Joshua
It's a nice story, it feels a bit too old school but I'm glad I read it. I prefer the first part over the second part and if I were to re-read it (not an impossibility) I'd probably only read the first part.
I don't exactly understand how Beulah Land is supposed to work. It's supposed to be a temporary place until you're called for Heaven but it implies there's no problems there, so isn't Beulah Land essentially Heaven? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a sense of living amongst the sinners or having missions to convert them rather than living in pre-Heaven? I know it's a story but I don't think this aspect really captures the late game of Christianity. It does a great job at describing the early and mid game of Christianity but falls short at the late game, perhaps because the author hadn't reached the late game?
This was also my first Christian book I think and it was enjoyable enough. I'm not sure how many more Christian books I'd read as I have plenty of history books I'd love to read and one should be strategic about what you are reading.
This is a very pro-postivity book, perhaps too positive at times. Nonetheless I kinda found it pretty simple, nothing too revolutionary in 200 pages.
I did like the chapter on what you say affects your mindset. Like saying you're tired makes you tired.
Overall, it wasn't very useful to someone who is generally considered a positive person but it could be better to someone more negative perhaps.
This was my first audiobook. I had never listened to an audiobook before and I enjoyed listening to it when I didn't want to read.
Overall, I found the first half of the books to be good. When he actually talks about personal growth and how myelin is the scientific way of how we actually get better at things. I also enjoyed how he deconstructs talent to basically just be practice and ignition (which I understood to be motivation and willpower).
The book kinda drops off when he shifts in talking about coaches and teachers. While they're interesting stories and show how hard work is actually the reason behind successful people, it feels a bit tangential and could've been a chapter or two.
Nonetheless, it was enjoyable and has made me a bit of a crusader for hard work rather than preordained ‘talent'.
Great book. I feel like by reading this early in my life, I'll have at least an advantage on how to live a better life than someone who read this book later in life.
This book isn't really a practical guide however. It's mostly just going through assumptions people have and why they're wrong and what could should be done instead.
I enjoyed this book quite a lot.
There is the issue that this book might be a bit ‘old man complains about technology' but his complaints are justified. We have such little time, why spend our precious free-time doing nothing of substance?
He mainly talks about the dangers of shallow work, how to minimize it and the ins and outs of deep work.
Pretty solid book though, not as ‘great' as a book I read before, Atomic Habits by James Clear which is most certainly a 5/5 while this being really good, doesn't achieve the same level of Atomic Habits for me.
I though it was okay. The first 150 pages are history before 1911. As a result, some parts were rushed a bit such as the Yuan Dynasty which I looked forward to reading the most but only got 10 pages.
The general pattern to the pre-1911 chapters was to introduce how the new Dynasty came in power, some fun facts about it and some facts about an emperor of interest, afterwards its mostly just social history such as looking at important inventions or relevant poets, women or philosophers. As a result, this book mostly uses political history to frame social history rather than political history and social history being co-partners.
This pattern breaks with the 1911 Revolution and feels very different to the rest of the book. Before reading this book I took a module on Chinese politics so I had some background knowledge. There were definitely instances where I was raising eyebrows in how she sometimes seemed to side with the CCP, at least to me. I doubt this book would be CCP approved but there's definitely some aspects that leave me suspicious.
Overall, this book is fine/okay/decent. But it's just too short to get any meaningful analysis and generally social history doesn't interest me currently so perhaps my bias impacted my appreciation of this book.
Phenomenal book, a book I could probably recommend to anyone and they would have some use for it. The book isn't exactly advanced in its psychology and most likely if you have had an interest in building habits you would already know a lot of these tips.
Nonetheless, fantastic book and really easy to read.
This book is long and complicated! I was not ready for this book!
Joachim Whaley covers a numerous amount of topics and genres in this book: at one point its a biography of certain individuals such as Martin Luther and later it could be a case study on some niche court case. A general theme of the book is reassessment however. He's constantly mentioning historians from the 19th and 20th century who's opinions of the Holy Roman Empire are seen as outdated nowadays. As a result, if you don't know anything about the Peasants Revolt, you might be a bit confused. Although he explains topics in detail, it's important to understand the big broad picture first.
As a result, while this is an excellent book, currently it's only a 3/5 stars because, perhaps, I don't appreciate it enough. Maybe in the future when I'm more knowledgeable and wiser, I'll give it a higher rating. A word of caution is to read something more broad first! The Holy Roman Empire is complicated and Whaley explains everything, therefore, keeping the topic a complicated one.
I thought it was great. I found myself reading a chapter straight which is generally rare for me considering I get tired reading like 20 pages. It reads less of a linear story and more short stories that involves the same themes and characters that sometimes references previous stories. I definitely look forward to the next books and I plan to re-read this book sometime in the future!
This is a good book. I gave it three stars for it being solid but something I wouldn't really re-read or something that changed my thinking entirely. This book does what it's supposed to, give a short introduction to Clausewitz. I did learn more about him, his theories and his legacy and Howard did that well.
