A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer

This is an excellent choice for those who are looking for a good overall history of World War I, who have not studied this war before, or the background history of the major players.  For the amount of material it covers, it is a short book.  G. J. Meyer intersperses "Background" sections at well chosen points in his narrative, that give information about persons, countries, or other entities that the reader is about to encounter, such as the Ottoman Empire, for example, or the Romanovs.

This is only the second book I've read about World War I, after Barbara Tuchman's <i>Guns of August</i>, and compared to that book, which focuses primarily on the Western front, this one gives a more comprehensive view.

Fatima, In Lucia's Own Words

I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the Fatima apparitions and the message they intended to convey.  Lucia is herself one of the visionaries, so it is a primary source.  She discusses the apparitions in a straightforward manner, and gives personal background information about herself and her two younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, who saw the apparitions with her, and who died of illness not very long afterwards.

Les erreurs de l'occident, par Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This is the French edition of Mortal Danger.

Winter Is Coming, by Garry Kasparov

I'm old enough to remember watching the demonstrations and other events associated with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, but my understanding of what followed (the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the rise of Vladimir Putin and his stand-in Dmitri Medvedev, aggression in Georgia, the Ukraine, and other places), has been quite sketchy. So I'm glad someone in my history book group suggested this for a book of the month selection. It's very informative about Russian political developments from the 1990's to the mid 2010's and really helped me to make sense of them.

Fatima for Today, by Father Andrew Apostoli

We've just passed the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, so I wanted to learn more about them.  This book makes an excellent one stop shop about the apparitions.  Everything you could possibly want to know about them is in here.  Fr. Apostoli relates the content of what the three children saw, the historical context in which they happened, biographical information about the children and their families, and about the history of their town and of Portugal, how the Fatima apparitions were determined to be reliable, how they meshed with other preceding and contemporaneous apparitions given to other visionaries, the Church's interpretation of the visions, how successfully the Church has followed the instructions of our Lady, and how the predictions came to pass.  There is also practical information in the book about how to do the devotions properly, as well as the prayers taught to the three children.

Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand

In his  1978 Harvard commencement speech, Solzhenitsyn said:

Through intense suffering, our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive...A fact that cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger.  68 years for our people, and 30 years for the people of Eastern Europe: during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience.

If you were to become curious about the nature of the spiritual training Solzhenitsyn means, Richard Wurmbrand's life provides a good example.  Wurmbrand was a Romanian who grew up in a secular Jewish family, converted to Christianity as a young man, and became a Lutheran pastor.  When the Soviets took control of Romania after driving out the Nazis, they established a Communist totalitarian government that drove the genuine churches underground.  For standing up to them, Wurmbrand and his wife were both sentenced to lengthy terms in what can only be described as a torture camp.  Despite the horrific conditions, this is an inspiring story of hope, endurance, and the great consolation of faith in God.

The Origin of Russian Communism, by Nicolas Berdyaev

Excellent book on the various influences in Russian history, culture, and religion that helped shape how Communism was implemented in the Soviet Union. 

Berdyaev cites the Muscovite period and the reign of Peter the Great as particularly influential, because that was when the governments were most absolutist and repressive, using methods to control the population and the church that prefigured those used by the Bolsheviks. 

He cites the messianic cast of mind of the Russian Orthodox Church, which thought of Moscow as the Third Rome (after the fall of the Roman and Byzantine Empires) and believed that it had a great mission to fulfill in the world. Similarly, Soviet Russia took upon itself a special mission: it was the means by which communism was to be spread throughout the world. 

Berdyaev also discusses how the Russian Orthodox peasantry, unlike their Western Christian counterparts, never developed a strong concept of private property. They saw the land and its resources as belonging to God, and anyone who works them ought to be able to make a living off them. They had a feeling that the gentry were wrong to have such large estates, so that when the Bolsheviks began confiscating the estates and turning them into collective farms, the peasants were easily sold on the idea. 

