The Reading Room

Ian Kershaw - 2015 This is my take on a work by one of my favourite authors and historians, Ian Kershaw. Well researched, well structured, and as always eminently readable, Kershaw is someone who brings the reader in to share a journey of discovery, of fact, and of new and interesting dimensions on periods of modern history which we often think we know intimately, until we accept his navigation to enter the room and pull up a chair. This isn’t a review as such, but rather a brief journey through this book, with my digressions as thoughts float into view like paper boats on a stream. At the end I’ll make a recommendation as to whether, and why, you should buy it if you’re so inclined. In ten chapters, Ian Kershaw paints a picture of the world, and of human lives, in the first half of the 20th Century. He describes the events which, at each turn, shaped and influenced the following course. In ‘To Hell and Back’ , subtitled "Europe 1914 - 1949", Kershaw examines a group...