At short 77 pages it's super easy to just pick up and read on the bus (like I did).
If you have any interest in military history, it's a good primer to see if you're interested in a short introduction of one of the greatest military theorists.
Having read the Analects by Confucius recently, I was mentally comparing these two works.
I much preferred the Analects. It had more to say and I feel like I could better understand what Confucius was arguing. It was also a much more simpler and perhaps secular philosophy? Confucius argues to be good to others and that there should be a good government. One should be constantly learning and set yourself towards virtue.
Lao Tzu is not so easy. Firstly, it's written as poetry which makes it much harder to understand the true meanings without going to an external analysis. As a result, my experience was one of confusion and trying to decipher what he was arguing. Lao Tzu has a lot of vague terms like Tao, Ado and so on. You're kind of expected to understand what they are. Lao Tzu recognises this criticism himself when he mentions that his message is simple to understand and practice yet the world does not understand him.
I think the philosophy was one of opposites. To be the best, you have to not try to be the best. The weak will overcome the strong.
There was some interesting insights for sure. Just currently I didn't really get it and perhaps I'll give it a re-read after I read more Eastern Philosophy.
I think its great. There's a lot of wisdom to unpack in Confucius. It's also bite-sized wisdom. There's no major concepts to understand beyond ‘virtue'. Confucius is pretty simple in his philosophy. It's mainly improving oneself and constantly growing. As a result, he makes a clear difference between a higher and a lower person, i.e. one that is dedicated to learning and growth versus someone who is not.
From my understanding, the philosophy of Confucius can be considered generally a good one. It evokes constant self-growth and to be good around others. It's main weakness however could be in how strict and limiting it is. It's very much fighting against your base instincts and doing what is ‘right'. There's also the issue of Confucius' emphasis on religious law which could challenge secular philosophy.
Nonetheless, the Analects is a classic piece of Eastern Philosophy and I encourage others to read it if they have any interest in philosophy.
This is not a book for casual audiences. You are expected to understand what capitalism is, what feudalism is and also have a knowledge of medieval English, French and Dutch history. Ellen Meiskens Wood expects you to know this because she does help you out. This is a very complicated book and will not try to make it simple to understand.
Nonetheless, if you can get past the confusing language, Wood does make a good argument throughout the book. To spoil the gist of the book, she basically argues that the traditional model of what the origin of capitalism is, is wrong. She argues that the ‘commercialization model' assumes too much and just assumes that capitalism was always present. She points out that this is wrong and that the origin of capitalism is very specific in that it only originated in the English countryside through ‘agrarian capitalism'. This book mainly discusses why England is so unique and why they were the only ones to develop capitalism.
She also goes on to discuss her theory in other topic areas such as imperialism or the Enlightenment.
There's also the issue of bias. She is a Marxist so naturally she isn't the biggest fan of capitalism. She actually ends the book saying that socialism is a real alternative to capitalism.
This is a great introduction to Irish history as a whole. While it cannot be considered the definitive history of Northern Ireland, Hegarty does spend a good amount of time discussing Northern Ireland, especially in the final chapter where the Troubles is given significant attention, albeit at the cost of a more detailed post-WW2 Republic of Ireland.
I very much enjoyed the early Irish history such as the Vikings since I wasn't taught too much about it in school. However, only the first hundred pages are pre-1600s history. Meaning the next 200+ pages discuss only 400 years of history. Of course it makes sense, there is a lot more ‘relevant' information to give about Charles Stuart Parnell or the 1916 Rising than the 1500s.
As a result, this book is great as a general primer to Irish history with a focus on more early modern to modern history. This does not mean the pre-1600s content is lacking, it's very good and I learned a lot.
I am relatively surprised that I enjoyed this book.
It is an easy claim to make that Arnold doesn't like political history and would rather study social history. However, I feel like he doesn't make that claim. Throughout 7 chapters we are introduced to various figures in history arguing that without the ordinary people, there wouldn't be a history. While this claim is bold which minimises political ramifications, he argues it's just one explanation. He never says that one interpretation of history is definitive. Each historian discusses something they find interesting in an arbitrary time period and as a result, not everything is discussed.
He provides a balanced view of each school of thought in history and historiography which I definitely found interesting as a history major.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to perhaps challenge their understanding of history and its purpose.
It wasn't terrible, just mediocre.
I found myself kind of bored, especially when the first half of the book talks about the heralds themselves rather than the heraldry I aimed to learn about.
When discussing heraldry, coat of arms, and such, it was of great interest to me. However, I feel like it could have been done better. There was definitely a focus on English heraldry and you mainly hear of other countries' heraldry as side notes.
For most of it, I just wanted to be done with the book and move onto other things.
Perhaps the short length of 123 pages meant that he had to cram in a lot of history into few words. Perhaps if it were around 300 pages, it could have been more detailed and would have allowed to walk beginners to heraldry a lot more gently.
