The following books have been selected for inclusion in the idleguy.com library because they focus on history, society, and political change.
“The Italians” by Luigi Barzini is a brief study of the nature and mores of the Italian people. The book addresses the issues of religion, family, history, honor, art and more, which make up the fabric of the people and the country which have attracted the world's attention for centuries.
The author begins the book by posing options for Italy's fatal charm and the elements that draw countless numbers of people from all over the world to visit each year. Some people come for the sunny weather; some come to be educated, and some come merely to get lost in the sensuousness of her food, music and art.
The lure of Italy, according to Barzini, is built on illusion and spectacle. The Italian people love drama and create it whenever and wherever possible in order to make the reality of their actual lives more palatable. This is exhibited in the exaggerated language and gestures of their speech, in the passion for pure, simple food, and the undying sentimentality for heroes and customs and family. Barzini also explores the structure and interpersonal dynamics of the Italian family complete with the revered masculine children and the awe-inspiring, long-suffering Italian mother.
Beginning with a discussion of familiar images of the French Revolution, garnered from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of let them eat cake, and tricolours, Doyle leads the reader to the realization that we are still living with developments and consequences of the French Revolution such as decimalization, and the whole ideology of human rights. Continuing with a brief survey of the old regime and how it collapsed, Doyle continues to elucidate how the revolution happened: why did the revolutionaries quarrel with the king, the church and the rest of Europe, why this produced Terror, and finally how it accomplished rule by a general. The revolution destroyed the age-old cultural, institutional and social structures in France and beyond. This book looks at how the ancien regime became ancien as well as examining cases in which achievement failed to match ambition. Doyle explores the legacy of the revolution in the form of rationality in public affairs and responsible government, and finishes his examination of the revolution with a discussion of why it has been so controversial. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life’s most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family historyIn 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members–mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists–The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invation of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluting the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.
In April of 1904, a lecture by Sir Halford J. Mackinder, the founder of the school of geopolitics, called The Geographical Pivot of History was published in the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Mackinder’s thesis argued that the coming of steam power, electricity and the railways was at last permitting continental nations to overcome the physical obstacles that had hampered their development in the past. In particular, the railway was enabling tsarist Russia to exploit its vast internal resources and to make strategic inroads in the far east and towards India that its imperial rival Great Britain could not counter. Land power was thus eroding the geopolitical advantages that had been enjoyed by the western sea powers. The rest of the 20th century bore witness to Mackinder’s treatise.
The Italians by Luigi Barzini (1964)
The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction by William Doyle (2001)
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi (2020)
The Geographical Pivot of History: Illustrated by Halford John Mackinder (1904)
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