Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, which will compel readers to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways.
Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.
Author Richard James Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich.
Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which “we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath,” said a review in Goodreads.com.
“He argues that this was the ‘great imperial war,’ a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires,” said the review.
It said that Overy “explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath.”
What We Are Reading Today: Blood and Ruins
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What We Are Reading Today: Blood and Ruins
What We Are Reading Today: Under the Naga Tail
- This gripping and inspiring memoir is a testament to the human spirit’s capacity to endure and prevail in spite of great adversity
Author: Mae Bunseng Taing
This book is a courageous and poignant memoir of a young man’s daring escape from Cambodia’s genocidal regime.
Forced from his home by the Khmer Rouge, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of backbreaking work, constant starvation, and ruthless cruelty from his captors — supposed freedom fighters who turned against their own people. Mae risks torture and death to escape into the dark tropical jungles, trekking across a relentless wilderness crawling with soldiers, according to a review on goodreads.com.
This gripping and inspiring memoir is a testament to the human spirit’s capacity to endure and prevail in spite of great adversity.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Atlas of World Embroidery’
- “The Atlas of World Embroidery” examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia
Author: GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD
Embroidery is one of the world’s most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse.
It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: Some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures.
“The Atlas of World Embroidery” examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Cold Kitchen’
- The book is a slice of life, a scrapbook of scrumptious crumbs that make up a medley of a meal: Recipes, descriptions and reflections — arranged seasonally
Author: Caroline Eden
During my recent visit to Scotland, while walking the cobblestoned streets beneath moody skies and with a grumbling stomach, I dipped into a nearby bookshop to whet my appetite before heading to dinner — and discovered a book offering a sort of charcuterie board of travel morsels: Caroline Eden’s 2024 release, “Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys.”
The book invites readers into Eden’s Edinburgh basement kitchen to recall where she went and what she ate in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the course of a year.
The title refers to the part of the kitchen often used for preparing cold dishes, like salads, preserves and such. But in Eden’s hands, it becomes a metaphor for freezing memories.
The book is a slice of life, a scrapbook of scrumptious crumbs that make up a medley of a meal: Recipes, descriptions and reflections — arranged seasonally.
It is presented with three chapters per season, starting with winter, spring and summer, then ending in my personal favorite: autumn. Each segment pairs a place with a dish.
Eden, an award-winning travel writer, is best known for her color-themed travel trilogy — “Black Sea,” “Red Sands” and most recently, “Green Mountains.”
She understands how food anchors us; how we truly are what we eat. What we feed our bellies shapes our sense of place long after our suitcases — and we — roll away.
One moment that stayed with me was Eden’s detailed description of the Uzbek melon in the beginning of the book, honoring winter — its sticky sweetness, its lingering scent.
I have tasted it in Uzbekistan while journeying there myself, and the fruit is as she describes: dense, perfumed and indulgent. That single taste can lodge a landscape in the mind.
In “Cold Kitchen,” a dish becomes a way to mark time. A menu gives us a moment to sit with grief — to remember someone or somewhere. It allows us to take a second taste from our own history, a portal into a past version of ourselves.
Picking up this memoir in Edinburgh felt just like reaching for the perfect fruit from an orchard — something local, ripe and firm, yet delicate to sink into. Truly food for thought.
Though Eden’s kitchen is “cold” by name, it radiates warmth.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Expectation Effect’
- “The Expectation Effect” is an interesting take on mindsets and how they impact us, but it should not be treated as a definitive guide to life and its problems
Published in 2022, “The Expectation Effect,” by award-winning science writer David Robson, explores the consequences of people’s beliefs and expectations on their health, performance, well-being, and perception of reality.
Robson argues that even seemingly insignificant thoughts can significantly influence our physiological and psychological responses. He introduces research that supports his claims, including that on the placebo effect.
One interesting angle explored by Robson is the relationship between stress and performance; he suggests that stress can sometimes be used as a tool to enhance performance under pressure.
He also claims that a person’s perception of aging plays a role in shaping their health later in life.
Although Robson does a good job of explaining how he reaches his conclusions, I found it hard to agree completely with some of his broader opinions.
“The Expectation Effect” is an interesting take on mindsets and how they impact us, but it should not be treated as a definitive guide to life and its problems.
What We Are Reading Today: Hegel’s World Revolutions
- Bourke shows that central to Hegel’s thought was his anatomy of the modern world
Author: Richard Bourke
G.W.F. Hegel was widely seen as the greatest philosopher of his age. Ever since, his work has shaped debates about issues as varied as religion, aesthetics and metaphysics. His most lasting contribution was his vision of history and politics.
In “Hegel’s World Revolutions,” Richard Bourke returns to Hegel’s original arguments, clarifying their true import and illuminating their relevance to contemporary society.
Bourke shows that central to Hegel’s thought was his anatomy of the modern world. On the one hand he claimed that modernity was a deliverance from subjection, but on the other he saw it as having unleashed the spirit of critical reflection. Bourke explores this predicament in terms of a series of world revolutions that Hegel believed had ushered in the rise of civil society and the emergence of the constitutional state.
Bourke interprets Hegel’s thought, with particular reference to his philosophy of history, placing it in the context of his own time. en historical ideas and present circumstances.
