Historical genre books (742)


71.

Babette's Feast by Karen Blixen EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Country: Europe / Denmark flag Denmark
Description:
These five rich, witty and magical stories from the author of Out of Africa include one of her most well known tales, ‘Babette’s Feast’, which was made into the classic film. It tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community, who treats her employers to the decadent feast of a lifetime. There is also a real-life Prospero and his Ariel in ‘Tempests’, a mysterious pearl-fisher in ‘The Diver’ and a brief, tragic encounter in ‘The Ring’. All the stories have a mystic, fairy-tale quality, linked by themes of angels, the sea, dreams and fate. They were among the last t... continue

72.

Bad Gays : A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey, Ben Miller EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / England flag England
Description:
These “very funny-deep dives into the lives of the most dastardly queer people in history” offer a passionate argument for rethinking gay politics beyond identity (Vogue). What can we learn from the homosexual villains, failures, and baddies of our past? We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those ‘bad gays’ whose unexemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Many popular histories seek to establish homosexual heroes, pioneers, and martyrs but, as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have b... continue

73.

Bangkok Wakes to Rain : A Novel by Pitchaya Sudbanthad EN

Rating: 4 (5 votes)
Country: Asia / Thailand flag Thailand
Description:
"A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. A jazz pianist is summoned in the 1970s to conjure music t... continue

74.

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Country: Asia / South Korea flag South Korea
Description:
The gripping true story of a South Korean woman's student days under an authoritarian regime in the early 1980s, and how she defied state censorship through the rebellion of reading.

75.

Barefoot Gen : A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
GRAPHIC NOVELS: MANGA. Beautiful new hardcover edition of Barefoot Gen Volume One! Striking new design with special sturdy binding for institutional use. August 6, 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Today, the danger posed by nuclear weapons is as great as ever, yet few people survive who witnessed their horror. To mark the event, and honor Keiji Nakazawa's incredible work, Last Gasp created a special set of Barefoot Gen, volumes 1-4 for institutional use. Nakazawa's manga illustrates the true impact of nuclear weapons when used against a civilian... continue

76.

Bede's Life of St Cuthbert by Bede EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / England flag England
Description:
'At this time, Cuthbert was keeping watch over flocks of sheep on some remote mountains. One night he was staying awake, praying through the night, with his companions sleeping beside him. Suddenly he saw a light streaming down from heaven, breaking through the darkness. In the light were choirs of angels coming down to earth, and after taking away a soul that was full of light, they returned to their heavenly country...' Written only a few years after the death of Cuthbert himself, Bede's Life is the definitive biography of the North's favourite saint. With introduction and notes.

77.

Beirut by Samir Kassir EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Lebanon flag Lebanon
Description:
Beirut is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. --from publisher description.

78.

Beloved by Toni Morrison EN

Rating: 4 (33 votes)
Description:
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engrave... continue

79.

Between Two Rivers : Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Saudi Arabia flag Saudi Arabia
Description:
Humanity's earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own.

80.

Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Country: Africa / Madagascar flag Madagascar
Description:
The first novel from Madagascar ever to be translated into English, Naivo’s magisterial Beyond the Rice Fields delves into the upheavals of the nation’s precolonial past through the twin narratives of a slave and his master’s daughter. Fara and her father’s slave, Tsito, have shared a tender intimacy since her father bought the young boy who’d been ripped away from his family after their forest village was destroyed. Now in Sahasoa, amongst the cattle and rice fields, everything is new for Tsito, and Fara at last has a companion to play with. But as Tsito looks forward toward the bright promis... continue