history

Those Absent, by Jill Culiner @JillCuliner #history #memoir #JewishHistory #Hungary #RuralVillage

February 26, 2024 by Adriana Kraft

In 1999, I was in Budapest, preparing a photographic exhibition about the vanished Jews of Eastern Europe, when I heard about the Kunmadaras pogrom: In May 1946, Holocaust survivors were accused of kidnapping Christian children and using their blood for kosher sausage. Grabbing iron bars, garden tools, any weapon they could find, the town’s residents went on a rampage, murdering Jews and pillaging their homes and businesses

How could such an absurd accusation have been levelled after the war? I was determined to discover the answer.

When I arrived in Kunmadaras, I was accepted by a group of friendly locals who hung around the local watering hole run by blowsy Ildikó — Tarzan, the black marketer and corrupt night watchman, Udo, the Austrian who preferred Hungarian women to his wife, Kata, the eternal party girl, hard-drinking Karcsi, and the brutal Ibolya. And although no one seemed to resent my questioning, all denied having any knowledge of the pogrom.

Settling in the neighbouring village of Tiszaörs, I soon discovered that village society was a unique but uneasy mix of former communists, dispossessed nobles, expropriated peasants, German retirees, black marketers, former members of the Hitler Youth Movement, and Hungarians who had returned after communism ended.

I began looking for traces of the vanished local Jewish community. And I discovered that, although Jews had lived here for hundreds of years and had arrived in the country alongside the Magyar tribes in the 9^th century, the villagers denied their existence. Therefore, I became more determined to question, listen, observe, to ferret out the truth about the pogrom and the Jews who were so strikingly absent.

Living on the Hungarian Great Plain was a remarkable experience, and carrying out an investigation, much as an amateur detective would, allowed me to step into the country’s history. Therefore, Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain is a blend of history, traditions, local happenings, rumour, love stories, and prejudices. And I hope I have portrayed, with empathy, people who, often caught in political conflicts, are pawns in a global one.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xa1aiVkiT4

Purchase links: https://books2read.com/GreatPlain

BLURB

Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain

A Hungarian village on the Great Plain: a microcosm reflecting this country’s history from early tribal invasion, to Soviet subordination, to European Community membership. Here, peasants, herders, party girls, former nazis and lapsed communists share gossip as well as love stories; and unscrupulous leaders, totalitarian or freely elected, decide behaviour. And while fully embracing the new consumer society, there remains one constant: hatred of the long-vanished rural Jew.

Author Bio

Born in New York, raised in Toronto, Jill Culiner, writer, social critical artist, and photographer has spent most of her life in France, England, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Holland, and North Africa. Her photographic exhibition about the First and Second World Wars, La Mémoire Effacée, toured France, Canada, and Hungary under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNESCO. Her non-fiction, Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers won the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History and was shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Award. Her biography of a nineteenth-century rebel Yiddish poet and singer, A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard, was published by Claret Press in 2022.

She presently lives in a 400-year-old inn in France that is so chaotic and strange, it has been classified as a museum. (http://www.jill-culiner.com)

Author links: https://linktr.ee/jillculiner
Web site: https://www.jillculiner-writer.com
Blog: https://jewish-histories.over-blog.com
Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner

On Tour: How to Dress like a Tudor, by Judith Arnopp @JudithArnopp #HistoricalCostume #TudorFashion #Tudors #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn

December 5, 2023 by Adriana Kraft

BOOK INFORMATION

Book Title: How to Dress Like a Tudor
Author: Judith Arnopp
Publication Date: September 2023
Publisher: Pen and Sword Books
Page Length: 224
Genre: Historical Non-Fiction

Blurb:

Have you ever hankered to dress like a Tudor lord or lady, or perhaps you prefer the status of goodwife, or costermonger, or even a bawd?

For beginner historical reenactors, the path to authenticity can be bewildering and sometimes intimidating. Judith Arnopp uses her own experience, both as a historian and a medieval/Tudor lady, to make your own journey a little easier.