As of 2021, being an English speaker and wanting to learn about general Bavarian history, your options are heavily limited. You can either read about it on Wikipedia or read this book...that was written in 1906. There are books on specific cases of Bavarian history such as a history book on Ludwig II or Merovingian Bavaria but other than that you're out of luck if you do not speak German.
As of now, I don't speak German so I decided to read this book. Ultimately, it was alright. Gertrude Norman doesn't really cite her sources so who knows where she's getting this from. Perhaps she spoke German and read a Bavarian history book in German. But nonetheless, from following along with Wikipedia, she appeared to be accurate. It was nice learning about these dukes and monarchs in chronology.
However, after around 140 pages which is how long it takes her to catch up to 1906, she shifts gear and starts to discuss art, architecture and cities. While there was some history involved such as the history of Munich, Regensburg, Wurzburg, Augsburg, etc it was mainly talking about the architecture of these cities. As a result, I spent a good amount of the book ultra-skimming which I why I was able to finish around 60 pages of this book in just one day (I usually read 10 pages a day).
Until more Bavarian history books are translated from German into English, I'm afraid this is all we have for now. I'd recommend it if you're really interested in Bavarian history and sure it's only 214 pages, most people could get it done it a week or two (whereas it took me 3 weeks!).
Also, she's not a historian from what I know about Gertrude Norman. From my guess she could be some countess in England who lived in Bavaria for a number of years and is just repeating what she learned in this book. As a result, she doesn't write like a history would but rather a fiction writer. This means when she isn't talking hard dates, it's gonna be pretty flowery language.
I found it to be okay. It's worthwhile reading to get information on the HRE and a general introduction to it. Although I still find myself questioning on what legacy the HRE left behind and I think the author failed to properly show this through the text. Perhaps it was not meant to be a study on the legacy of the HRE but rather an introduction. As a result, you most likely won't get much deep analysis or lasting ideas but mainly a decent introduction to basic history like who the Franks were, how the empire became German and the rise of Prussia.
The writing isn't too captivating but it is not dreadfully boring. The chapters and sub-chapters are short enough. Sure with 160 pages you could probably read it in a week or if you're being slow, two weeks.
I usually give history books 4 stars because I'm pretty easy to please most of the time. I had to give this 3 stars because Jenkins as a writer is very dry. He doesn't really try to motivate you to read more, it's purely on you if you want to read more. As a result, it feels like a bit of a chore to get through the book. Nonetheless, it's a very solid introduction to English history although after 1714, it can start getting a bit messy with parliamentary politics and the numerous names given at once. I can say I know Chatham, Walpole, Disraeli, Gladstone and Lloyd George are important figures but I probably can't remember what they did very much.
The main theme Jenkins is trying to convey is that parliament was very much a check to the power of the king. Jenkins' writing style as a result reinforces this argument because you feel like he's talking from a place of authority.
Basically, it's informative but dry and lacks charm.
‘The Dead Past', ‘Living Space', ‘Profession', ‘The Last Trump', ‘The Last Question' and ‘Jokester' were all fantastic stories that really left you with something to think about long after you've read it.
I would give this book 4 stars but as it's more of a collection of stories rather than a one story, it doesn't seem fit to re-read the entire book again. I would definitely re-read certain stories but I would skip over others like ‘The Dying Night' which I didn't really care too much for. Probably because it was more of a murder mystery, but it is good that the book included a wide variety of genres than just sci-fi.
There were a good few religious references in the collection as well. I found it interesting how religion and sci-fi could be melded together to create a solid story. My favourite story of this theme was the ‘Last Trump' primarily because it was funny how angels and gods were apart of a bureaucracy.
I would recommend this to basically everyone unless you have some hatred of sci-fi.
I enjoyed it!
The Irish education system did a good job at looking at all of these periods but some naturally got a bigger spotlight like the 1798 Revolution and 1916 Rising. The areas I did not know about prior to reading were certainly the Vikings and Northern Ireland. I found both to be super interesting!
The main flaw of the book is that if you know the information before reading, you'll lose a lot of the charm of the book because you know what was simplified and left out. However, if you basically know bits and pieces left over from the Irish education system or just general knowledge, you'll find this book to be intriguing and great. It also has pictures on every page which is always nice to see. More maps would've been great though!
If you know nothing on the Mongol Empire, after you read this book, you'll understand a lot more about it. I'd say it's an intermediate difficult book as the author does not oversimplify complicated issues.
The book can be mostly divided between conquest, administration, civil wars and religion. Most of the time, the author is talking about one of those topics. I found the conquest and administration themes to be the best written because I find those topics to be the most interesting but the author does give each theme equal love and attention.
This was a great introduction to Romanian history. Despite being a Romanian, I had not known much of my own history, only bits and pieces from my parents.
Hitchins does a good job at looking at history overall and connecting the past and present together.
I recommend this book if you wish to understand more about Romanian history from a neutral standpoint.