Berdyaev himself was a disenchanted Marxist who converted back to the Russian Orthodox Church. He was among the exiles in the “philosophers’ ships” of the 1920’s, when Lenin threw out much of Russia’s dissident intelligentsia. Unfortunately, despite his disappointment with Marxism, Berdyaev did retain (at least at the time he wrote this book—I don’t know about later in life) the same mistake to which some Christians are prone: the view that socialism is a more moral economic system than the free market, and that there must be some way to make it work without resorting to evil means or evil results. 

One Word of Truth- Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Lecture

This speech is just as good as A World Split Apart, and that's really saying something.  He describes the existential gulf between people living under oppressive governments and those in free countries.  There is a disconnect between the two, and the latter group very often cannot understand where the former is coming from.  As a representative of the former group transplanted into the world of the latter, Solzhenitsyn cites art as the means by which the gap can be bridged.
It is the means by which one can enter into another person's experience.

He also talks about the "spirit of Munich" and how it has dominated the 20th century (inclination of the free world to appease and tolerate unjust violence elsewhere provided it left the West alone) and how violence inevitably requires lies to maintain its position of power-- to deceive people about its true nature and give itself legitimacy.

The task of the artist above all is to remain honest in the face of violence and lies.

"Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me."

The Solzhenitsyn Center has released a video made with an excellent (English) reading of this speech, which is available to view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ITbFdTaB_E.

Understanding Europe, by Christopher Dawson

This is an outstanding analysis of Europe and Western civilization.  The book is divided in two parts.

In the first part, Dawson describes what Europe is: a society of peoples whose culture was shaped both by Christianity and the Greco-Roman heritage.  Through comparisons, he explains what differentiates it from Asia, describes the special case of Russia, and discusses the regional differences among the different peoples.  These were produced by the splintering of Christianity during the Reformation and the different styles of government in the different regions, contrasting the parliamentary governments that sprung up in Western Europe with the large military empires that developed in Central and Eastern Europe.  He also devotes two chapters to Europe's overseas colonies: the dual nature of European colonialism and how each nation's colonial effort differed in character from one another.

The second part of the book is about the decline of Western culture and the revolt, starting in the eighteenth century, against the ideas and norms that used to unify Europe.  He describes the rise of the large totalitarian and authoritarian states, how the ideas behind this style of government originated in Hegelian philosophy, and how the two world wars came about.

For a relatively short (230 page) book, he covers a lot of ground, and it's definitely a book that you have to read more than once in order to properly digest the material.  It's best to have a reasonably good general knowledge of the history of the various European countries in order to appreciate this book properly.

The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman

Back in 2014, the first of the World War I centenary years, I decided to get informed about World War I since I knew so little about it and it is frequently cited as the cause of various negative developments in the modern world (not the least of which was World War II).  But I'm a procrastinator so it took three years to get my rear in gear.

This book served as a great start. It's a military history covering the first month of the war on the Western front, including the frantic diplomacy and negotiation on the few days before the outbreak of the war, particularly in Belgium.  It ends on the eve of the battle of the Marne.  Tuchman only dedicates two chapters on Eastern front battles (Gumbinnen and Tannenberg), and one on the pursuit of the German light cruiser Goeben in the Mediterranean which resulted in the Turkish alliance with Germany, so if you're looking for a history of the Eastern front and an account of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife this is not it.

Tuchman is a skilled storyteller and includes just enough maps and technical information about military strategy and the technology of that time so a layman can understand the ramifications of the decisions made by the many generals, diplomats, monarchs, and politicians to whom he will be introduced. I had no problem following the progress of the war and learned a lot about the military thinking of the time. She also includes enough detail about the situations and people to draw the reader into the world of 1914. No mean feat.

Moscou sans voiles, by Joseph Douillet

The author, Joseph Douillet, is a Belgian citizen who spent thirty five years living in Russia—first as Belgian consul when the tsar was still in power, then with humanitarian organizations that set up in the USSR to help alleviate the effects of the economic problems and famine caused by increasing nationalization of the factories and farms after the October Revolution. The timing of his career, the positions he held, his fluency and familiarity with the Russian language and culture put him in a perfect position to observe the transition from tsarist to Soviet Russia and to draw comparisons between the two. If there was any historical event that proved that not all change is for the better (to put it mildly), this is it. 

