List: History

This book was a great overview of the wider mediterranean civilisations during the Bronze Age, with a short discussion of the so-called collapse towards the end. I went into it expecting a lot of content about the collapse itself, and the book turned out to be 80% stage-setting. I happen to be into this, so it was a pleasant surprise, but depending on your tastes, this could also be less fun.

Kaffeehauskultur. Tales of the Austrian in-group.

This classic (pub. 1969) on city development was extremely accessible to read, particularly considering the ugh field that surrounds economics for me. Jacobs' main premise is that cities don't arise as a consequence of agricultural settlements – cities are there first, and develop their hinterland to support themselves.

Berlin's Third Gender (Berlins drittes Geschlecht) by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld is a description of queer lives in Berlin around 1900 (published 1905). Even though it's naturally sad in some ways, it's also encouraging: Berlin was comparatively liberal at the time, and I enjoyed the descriptions of queer groups, events, relationships, and creative side-stepping of general conventions. The descriptions are very vivid and obviously well-researched, and contain lots of amusing facts about everyday life in different social circles.

For once, I have nothing to say. This first-hand account of one year spent in Auschwitz is very calm, deliberately matter-of-fact, and inevitably painful to read.

Primo Levi's way home after the end of WW2, from Auschwitz to Italy. So matter-of-fact that it reads as deadpan when Europe consists only of remains and confusion.

This book is a treasure! It follows the history of gay men's dress from the days of Oscar Wilde to the 90s, and by necessity along the way explains the cultural changes in and around gay groups. It explains hidden and implicit cultural meanings, is sourced from interviews, magazines, and lots and lots of other books and articles. I can't overstate how in-depth and conscientously the information is presented.

My first non-fiction book in quite some time, The Victorian Internet is a nice introduction into the rise and fall of the electrical telegraph, and all its implications. Tom Standage shows us in an easy, meandering style how the world changed due to the telegraph, and how people changed (and/or didn't). While he's often very direct (or on the nose) about his theories, and some minor facts looked not quite well researched (Karlsruhe was never part of Prussia, thank you very much), I liked both the very human approach to history, and his final – if simplistic – comparison between telegraph an internet evolution.

So viel au :( aber ein guter Überblick.

Published in 1942, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry talks about his life, experience, thoughts and feelings about being a pilot in WWII, while on the defensive and with little hope of surviving. The novella follows one flight, and comments on both the flight itself (mechanically, strategically) and the war in general.

Liest sich gut und informativ, einem wird nur halt immer wieder zwischendurch dabei schlecht. Liegt aber am Inhalt, nicht am Stil.

Impressive and intriguing: Against the Grain tells the story of early state-building as a story of agriculture – that's not new. What's new is that James Scott has spent years aggregating the current insights of history and archaeology to paint the same idea from a new angle: What if early states did not naturally arise with the cultivation of grain – what if they required a food staple as grain (divisible, countable, and with a strict yearly cycle) to establish a bureaucracy?

Bringing Columbia Home is the story of the aftermath of the break-up of the Columbia shuttle, told by Michael D. Leinbach who was a launch manager at NASA and bore responsibility during the collection of Columbia and the ensuing review. I didn't really like the book – the author gave me the feeling that the book was more written for the people involved in the clean-up missions, both volunteers and professionals, than for an interested outsider like me. Some chapters feel more like a long list of names and their roles, to include everybody who did important work at the time, which was certainly important to those people, but at the same time a bit tedious. A bit of stylistic editing would have helped a lot here. I also felt that quite some things I'd be interested in (e.g. the concrete organizational consequences to change NASA feedback culture) were glossed over way too much.

Sehr trocken geschrieben. Der Band zur 1918er-Revolution aus derselben Reihe ist da ungleich besser.

This book was honestly, truly, terrible. I picked it up because as a history nerd, "where did this family end up" is always an interesting prompt. I had not thought that a single book could contain this amount of disjointed anecdotes, self-important injections, and – most damningly – humble and meek servility towards a dead monarchy. If I have to read books by monarchists, I'd prefer them to be stylish and clever instead of sleazy and obnoxious.