Rating: 7.7/10. Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point by Jean Barman Book about the history of Stanley Park in Vancouver, specifically the people who lived there for several decades after the area was officially designated as a park. Today, Stanley Park is marketed as a pristine wilderness,…
Category: History
Maximum Canada by Doug Saunders
Rating: 8.2/10. Maximum Canada: Toward a Country of 100 Million by Doug Saunders Book about the history of immigration in Canada. Today, Canada is recognized as one of the most multicultural countries in the world, but Canada has only been multicultural fairly recently, since the 1960s. In the 19th century, Canada was set up as…
Agricola and Germania by Tacitus
Rating: 7.8/10. Fairly short book containing two minor works by Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived in the first century AD. The two works, Agricola and Germania, were written around the same time but on two different topics. Agricola describes the career of the author’s father-in-law, Julius Agricola, a general who conquered Britain and served…
The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper
Rating: 8.3/10. The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper Book about the fall and decline of the Roman Empire. The decline of the Roman Empire can be analyzed from many angles: Officially, the Roman Empire was invaded by barbarians and the last emperor was in 476 AD,…
Viking Age Iceland by Jesse Byock
Rating: 7.4/10. Book about the history and societal structure of medieval Iceland, particularly the period from the earliest settlement by people from Norway (~870AD) until about 1200AD. All of the arable land was quickly settled within about 60 years of the island’s first settlement, leading to lots of disputes and feuding over the land; details…
Against the Grain by James C. Scott
Rating: 7.5/10. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott Book about the neolithic revolution and how early states arose out of hunter-gatherers. The traditional narrative is that the invention of agriculture enabled the formation of larger, more complex states, and this is the first step on the road…
The End is Always Near by Dan Carlin
Rating: 7.9/10. The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin History book by Dan Carlin, famous for the Hardcore History podcast. This book is a collection of eight loosely-related chapters, mostly related to societies in decline or apocalyptic moments in history, such as the…
A History of Modern Tourism by Eric G. E. Zuelow
Rating: 7.7/10. A book describing the history of tourism, i.e., travel for leisure reasons. Although humans have migrated for thousands of years, travel for fun was not common until quite recently. In ancient times, people traveled for trade, in search of new resources, or for religious reasons, but these types of travel have a very…
Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America by Michael Reid
Rating: 7.9/10. Book about the recent history of Latin America — despite encompassing approximately 20 countries and spanning across two continents, the countries in this region has had remarkably similar histories and has faced similar societal issues: inequality, lack of development, political instability, crime, etc. Compared to the Western World, Latin America started to fall…
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
Rating: 8.3/10. A history of the Aztec people, compiled using recently-available sources in the Nahuatl language that tell the story from their own perspective. The word “Aztec” was never used by their own people, instead they called themselves either the “Mexica” when referring to the political entity (centered in Tenochtitlan), or the “Nahuas” when referring…
The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris
Rating: 8.4/10. The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure, 2nd Edition by Randy Allen Harris Book about a period in the history of linguistics around the 1960s-1970s, when a “war” was being fought in theoretical syntax. Linguistics tries to study how form is linked to meaning, but there are many theories about…
Shadows on the Rock by Willie Cather
Rating: 8.2/10. Historical novel set in Quebec City in the year 1697, when the settlement was just a small town on the frontier. The story follows Cecile, a 12-year-old girl whose father is the apothecary (similar to a doctor). Not much plot happens, rather, the novel is based on characters: we get to hear stories…