History in Books

[Wilbur]

One of the most insightful works of historical fiction for the final days of the Roman Republic is actually the SPQR series of mysteries by John Maddox Roberts.

JMR's writing is always smooth and professional, but in this series he really plumbs to the heart of the political and personal struggles that ended the Roman Republic, highlighting the religious and mystery cult feuds, the interpersonal hatreds of different factions in the streets of Rome and Ostia, and the incestuous nature of the inter-familial relationships among the powerful families of the Senatorial class.

The sense of gritty realism and the personal stakes at risk for the individuals involved really make these books shine, and they emphasize the sense of despair and loss among the people who make the wrong choices or back the wrong players.

• SPQR (1990) (also SPQR I: The King's Gambit)
• The Catiline Conspiracy (1991)
• The Sacrilege (1992)
• The Temple of the Muses (1999)
• Saturnalia (1999)
• Nobody Loves A Centurion (2001)
• The Tribune's Curse (2003)
• The River God's Vengeance (2004)
• The Princess and the Pirates (2005)
• A Point of Law (2006)
• Under Vesuvius (2007)
• Oracle of the Dead (December 9, 2008)
• The Year of Confusion (February 16, 2010)

[SeanF]

On 8/26/2021 at 10:54 PM, Zorral said:

I thought we were mostly looking at works by authors that aren't as well known as Scott, the father of historical fiction, and Dumas, the godfather of historical fiction, or Dunnett or any of these others we all know, such as McCullough, and Penman or even Druon.  These authors come up here all the time.  So well, maybe they should be brought up again, in their own thread?    Besides, I for one would love to read from the commentators here what they particularly admire about these books, as individual readers!

I particularly liked Druon's series (far more than Dunnett whom I personally find nearly unreadable, and whose Lymond I heartily wish had gotten speared like boar in the hunt in the first book  ) for it including the 100 Hundred Years War.  Among the content that I most liked was the portrait of how early banking was emerging.  There was a bit I particularly relished, which was during a French invasion of Italy, an aristo's army got sidelined by weather.  He started reading parts of Dante's Inferno to his fellow lords, laughing so hard at some of the parts -- they knew so well who all those people were Dante put into hell, even though it was so much later, so much did they relish their fates.  I wish I had been able to see the French televised adaptation of the series. Evidently while the first adaptation in the early '70s ran it was in France like it was in England when The Jewel in The Crown was first televised by the BBC in the mid-80s.  Nobody on the streets, everybody glued to the screen.

For that matter, Paul Scott's Raj Quartet is terrific historical fiction, as is Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga -- which also kept people inside when running on the BBC the first time in the 1960s. Here in the US too, I hear, from older viewers.  When it first ran on PBS people commuting home from work would try to leave a leeetle early to be sure they were back home in time to catch that week's episode.  The same with the first Poldark series in the 1970's. adapted from Winston Graham's long series of novels.

I enjoyed Druon, too.  It's also fun to match some of the characters to characters in ASOIAF (Philip the Fair = Tywin, Isabella = Cersei, for example).  I've read Coromandel and The Deceivers by Scott, which are both good, and the Forsyte Saga.  I never shared Galsworthy's sympathy for Irene, though.

I like a lot of Allan Massie historical fiction, especially the fictional autobiography of Augustus, and Nero's Heirs.

[HoodedCrow]

Les Miserables( is not the musical )

War and Peace

The Three Musketeers

Richard the Third

 

 

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

I enjoyed Druon, too.  It's also fun to match some of the characters to characters in ASOIAF (Philip the Fair = Tywin, Isabella = Cersei, for example).  I've read Coromandel and The Deceivers by Scott, which are both good, and the Forsyte Saga.  I never shared Galsworthy's sympathy for Irene, though.

I like a lot of Allan Massie historical fiction, especially the fictional autobiography of Augustus, and Nero's Heirs.

Martin did take a lot of names from Druon, that's for sure.  

As for Galsworthy's Irene, like both Jolyons, I really liked her!  Whereas I couldn't stand Fleur -- or Soames.  I also didn't like Bosinny much either.  But I loved the aggregate of all these characters clicking and colliding, some of them reaching far back into the early decades of Victoria's endless reign.  

Thank you for mentioning Allan Massie -- a writer I'd not previously known.  His Dark Ages series looks right up my little old alley!  

