Andrew Dunn

And so he should, given the scale of the fraud perpetrated on the 99% by the criminal propertied classes and their lackeys in government. If you like Chris Hedges, read Salon and don't pronounce the word as 'gubmint', then this could be the book for you.

Like most people, I didn't really have a clear idea exactly *why* Europe went to war in August of 1914, and why it took 4 long years to arrive at a peace. I left Meyer's book with a much better understanding of the factors and personalities that led the world into the meat grinder of the Great War.

The book is a bit too detailed in places, in terms of the military history and strategic wartime decision-making, and perhaps a bit light on the effects of war on the non-fighting people in the belligerent countries, but it's a minor quibble, and this is an excellent book.

The reader can be a little dry-sounding and dull, but he generally does well with the material. there's a few obvious audio-patches where the tone of voice changes mid-sentence or mid-para, but nothing too jarring.

I've read quite a lot about WWII and the Holocaust, but this book really bought home the scale of the industrial murder that took place between the Elbe and the Vistula and between 1933 and 1945. Snyder doesn't need to make trite comparisons between Stalinist and Hitlerian atrocities - he lets the crimes and the victims speak for themselves, and the result is a valuable and humane book that should be compulsory reading for our current crop of gung-ho intellectual pygmy leaders, keen to repeat the same mistakes in our supposedly more enlightened times.

This is the middle book in the Pax Britannica trilogy and deals with the events around the 1897 Diamond Jubilee of Victoria. Morris goes into great detail about pretty much every aspect of the Empire, which was by then at it's apogee. I preferred Vol 1, which was a bit faster-paced, and am into Vol 3 at the moment, though we're still mired in the fin de siecle.

Jan Morris is old-school - there's not the overwrought apologist tone that colours much modern history on the British empire and it's myriad crimes and misdemeanors. She trusts that we, the readers, know that Imperialism isn't justifiable, but she refuses to judge the Imperialists by our moral standards, and in my view she sets the right tone by this approach.

I'd recommend the trilogy, which is well-written, well read (in both senses) and entertainingly informative.

Witty, knowledgable, dated

The way Jan Morris manages to thematically describe the British Empire without it seeming as if she has shoe-horned events to fit her thesis, that the Empire changed, in purpose and intent, during the long reign of Victoria.

He reads well. I quibble with some of the pronunciation (''Métis" is pronounced 'may-tee', not 'metiss'), but he does well with the text, including the copious footnotes.

The book was written in the 60s and early 70s, and the attitudes and language used perhaps reflects that, but Jan Morris was and is an expert writer, and her wit and wisdom make the occasional unreconstructed imperialist tone forgivable

The scope and scholarship, coupled with the readability and gripping prose.

It was accessible without being dumbed-down

Pacing, gravitas and colour

A good accompaniment to Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder

Somebody who doesn't mind following Amis on a one-way journey up his own arse

Something not by Amis

He does well with the characterisation

Amis/Nearing, all the other ones

Really, really poor book. Impossibly louche characters used as a vehicle for Amis' own imaginary recollections of his youth, and to reinforce his own particular prejudices. A mean-spirited little book, too. Awful. It was my nth attempt at an Amis Jr., and has forever cured me of the impression that he has something to offer.