These are some history books I've been reading lately.
The Story of Civilization Part 11: The Age of Napoleon. I'm usually not a fan of Will Durant but this is book provides a good synopsis of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era in France. Those parts of the book make a nice little companion piece to David Chandler's "Campaigns of Napoleon". The book spreads itself too thing, though, by trying to cover every facet of Western Civilization during that period. For example, there's an entire chapter dedicated to Beethoven and several more just about poets and philosophers of the time. It's just too much to tackle in a meaningful way in just a single volume. Even the three-volume Encyclopedia of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars failed to do that. Interestingly, neither that work or this has a section about Edmund Burke. There are offhand mentions made here and there (usually portraying him as the embodiment of stuffy English opposition to the revolutionaries) but no serious examination of him like there is about the other significant English philosophers of his day. This is especially surprising from Durant given his fascination with the history of philosophy.
The Italian Wars 1494-1559. This is the book I could find covering what was essentially the first modern European conflict. It does a decent job of giving a rundown of the events without doing that gay pop-history thing of trying to be like a novel. Personally I would have liked a little more focus on the military aspect over the political but I realize that's just my own autism.
Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suliman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe. This covers roughly the same period as the Italian Wars but focuses on the lives of the titular four rulers who dominated Europe in the first half of the 16th century. Most of the figures it discusses, outside of those four, are portrayed in a rather one-dimensional way. It reminded me of the documentaries the History Channel used to air before it became all about pawnshops and aliens. Overall, it's okay I guess.
China Condensed Absolute shit. It reads like a summery of a Wikipedia article but without citing any sources and even more fabrications. It presents highly contested theories (like the Huns being the same people as the Xiongnu) and legends as facts. It's also very biased; it glorifies China as much as
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