[Zorral]

The Personal Librarian is an historical novel following the life of J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle Marion Greener, an  African American who passed as white.  She claimed Portuguese ancestry and changed her name -- or rather her mother did -- to Bella da Costa Greene. She spent millions, building and curating Morgan's personal library on Madison Ave., making its contents and collections among the most coherent, organized, and most valuable in the world. She became part of the semi-boho, very well-heeled, thanks usually to daddy's money, cohorts of artists, intellectuals and suffragettes of the time, as well as the more staid and stuffy of the Gilded Age in NYC, worked through WWI, the Roaring 20's and WWII.  She was acclaimed for her wit and flamboyance, as well as her hard-headed negotiation and deal making in the art world, confined back then nearly exclusively to the wealthy and powerful.  Along the way she and Bernard Berenson became lovers.  The authors speculate within this fiction that perhaps among the mutual attractions is that both of them, traveling as they did in these very racist, anti-semitic wealthy and influential circles, had to carefully at all times conceal their 'other' identity.

The book is co-authored by African American author, Victoria Christopher Murray, and white litigator, Marie Benedict.

I first encountered Bella da Costa Greene in Ron Chernow's The House of Morgan: An American Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990).  I thought then, "What a good historical fiction this would make!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

China (2021) by Edward Rutherford.  What an authorial journey, from Sarum's (199) Stonehenge (which I've not read) to 19th C China's opium wars, Taiping Revolt, Boxer Rebellion (meaning, rebelling against Brit occupation and overlordship) Manchu overthrow

Coincidentally. today,, the history, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021) by Mae M Ngai arrived.  This is an excellent companion to the television series of Chinese in in San Francisco in the 1970's, Warrior, currently available on HBO.

[Zorral]

Holy cow -- somebody I don't even know -- though I do know his name, I've never even met the person -- sent me a copy of the massive, annotated, mapped, appendiced and encyclopedic indexed The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (2007), edited by Robert B. Strassler.  It's so big it's too heavy to hold. It has to rest on a lap desk or some other support. A serious research resource.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Zorral

[JGP]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

Holy cow -- somebody I don't even know -- though I do know his name, I've never even met the person -- sent me a copy of the massive, annotated, mapped, appendiced and encyclopedic indexed The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (2007), edited by Robert B. Strassler.  It's so big it's too heavy to hold. It has to rest on a lap desk or some other support. A serious research resource.

I got that badboy, though my copy of The Oxford Classical Dictionary is bigger. 

---

 

Has anyone heard anything about what may be going on in the publishing world? Haven't really dug into it, but over the last few days on twitter been seeing a lot of authors talking about the scale back in print publishing, the increased importance of preorders, etc

 

 

[Zorral]

14 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I got that badboy, though my copy of The Oxford Classical Dictionary is bigger. 

That's ... BIG!  What's the font size like in the Dictionary?  They went for readable size font for Herodotus rather than cut back on pages.  Thank goodness, otherwise I wouldn't be able to use it.

I have read Herodotus's Histories -- or at least a lot of them.  I don't imagine I've read his work in full.  Have you seen Travels with Herodotus (2004) by the Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuściński?

 

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by Zorral

[JGP]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

That's ... BIG!  What's the font size like in the Dictionary?  They went for readable size font for Herodotus rather than cut back on pages.  Thank goodness, otherwise I wouldn't be able to use it.

Font size on the Dictionary is very small. Lemme see... Looks like subject headers are 12, but contents are comme ca [11] 1640 pages

 

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I have read Herodotus's Histories -- or at least a lot of them.  I don't imagine I've read his work in full.  Have you seen Travels with Herodotus (2004) by the Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuściński?

No, I have not. Is it good?

 

[JGP]

9 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I haven't been hearing the rumors. But all the writers I'm in personal contact with these days are pretty much historians of one sort and another, so that operates rather differently than commercial fiction.  OTOH, pre-orders have been important for all books pretty much for years now. 

The real problems I've been hearing about all through pandemic is jam-ups, chokes, in production of the physical books due to paper shortages and printing factories.

Yeah ok, that makes sense.

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Is it good?

Yes, even if one isn't familiar with or care about Herodotus! The author is so good.  All his work is worth reading.  But this one focuses on his experiences with Herodotus in the places he studied and chased his reportage. He never traveled without the Histories.

