I think it was the Tom Holland In the Shadow of the Sword that really persuaded me to get an e-reader. It was a hard-back and weighed a good few pounds. Carrying it with me on the train every day really weighed me down.
So the Kindle is very light and I really like the online dictionary which means you can look up the meaning of words just by highlighting them on the screen. It’s amazing how many words have slightly different meanings to what you thought - a great way to improve your vocabulary while reading.
What I don’t like about the Kindle is the fact that you can’t buy a book and then pass it on to a friend or member of your family. One of the pleasures of reading a book is the element of sharing and this is completely removed with the Kindle. It wouldn’t be so bad if the price of e-books wasn’t so high. They are not sufficiently cheaper so that you might gift a book that you’ve enjoyed to a friend.
The other major drawback is that maps and images render very badly. I read a lot of history books and maps are often a key aid in understanding what’s going on. It’s almost impossible to use maps properly on a Kindle. So when I’m not commuting, I’ll probably go back to paper; but this year the Kindle had allowed me to read more easily.
These are the books I’ve read during 2012:
In The Shadow Of The Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient Word by Tom Holland:
Historian Tom Holland has caused some controversy with his new book In the Shadow of the Sword, which looks at the rise of Islam and (to a certain extent) the rise of Christianity as the great empires of Rome and Persia fell apart during the first half of the first millenium. I suspect he’d liked to have caused a bit more controversy in order to sell books, but when you’re writing about Islam, the pro of being named in a fatwa (lots of free publicity) is often outweighed by the con - being beheaded by a religious fanatic.
Holland is a popular, but serious historian, and I think he’s deliberately set out to be controversial (or at least to advertise the potential for controversy) in order to sell more copies. Even his choice of title is interesting - In The Shadow of the Sword is taken from “the gates to heaven lie in the shadow of the sword” which is a quote from the Koran and suggests that an essential part of Islam is conquest. It is, of course, but muslims rarely like to have this pointed out and it’s something of an inconvenient anachronism for the religion in the modern world. History shows that Islam has been used by many empire builders from Tamerlaine to Sulieman to justify conquest, enslavement and genocide (or ethnic cleansing as we call it today). Of course, it’s not only Islam that has been used in such a way; the history of Europe is littered with despots (large and small) who conquered in the name if Christianity and the Crusaders didn’t exactly go to Jerusalem to hold a few rallies and hand out pamphlets.
One theme of Holland’s book is how monotheistic religions were used politically to unite peoples and to give a greater mass of people a common purpose for any task (but mainly conquest and empire building).
Holland’s, or his marketing team’s, attempt to court controversy in the book title was something of a failure. No-one seemed to notice, but a Channel 4 documentary, based on the book (the most contentious bits) exposed the author to a wider audience and there have been around 1,500 complaints to Ofcom (the broadcasting regulator) but so far no Salman Rushdie-style fatwa.
Holland approaches Islam with a historian’s eye, looking for contemporary accounts and evidence (of which there’s next to none) around the creation of the faith. It’s pretty clear that Mohammed didn’t sit in a cave and have the Koran dictated to him by an angel, but that’s hardly controversial in my view. What I found most interesting was the account of the fall of the Roman empire (Christian) and the Persian empire (Zoroastrian) both brought about chiefly by the arrival of what Holland says was bubonic plague, which so depopulated major cities and the surrounding countryside that it was no longer possible to adequately defend them. Rather than bubonic plague, the pestilence may have been smallpox, but whatever people were dying from, they were certainly dying.
Islam grew into the vacuum as the religion that united the Arabs (the children of Ishmael). Early Christians come under Holland’s historic analysis even more than Islam does, mainly because (being on the Roman side of the fence) there’s a lot more evidence. It’s extraordinary the various Christian factions that existed so early in the religion’s existence, amazing the compromises they made and beyond belief the petty things they found to argue and bicker about.
Islam also had its divisions (and quite early) being split into what we now call Shia and Sunni, but essentially Arab and Persian. The book talks about the influence that Jewish scholars and the Torah had on the development of Islamic laws. I’d have thought that would have been highly controversial, but because it’s in the book and not in the Channel 4 documentary, it escapes.
Chris Bonington Mountaineer: Thirty Years of Climbing on the World's Great Peaks by Sir Chris Bonington:
Chris Bonington Mountaineer is a difficult book to read and I confess that I haven’t yet finished it. The difficulty is nothing to do with the writing or content, it’s just the size. When I bought it secondhand on Amazon, I expected a normal paperback, but it’s actually way over A4 and virtually impossible to carry to work and back. My normal, indeed my only serious reading time, is on the train, so that’s why Chris Bonington’s account of his climbing career is taking me so long. I bought it in 2011 when I had a spell of reading mountaineering books (see Books Read in 2011) and it’s easy reading, amazing stories and brilliant pictures. It’s just too big to take out of the house. I dip in and out when I have some spare time at home (which is rare) but I haven’t finished it, so really it’s here under false pretences - another project for retirement.
