History wishes

  • Dec 21st: The Monopolists by Mary Pilon

    “The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man’s lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game’s questionable origins. Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian…

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  • Dec 20th – Queen Anne: the politics of passion by Anne Somerset

    “She ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1702, at age thirty-seven, Britain’s last Stuart monarch, and five years later united two of her realms, England and Scotland, as a sovereign state, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had a history of personal misfortune, overcoming ill health (she suffered from crippling arthritis;…

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  • Dec 19th: The Women who flew for Hitler by Clare Mulley

    “Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to make their names in the male-dominated field of flight in 1930s Germany. With the war, both became pioneering test pilots and were awarded the Iron Cross for service to the Third Reich. But they could not have been…

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  • Dec 18th: Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien

    “Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more…

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  • Dec 16th: Behind the Throne – a domestic history of the British Royal Household by Adrian Tinniswood

    Monarchs: they’re just like us. They entertain their friends and eat and worry about money. Henry VIII tripped over his dogs. George II threw his son out of the house. James I had to cut back on the alcohol bills. In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life…

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  • Dec 15th: Daughters of the Winter Queen by Nancy Goldstone

    “From the great courts, glittering palaces, and war-ravaged battlefields of the seventeenth century comes the story of four spirited sisters and their glamorous mother, Elizabeth Stuart, granddaughter of the martyred Mary, Queen of Scots. Upon her father’s ascension to the illustrious throne of England, Elizabeth Stuart was suddenly thrust from the poverty of unruly Scotland…

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  • Here’s the first 14 days of my Christmas advent book calendar wish list. I’m having a lot of fun with this!

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  • Dec 13th: Richard III, Loyalty Binds Me by Matthew Lewis

    “King Richard III remains one of the most controversial figures in British history. Matthew Lewis’s new biography aims to become a definitive account by exploring what is known of his childhood and the impacts it had on his personality and view of the world. He would be cast into insecurity and exile only to become…

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  • Dec 12th: The Butchering Art by Lindsay Fitzharris

    “In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters—no place for the squeamish—and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute…

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  • Dec 11th: The Suffragents by Brooke Kroeger

    “The story of how and why a group of prominent and influential men in New York City and beyond came together to help women gain the right to vote. The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909…

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