 

[JGP]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Yes, even if one isn't familiar with or care about Herodotus! The author is so good.  All his work is worth reading.  But this one focuses on his experiences with Herodotus in the places he studied and chased his reportage. He never traveled without the Histories.

Cool, I'll definitely check it out!

I know it's more mythological in nature, but I feel the same way about the gorgeous writing and observations within Roberto Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. It's beautiful, insightfully interpreted, and riddled with humor and snark. Definitely my most treasured non-fiction book, by a wide margin

 

edit: although Courtesans and Fishcakes by James Davidson isn't that far behind it, I suppose.

Edited September 13, 2021 by JEORDHl

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

Cool, I'll definitely check it out!

I know it's more mythological in nature, but I feel the same way about the gorgeous writing and observations within Roberto Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. It's beautiful, insightfully interpreted, and riddled with humor and snark. Definitely my most treasured non-fiction book, by a wide margin

 

edit: although Courtesans and Fishcakes by James Davidson isn't that far behind it, I suppose.

I will check out Davidson for sure.  Thank you.

 

[LongRider]

On 8/27/2021 at 2:39 PM, Wilbur said:

One of the most insightful works of historical fiction for the final days of the Roman Republic is actually the SPQR series of mysteries by John Maddox Roberts.

Sounds interesting, might have to give these a go.  Thanks!

[LongRider]

On 9/25/2021 at 8:08 PM, LongRider said:

Sounds interesting, might have to give these a go.  Thanks!

My library has nothing!     

[Wilbur]

13 hours ago, LongRider said:

My library has nothing!     

Does your library participate in ILL (inter-library loan)?  That used to be my go-to move, to talk to the librarian and ask him or her to make requests for my library to collect a copy from some other library.  Now I use the Overdrive function more often than not if my library does not have a physical copy.

Otherwise online sellers have used SPQRs for five bucks or less at the usual suspects - Hippo, Thriftbooks, Worldofbooks, BetterWorldBooks, etc.  Once in a while these online booksellers will also include a book I didn't specifically order in my package, and these bonus books usually turn out to be pretty good.

[Zorral]

It's been a whole other experience reading Mae Ngai's The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics in tandem with Brit popular author Edward Rutherford's China, as the events in the novel are parallel to the history that's told in Mae Nagai's research. Seeing the same characters referenced has been particularly striking, in one as documentary history and the other as fiction.

Additionally so soon after watching Warrior on HBO. Some of the same elements are explored here, in one of the few USian popular entertainments depicting this community, back in the day, of the 1958 Broadway musical, and the 1961 film, Flower Drum Song.  One of the most significant elements is that the frst Chinese, and many others, did not come here as "coolies" or indentured labor, but as organized actors to make money in various ways -- not just the gold fields, or working on the construction of the transcontinental railroad lines, washing clothes etc. The Flower Drum Song characters were descendants of those first settlers.

This tended to work out differently in some ways in Australian and South Africa though, but in all of them, the racism was a constant pressure, to repress 'respectability' and thus to push into criminal activity -- and not allow them to compete for the strikes' gold with 'white' people.  All of it conscious tools of the European and US colonial powers to dominate China the nation and its resources.  Hmm, where else have we seen this process going on?

Edited September 28, 2021 by Zorral

[DireWolfSpirit]

My sister gifted me a copy of Jimmy Carter's historical fiction story of the Revolutionary War.

The Hornet's Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War is a 2003 novel by Jimmy Carter. It features the American Revolutionary War as fought in the Deep South, and is the first fictional publication by any president of the United States. ^[1]

^endquote

^{The interesting feature for me was that Carter did all the illustrations, plus as the above mentions, it's the first fictional publication by any President of the U.S.}

[Zorral]

I read that, when it came out.  It seemed ... though the information was good to have, Carter is not as good at writing fiction as he is at building habitats for humanity!

[HoodedCrow]

Thanks, my kindle has lots of samples:) I also liked the SPQR series, but I gave away most of my books. 

I recommended Edward Rutherford’s London to someone who was visiting London. I thought it would be good to get some history in there so as to understand better what she was seeing. Also, I praised the style as suitable for being read while jet lagged, changing airports…Hilary Mantel, not so much.