacre. We see a society struggling to make sense of disease, disability and death, as incurable epidemics sweep through medieval Europe. We learn of a protracted battle between Church and State that led to the murder of Thomas Becket and the destruction of the most famous tomb in England. And we come face to face with the archers who went down with Henry VIII’s favourite ship, the Mary Rose.

[SMJ]

   
The Dissolution of the Monasteries - A New History by James G Clark

This is a marmite sort of book - I'm about ½ way through and it is best read in solitude with no distractions. I'm finding it impossible to give it the attention it deserves if there is family or the TV on in the same room. Several quotations are transcribed in the old english of the time with no explanation of the meaning of uncommon words or grammar - this can cause the reading flow to stutter while you work out the context.

However, the book is well balanced and gives a good overview of the religious and political differences from both sides of the conflict. It also adds the connections between the religious ruins and the individuals who lived there.

[JonikW]

I bought this battered old book (printed in the year I was born) for £2.49 in an Oxfam charity bookshop after picking it off the shelf and being intrigued by what I saw on a quick flick through. Several weeks on, it's been an enjoyable companion and I'm sad I'm now only a few pages from the end. It's both utterly mad and uniquely inspired by turns, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in poetry and myth, especially of a Celtic or Classical variety.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8204...te_Goddess

[AimSmall]