It is a very well organized book that details the effects Communism had on different aspects of life. He starts off with how the USSR presents itself to foreigners, which is like a type of theater. Then he moves on to discussing Communism’s effects on the working and living conditions of peasants and factory workers: the level of their earnings, prices and availability of necessities, use of taxes to disadvantage disfavored groups, the educational system, the disintegration of marriage and family, illegitimacy, crime rates, treatment of people at the beginning and at the end of life, treatment of religious people, confiscation of church property, and the omnipresent surveillance of the secret police, whose power surpassed even that of the Politburo. He even spent 9 months in KGB custody at the Loubianka prison in Moscow prior to being deported to Latvia in 1925, so the later chapters are about his experiences in that jail, the effects of torture and interrogations on fellow inmates, their various fates--often deportation to gulags in Siberia or Solovetzky Island, or execution in the prison compound itself. The last chapter is about the Comintern, the Party’s foreign outreach and propaganda arm, whose aim was to spread the movement in Europe. 

My edition is dated 1928, so this was written soon after being expelled from the USSR. There does not seem to be an English translation, so this book is only accessible to French speakers. Great read for those interested in Russian and Cold War history. I’m surprised at how early this book appeared (just 11 years after the October Revolution), as I had the impression that information about the real conditions inside the USSR took longer to become known in the West.

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

In this series of eight essays, Isaiah Berlin recounts the intellectual dispute that took place in the late 18th to early 19th century that gave rise to the Romantic movement, and how ideas from both sides of the debate combined and recombined in the heads of various thinkers over the years so as to produce the fascist and socialist movements of the twentieth century.

One side of the dispute consists of those who believed in universal, objective truth, scientific rationalism, a common human nature, the possibility of an earthly utopia, and the non-contradiction of values. On the other side were those who believed in various degrees of relativism, the value of local traditions, even those that could not be traced to any rational basis, the possibility of different hierarchies of value that could contradict each other, and that human societies are ultimately founded on an irrational factors.

The second essay, called Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth Century Thought is particularly valuable because it explains how pluralism is different from relativism, and how pluralist thinkers of the eighteenth century (like Vico and Herder) are sometimes mistaken for relativists.  I read that one twice.

Included among the essays is an exposition of the life and thought of Joseph de Maistre, who is often mistaken for a conservative Catholic reactionary, but whose ideas contradicted those of Church and those of other conservatives, such as Edmund Burke, on important points, and whose dark, illiberal, eerily modern outlook presages twentieth century totalitarian movements.  Berlin recaps much of the content of this essay in this lecture.

The last two essays in the series, The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will and The Bent Twig are about how in the Romantic movement, the will, particularly in art, began to displace objective truth and nature, and how appreciation for local customs, thought to be the least enduring part of the Romantic movement, morphed into the nationalist movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries, from the desires of small ethnic or linguistic minorities to become independent states, or the sense of entitlement of large states to take over regions in other states inhabited by people of the same race or language.

I learned a lot reading this.  Great read if you're interested in the art, literature, and thought of the Romantic era, how ways of thinking we now take for granted originated, and in the causes of some of the most important events in twentieth century history.

L'Alsace Est-Elle Allemande Ou Française? Réponse A M. Mommsen

After reading La cité antique, I knew I found a new favorite author, so I was researching around the internet for other books he wrote.

This little pamphlet, whose title translates into: Is Alsace German or French? was written during the Franco-Prussian war as a response to some letters to the Italian press written by German historian Theodore Mommsen, which justified the Prussians taking the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine by insisting that the provinces should be a part of Germany due to the race and language of their inhabitants.  Fustel de Coulanges demolishes Mommsen's argument that race and language are what determine nationality and shows how other factors are much more important.  Great reading for those interested in the Franco-Prussian war, the aftermath of the 1866 war of the German League against Prussia, and in the historical events and ideas leading up to World Wars I & II.

For those who don't read French, I translated de Coulanges's text into English and posted it online in blog form.  Feel free to check it out here.  I included links to Fustel de Coulanges's original French text as well as to an English translation of Theodore Mommsen's letters, so you can get both sides of the debate.

Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millenium

Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI always did have a talent for explaining things clearly and concisely--he must have been an awesome teacher.  The interview in this book is no exception.  In it, he talks about his upbringing, his thoughts on salvation, on various ideas and ways of thinking widespread in the modern world, on the declining influence of the Church in Europe, with a special section on Germany, and on what it needs to do to continue carrying out its mission.  While maintaining a conversational tone, a lot of ideas are crammed in there and it covers plenty of ground for its size.  A re-read is definitely in the cards for this one.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Thomas Sowell takes several instances of false ideas about how the economy works and shows how they are not supported by real life evidence.  He also shows how political policies based on these ideas often backfire and aggravate the problem they were supposed to solve.  In many ways, this book is like a more modern version of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson written in the mid-1940's.  Not that Hazlitt's book is outdated, as many of the economic misconceptions being examined are stubborn ones that keep recurring no matter how many times they are debunked.  Many of these misconceptions are ones that politicians love to use in their election platforms to manipulate the populace into voting for them, so this book is invaluable for people who wish to exercise their citizen duties responsibly.

The Hall of Uselessness, by Simon Leys

Great collection of essays from an author whom I think is one of the best essayists ever!  The topics in this collection are wide ranging, from literature to China to history to the sea.  My favorites were the ones on Chinese art and history (a subject I know little about, so I learned a lot reading them), and the ones on Cervantes, Victor Hugo, and Magellan.  Included in this collection is the one where he (rightfully, in my opinion) excoriates Christopher Hitchens's negative comments about Mother Teresa.

Reflections on History, by Jacob Burckhardt

Interesting and concise study of various patterns that often appear in history, particularly those involving the interactions among the three powers Burckhardt identifies at the start of the book: State, Religion, and Culture. Reading this book, which is not specific to any particular time or country, will make one more alert to spotting and remembering these patterns when they are encountered in studying the history of any time or people.

On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, by Gertrude Himmelfarb

This is an excellent series of essays on various thinkers and philosophical ideas that have filtered out of academia and become influential in the modern world to the detriment of clear and logical thinking based on objective truth.

Her essay on John Stuart Mill, <i>Liberty: One Simple Principle</i> is especially good as an introduction to Mill's work, particularly <i>On Liberty</i> and the effects it has had on how people define "liberty" today.  Also particularly enjoyable is the essay on footnotes <i>Where Have All The Footnotes Gone?</i>, which suggests that their increasing absence in scholarly works, and scholars' increasing insistence on dispensing with them, is a symptom of the blurring of the line between history and fiction, footnotes being one of the ways a scholar's work can be checked by readers.

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, by Victor Davis Hanson

This is a collection of articles by columnist, historian, and classicist Victor Davis Hanson that shows why the neglected study of military history is important for everyone, not just those who want to serve in the military.  Studying past wars in past ages helps put current wars in perspective and helps one learn why and how wars are fought and justified.  Studying the Greek and Roman classics used to be one way that people learned about past wars but few schools below university level now teach about them.

Speaking of the classics, I have [author:Thucydides|957]'s big behemoth [book:The History of the Peloponnesian War|554178] on my to-read shelf and this book makes me feel guilty about not having had the courage to crack it just yet.  Maybe next year.

At a Century's Ending, by George F. Kennan

This book is a collection of essays, articles, and speeches written by historian George F. Kennan in the 80's and 90's at the tail end of the Cold War. He was in the U.S. Foreign Service from the 1920's to the post WW2 era and even served briefly as American ambassador to the USSR. His views on the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, the Cold War, American foreign policy, and the sometimes baleful effects of the American political process on foreign policy are very interesting, sometimes surprising. Great read for those interested in Cold War history. Also particularly educational for people who may have lived through the 80's or 90's as children, vaguely remember newscasts and commentary about these events but weren't old enough to understand much of it. I learned a lot reading this book. Since each chapter is a self-contained article or speech, the book lends itself well to reading in short spurts, and the chapters don't have to be read in order.