It's a light week this week. So, without further ado, new and reviewed this week in history and historical fiction:
Historical Fiction
Imperium, by Robert Harris, reviewed by Dennis Drabelle for the Washington Post. "I could have used this book while taking third-year Latin," says the reviewer (halfway through this myself, I know how he feels). Harris hits the high points of Cicero's career, but fills in lots of juicy backstory about just how the conspiracies and prosecutions that led to his great speeches happened -- it's inside baseball for high-school classics students, and I mean that in a good way.
History
Donne: The reformed soul, by John Stubbs, reviewed by Katherine Duncan-Jones in the Times Literary Supplement. Donne has pretty much defied biographers, says Duncan-Jones. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Stubbs has "completed a substantial and lively account of Donne's life and times ..."
Consuming Passions: Leisure and pleasure in Victorian Britain, by Judith Flanders, reviewed by Rosemary Ashton in the Times Literary Supplement. This isn't the first historical account of leisure, but the angle (that increased leisure time and funds were spin-offs from the Industrial Revolution) feels fresh. Of course, since it's a British history, it wouldn't be complete without some account of class conflict; at least this time it's relevant.
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn, reviewed by Ron Rosenbaum for the New York Times. I have to admit, my first reaction on seeing this review was "not another Holocaust book," but Rosenbaum points out a few things that turned me around. Mendelsohn is an interesting and careful scholar who writes on a number of subjects, and his book appears to eschew a number Holocaust cliches (like "backshadowing" -- making lives seem tragic in light of the coming Holocaust) in favor of reconstructing the fate of a single family.
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