The author traces the transition of fashion from the relatively subtle styles popular at the court of Henry VII, through the carefully constructed royal grandeur of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I to the pinnacle of majesty and splendid iconography of Elizabeth I.

In contrast to the magnificence of court come the ordinary folk who, subject to sumptuary laws and regulations, wore garments of a simpler cut and cloth – a strata of society that formed the back bone of Tudor England.

This brief history of 16th century fashion examines clothing for both rich and poor, adult and child, and offers tips and tricks on how to begin to sew your first historically inspired garment. This book is aimed at helping the beginner learn How to Dress like a Tudor.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: mybook.to/howtodress

Author Bio:

Judith writes historical fiction set during the late medieval and Tudor period. Her usual focus is on the women who lived close to the monarch, women like Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York and Mary Tudor but more recently has been writing from the perspective of Henry VIII himself. Her books are on Kindle, Audible and Paperback.

You can find her fiction books here: http://author.to/juditharnoppbooks

She also writes non-fiction, her work featuring in many anthologies and online magazines.

Her latest non-fiction, How to Dress like a Tudor published by Pen & Sword Books is available now.

Judith is a founder member of a reenactment group, The Fyne Company of Cambria, and began making Tudor costumes for herself, her husband, John, and other members of the group. It was this that inspired How to Dress like a Tudor and she hopes to write more non-fiction Tudor history in the future.

Author Links:

Website: http://www.judithmarnopp.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudithArnopp

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetudorworldofjuditharnopp

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/judith-arnopp-ba999025

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tudor_juditharnopp/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jarnopp.bsky.social

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/judith-arnopp

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Judith-Arnopp/e/B003CGLWLA/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4088659.Judith_Arnopp

#MustRead for #4thOfJuly – Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Ron Chernow, Diana Rubino, and Piper Huguley #IndependenceDay #FourthOfJuly #OurHistory #NeverForget #MFRWAuthors

July 4, 2023 by Adriana Kraft

If you’re an American, take a moment today to ponder how we got here. The American Revolution was a complex web of motivations, alliances, happenstance, luck, hard work, and some would say divine providence.

If you only ever read three books to deepen your understanding, here is what I recommend:

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy

Freedom or death. This is how much it mattered to the colonists who chose to take up this battle and fight the great British Empire. But they were bit players on a far larger stage, where British victory was a foregone conclusion and the gnat annoying England was of little consequence. The Men Who Lost America takes us behind the scenes across the pond, giving us an in depth (and highly readable) exploration of the British leaders, their motivations, their history, and the forces and intrigues that drove them.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow is perhaps more famous for his spectacular biography of Alexander Hamilton, a major source for the enormously successful musical Hamilton. He brings those same skills to this portrait of our Revolutionary War Commander and our first president. We view the inner man through direct quotations – “My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings,” – examine the context and forces that shaped him, and follow his emergence from the bumbling colonial soldier who made mistakes in the French and Indian War to the competent general and leader who won the revolution and the hearts of the people.

Oney: My Escape From Slavery by Diana Rubino and Piper Huguley

Any effort to comprehend the events of July 4 1776 would be incomplete without addressing the great stain upon our history of liberty and freedom – slavery. Until I ran across this book by historical romance author Diana Rubino and Afro American historical author Piper Huguley, I had never considered how the “Father of our Country” might have treated his slaves. Together this pair of talented authors have created a believable, authentic voice for Oney Judge, the young woman whose position as a household slave to Martha Washington was viewed as one of privilege – privilege, that is, for everything but liberty.

My Review: Code Girls, by Liza Mundy @lizamundy #WWII #WomensHistory #Review #KU

November 19, 2022 by Adriana Kraft

Code Girls, by Liza Mundy, is the third book in my current series of book reviews featuring the role of women in the WWII Allied victory. The first two books – The Atomic City Girls, and Daughters of the Night Sky – are historical fiction based very closely on actual events and characters.