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
This is one of those “get you thinking” books and one of those you don’t quite trust because the author clearly has a massive agenda. In this case, I agree entirely with his sentiments and wish that I didn’t agree with his conclusion (which is that mankind is basically racing towards a brick wall of over-consumption and over-population).
To illustrate our current situation, Wright looks at societies such as the Easter Islanders or the Mayans, examining how overpopulation pushed their resources to and over the limit. In that situation, minor changes to weather patterns (a few dry summers) caused population collapse. In Easter Island, the solution was to carve more and more sacred heads, bigger and bigger sacred heads. It didn’t work. In South America, what was left of the Mayan population probably just walked back into the jungle.
We are increasing our population and over consuming on a grand scale, but what can we do about it? It needs a political will or mandate that can’t be secured in a democracy, where people will always vote for short-term objectives. All we can do is watch the news as China and India industrialise and increase their populations (as we did 200 years ago); while Britain’s population, boosted by uncontrolled immigration pushes towards 70 million. The simple truth is that there are too many people in the world and there’s precious little we can do about it but wait until the shit hits the fan.
Wright could be alarmist, many others have predicted famine as populations rose in the past and we’ve always been able to increase production and find new sources of food. There are improvements in technique and technology that can help still further, but we’re doing just what the Easter islanders did - push things to the limit and, at the limit, it doesn’t take much for it all to go wrong.
That Near Death Thing: Inside the Most Dangerous Race in the World by Rick Broadbent
Tom and I went to the TT this year (my first time and his third). We’re planning to go again in May/June of 2013. See: http://ericsdailydiary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/taking-in-tt.html
It’s an extraordinary sports event that completely defies modern standards of health and safety and what constitutes reasonable risk in today’s society.
Broadbent is a sports journalist, currently working for the Times, and has a particular interest in motorcycle racing. He wrote Ring of Fire about grand prix racing and it was a terrific book. That Near Death Thing is good, but not nearly so good and I can’t help thinking that he decided to do it on the back of the success of Closer to the Edge, the film about the TT.
There’s some evidence, if any was needed, that Guy Martin is a bit crazy, there’s some interesting stuff about John McGuinness and some real insights into the Dunlop racing clan. I don’t want to criticise Broadbent - it’s a very good book for anyone interested in bike racing - but he has rather followed the trail blazed by the film and so a lot of the stuff he writes about is already well exposed.
Being a book, it also suffers from having taken a snapshot of events in time. One of the characters he writes about was killed in the Ulster Grand Prix this year and there have been developments in the story around Ian Hutchinson which are worth a chapter in the book on their own (see my blog: Ian Hutchinson: Closer to the Edge - see even I can attempt to cash in on the success of the film).
It’s a shame Broadbent didn’t expand the subject to cover Irish road racing, the TT is just the biggest event in the Irish road racing calendar, and add another 100 pages.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
So, after reading Rick Broadbent’s book, I switched from paper to Kindle and my first foray was The Jungle Book which was available free from one of the many sites offering books which are out of copyright.
I read this for the first time when I was about 22 and I’ve since read it to the children, so this was a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me. It’s easy reading and got me into using the Kindle.
Constantinople: The Last Great Siege 1453 by Roger Crowley.
The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans is one of the pivotal events in modern/European history. It meant that Islam gained a base which enabled it to advance well into Europe and north Africa and it marked the final end of the Roman (Byzantine) empire.
Constantinople, like Rome and Athens, is one of the great ancient cities of western civilisation. It shouldn’t have survived as long as it did being the main city of a bankrupt and tired empire and having been sacked and pillaged by Norman crusaders a few hundred years previously. Then again, it should never have fallen. Despite a serious lack of men and money, the defenders almost managed to hang on. If Christian Europe had stopped squabbling long enough to provide only a couple of thousand men and a few more relief ships, then Constantinople might have remained a bastion, the front line, of Christianity.
It was technology which allowed the Ottomans, under Mehmed, to take the city. They showed an ability to organise and mobilise resources as only an absolute dictatorship/monarchy can do and what they did was extraordinary. They built the biggest cannon cast (pushing bronze metallurgy technology to the limit), they built opposing fortresses to throttle the Byzantine empire (what was left of it) and they transported a naval force overland for 20 miles or more in order to outflank the defenders.
In the end, the massive Theodosian walls almost kept out the attackers. The huge cannon knocked chunks out of them, but the breeches kept being filled and the ladders kept being cast down. It was a knife edge between victory and defeat, between survival and murder.
Had Constantinople held out, then the Ottoman empire might not have survived. The Sultan might have lost control and the Hapsbergs or the Russians filled the gap as the Byzantines slowly collapsed. Persia and the Shia branch of Islam may have been more dominant and the western Mediterranean saved from centuries of raids by Barbary pirates who captured many thousands of Italian, Greek and Spanish people and sold them in the slave markets of Africa. Slavery was still an integral part of the Ottoman empire well into the 19th Century (as it was in America, of course).
As it was, Constantinople became Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman empire, which expanded through Greece, the Balkans and into western Europe as far as Vienna before the tide turned. The Ottomans were a little disappointed in their prize; they were surprised how poor and run down the place was. To their credit, they didn’t murder the entire population and they converted the great churches into mosques rather than destroy them, but many of the remaining treasures were destroyed including the famous bronze statue of Justinian.
Roger Crowley is a serious historian, but he writes in an easy style which is very digestible.
The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
A book on clouds? Doesn’t sound a great read, but Gavin Pretor-Pinney is one of those great British eccentrics; he wanted to write a book about clouds (not a serious textbook) and write it he did.
He loves his subject and this comes through in the writing. There are anecdotes, interesting trivia and serious facts. If you want to know how hail is formed or what’s causing it to rain; or if you just want to impress your friends by remarking that you’d better hurry your picnic as that Cumulus Congestus looks threatening then this book is great.
I now know why clouds are white and why some are black; annoyingly, when Margaret remarks that it’s a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky, I can’t help but point out that a plain blue sky is a bit boring and then find a wisp or two of high cirrus just to prove her wrong.
This is a great book and it needs to be a book, it wouldn’t work on Kindle as you really need the pictures and diagrams to work to get maximum enjoyment from it.
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580 by Roger Crowley.
After the fall of Constantinople, I wanted a bit more Ottoman history and this is history starring Russell Crowe. It has everything - cruel Turks, evil Pirates, swashbuckling heroes, great battles on land and sea, people skinned alive, treacherous French ...
This all happened more than 400 years ago, but it’s hard not to sympathise with the hard-pressed Christian kingdoms of the Mediterranean, constantly attacked by the Saracens. Well, it is if you’re from a Christian background and I kind of feel that Roger Crowley is there at the head of a galley next to Don Juan cheering the Christian fleet at Lepanto or urging the Knights of St John to hold fast at Malta.
It’s a serious history book and analyses a period where the Mediterranean was the theatre for a power struggle between the Islamic empire of the Ottomans and the Christian kingdoms of Spain, Austria and the various Italian city states. Control of the Mediterranean would allow the Islamic conquest of Europe from the bottom up. Venice would fall, followed by Rome and all Italy; and Spain and the Iberian peninsula would be recolonised from North Africa.
The book starts with the siege of Rhodes and the eventual expulsion of the Knights of St John from this forward base, established after the fall of Acre in 1291, some 250 years earlier. From Rhodes the Knights retreated to Malta, a key strategic point between Italy and North Africa. The Christian island withstood a massive siege by the Ottomans, but the Turks seized Cyprus from Venice after a bloody siege and dreadful atrocities. Eventually, the squabbling Christian rulers managed to hold an alliance together long enough to raise a fleet, which destroyed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto in the Peloponnese.
It brought an end to Ottoman hopes of controlling the Mediterranean and forced further attacks on European countries to go by land rather than by sea. It was bad news for Budapest, but good news for Italy, France and Spain. The Turks got as far as Vienna, but their failure to take the capital of the Holy Roman Empire was the turning point. had they controlled the seas, conquest would have been easier and Europe would have looked very different today.
Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 by Caroline Finkel
I’ve finished the year 65 per cent through Caroline Finkel’s history of the Ottoman Empire. After looking at the Ottomans through Christian eyes (from the opposite trenches, as it were), I thought I should have some redress.
Finkel likes her Ottomans and the book has taught me a great deal, although here’s a case where the Kindle’s inability to render maps in a readable format has meant that I’ve found it much more difficult to follow what’s happening or the scale of achievements.
The book is long and it’s rather heavy going, not helped by names being unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce, so that the temptation is to bleep over them. I’m looking for more summary and trends, but the book plods on chronologically, so I have to summarise myself.
It’s fascinating how the Ottomans were quick to harness the cutting-edge technology of warfare - particularly cannon and crack troops (the janissaries), but failed to maintain that technological advantage. In particular, they failed to build a dominant naval force, preferring to franchise that role to a bunch of able, but violent pirates. They came unstuck at Lepanto when floating Venetian gun platforms devastated their rowed galleys, but didn’t learn the lesson.
Their land advantage lasted longer than it should have done mainly due to the divisions and rivalries among their enemies, with Christian kings happy to use the Ottomans to defeat their Christian rivals. When the tide did turn and Ottoman rulers tried to reform the military, they were blocked by vested interests. It didn’t take much to prompt a janissary revolt and as the corps developed from a force comprising Christians converted to Islam to a force where converts were not allowed, which allowed the janissaries to use religious excuses for opposing reform.
The empire’s economic structure meant it was almost always bankrupt, especially when they ran out of rich neighbours to conquer. What is interesting is that many Christians (especially those at the bottom of the heap) were happier to live under an Islamic absolute ruler than they were as virtual serfs under a Christian regime.
Also see: Books Read in 2011
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