Popular European Historical Books
Find historical books written by authors from Europe for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (297)
Finland162.
Purge by Sofi Oksanen EN
Description:
A blowfly. Unusually large, loud, and eager to lay its eggs. It was lying in wait to get into the kitchen, rubbing its wings and feet against the curtain as if preparing to feast. It was after meat, nothing else but meat. Deep in an overgrown Estonian forest, two women, one young, one old, are hiding. Zara, a murderer and a victim of sex-trafficking, is on the run from brutal captors. Aliide, a communist sympathizer and a blood traitor, has endured a life of abuse and the country's brutal Soviet years. Their survival now depends on exposing the one thing that kept them hidden... the truth.
163.
Reclaiming the Salient : Resurrecting the Great War Battlegrounds of Flanders Fields by Roger Steward EN
EnglandDescription:
The end of the First World War saw the fields of Flanders contaminated by incalculable amounts of unexploded munitions and thousands of rotting corpses still exposed on the old battlefields. This is the story of how the battlefields of Belgium were, and still are, being cleared of the legacy of the Great War.
164.
Spain165.
Renia's Diary : A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel EN
UkraineDescription:
The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English Renia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. “I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that’s why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form ... continue
166.
Belgium167.
Iceland168.
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay EN
FranceDescription:
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from... continue
169.
Scotland: An Autobiography : 2,000 Years of Scottish History by Those Who Saw It Happen by Rosemary Goring EN
ScotlandDescription:
Contributors range from Tacitus, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Oliver Cromwell to Adam Smith, David Livingstone, and Billy Connolly. These include not only historic moments from Bannockburn to the opening of the new parliament in 1999 but also testimonies like that of the eight year- old factory worker who was dangled by his ear out of a third-floor window for making a mistake; the survivors of the 1746 Battle of Culloden, who wished perhaps that they had died on the field; the breakthrough moment for John Logie Baird, inventor of television; and, the genesis of great works of literature recorded ... continue
170.
Second-Hand of Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich EN
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s... continue