Code Girls is not fiction, even though through most of its pages it reads as smoothly and dramatically as any novel. Following interviews with more than twenty participants and years of meticulous research, much of the data having spent decades as classified and unavailable, Liza Mundy has crafted the story of over 10,000 American women, most freshly out of college, who secretly worked during the war to break the German and Japanese military codes. These women saved thousands of lives and in no small part helped to bring down first Germany, and then Japan.

They – and their superiors – could tell no one about it for decades.

In November, 1941, letters began going out to select women who were seniors at several of the nation’s elite colleges. The letters invited the women to an interview, where the questions simply were whether they liked crossword puzzles and if they were engaged to be married. If they answered appropriately, they were invited to further meetings where they learned about “cryptanalysis” and were told never to utter that word to anyone else. They entered on-campus training in code breaking – again, about which they could tell no one, not even family members. Those who passed the rigorous training were the earliest recruits to facilities being readied for them in Washington, D.C., by both the Navy and the Army.

Over the ensuing years, recruitment criteria broadened, but secrecy, the ability to identify patterns, and having a bright mind remained paramount. Mundy’s account traces the initial American codebreaking developments between the wars, then proceeds through the war years chronologically. By weaving together historical data and material from her interviews, she provides a window into the mundane as well as the dramatic. We learn what interaction was like in the cramped working quarters; how the women were treated by outsiders – who could never know how technical and important their work was – how they spent their relatively few free hours; and, for many of them, how their lives unfolded after the war.

Most of them remained unacknowledged and unsung for the rest of their lives. Some family members never learned what a mother – an aunt – a grandmother – had accomplished, how many ships were sunk because the Navy “happened” to be in the right place at the right time, due to intelligence provided by the codebreakers.

I found this book to be both informative and very engaging, and I highly recommend it.

BUY LINK

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316439894/

Code Girls is available exclusively at Amazon
and is currently on Kindle Unlimited

#Review: 1066 Turned Upside Down #HistoricalFiction #Midieval #BattleofHastings @AnnieWHistory @HelenHollick

October 16, 2022 by Adriana Kraft

On my side of the pond, the history lessons I grew up with were woefully inadequate when it came to England. My college Western Civ history began with the Renaissance, as though nothing that came before either was known or would have mattered. I knew nothing about the Norman Conquest or the tribes and kingdoms that had preceded it across the British Isles.

I’ve been filling this gap in the last few years with marvelous history and historical fiction by, among others, Annie Whitehead and Helen Hollick. Annie Whitehead’s Alvar the Kingmaker, suspenseful and rich with cultural details, brings us up to the accession of Æthelred the Unready (978-1016). And Æthelred’s second wife, Queen Emma (984-1052), comes alive in Helen Hollick’s engaging The Forever Queen. It is Emma’s son, Edward the Confessor, whose lack of offspring sets the stage for the Norman invasion of 1066 – and it is Emma’s grand nephew, William the Conqueror, who ultimately won the Battle of Hastings, now being turned upside down in fiction.

So I was intrigued a while back as I scrolled through my morning Triberr posts to discover the title 1066 Turned Upside Down, then further thrilled to realize I was familiar with some of its authors. It takes a special talent to make history come alive, and the nine authors who’ve contributed to this work have succeeded marvelously.

The book is organized chronologically and examines nine turning points in the autumn of 1066, any one of which could easily have led to a different outcome. Each chapter creates a compelling narrative of that different outcome and its consequences.

The stories make great reading, and I was struck that they would be an excellent resource for middle school or high school students to soak up the history that hangs by a thread. But they are also delightful reading at any age. The players were already familiar to me though my earlier reading, and I was entertained and intrigued to explore their actions and motivations at each twist of the story.

Amazon Buy Link:

https://amazon.com/1066-Turned-Upside-Down-Alternative-ebook/dp/B01I1V7G42/

With a forward by C. C. Humphreys, the book brings us stories by the following authors: