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Simon Schama

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Sir Simon Michael Schama CBE FBA FRSL is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, New York. He first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989.
26 books on the list
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Enemies and Neighbors book cover
Enemies and Neighbors
Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
Ian Black - 2018-10-16
Simon Schama
2023-01-23T09:36:33.000Z
Deeply sorry to hear of Ian's tragically early death. His middle east books especially Enemies and Neighbours will endure as essential reading ; he was a lovely man as well as a brilliant writer      source
Seven Types of Ambiguity book cover
Seven Types of Ambiguity
William Empson - 1966-01-17 (first published in 1930)
Goodreads Rating
Revised twice since it first appeared, it has remained one of the most widely read and quoted works of literary analysis. Ambiguity, according to Empson, includes "any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language." From this definition, broad enough by his own admission sometimes to see "st...
Simon Schama
2022-12-09T10:24:38.000Z
a very great book - big influence on the teenage me      source
All That She Carried book cover
All That She Carried
The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles - 2022-02-01 (first published in 2021)
Goodreads Rating
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives. KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST - ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Publishers Weekly - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS...
Simon Schama
2022-12-08T10:55:54.000Z
phenomenal book      source
Little Dorrit book cover
Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens - 2012-05-16 (first published in 1857)
Goodreads Rating
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery....
Simon Schama
2022-10-06T20:47:58.000Z
@MarBenCel1 Little Dorrit's opening and closing are astonishing - unlike anything else in his books I think - more like Hugo or even Zola.. architecture is a character in its own right as it is so often w Hugo. Miss Wade a riveting character.      source
Cocktails with a Curator book cover
Cocktails with a Curator
Xavier F. Salomon - 2022-10-11
Join the curators of the Frick as they present engaging histories of works of art paired with creatively inspired cocktails--a crash course in art history and a delightful introduction to the treasures of the esteemed New York collection.Based on the critically acclaimed video series of the same name, Cocktails with a Curator is a collection of liv...
Simon Schama
2022-10-06T20:36:01.000Z
here's a lovely thing - just arrived - book form ( w brief foreword by me) of weekly talks during Covid lovkdown by brilliant ⁦@frickcollection⁩ curators on masterpieces from the collection plus matching cocktails. A saver of sanity; weekly glass of learned pleasure.      source
The Mirror & the Light book cover
The Mirror & the Light
Hilary Mantel - 2020-03-10
Goodreads Rating
“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his c...
Simon Schama
2022-09-23T14:12:12.000Z
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel — ‘majestic and poetic’ my tribute to this very great book and its author      source
Partition Voices book cover
Partition Voices
Updated for the 75th anniversary of partition
Kavita Puri - 2019-07-11
Goodreads Rating
Dotted across homes in Britain are people who were witnesses to one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Yet their memory of India's partition has been shrouded in silence. Kavita Puri's father was twelve when he found himself one of the millions of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims caught up in the devastating aftermath of a hastily dra...
Simon Schama
2022-07-21T08:32:54.000Z
ditto - absolutely wonderful book about a deeply tragic moment      source
God's Chinese Son book cover
God's Chinese Son
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
Jonathan D. Spence - 1996-12-17
Goodreads Rating
Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuqua...
Simon Schama
2021-12-28T13:48:37.000Z
Another of Jonathan Spence's extraordinary books was God's Chinese Son, his history of the Taiping Rebellion - no one can really claim they know the 19th century unless they have understood this epic upheaval that took millions of lives.      source
The Ants book cover
The Ants
Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson - 1990-03-28
Goodreads Rating
View a collection of videos on Professor Wilson entitled "On the Relation of Science and the Humanities"This landmark work, the distillation of a lifetime of research by the world's leading myrmecologists, is a thoroughgoing survey of one of the largest and most diverse groups of animals on the planet. HOlldobler and Wilson review in exhaustive det...
Simon Schama
2021-12-27T17:28:33.000Z
The Ants (1990) is an astonishing book; absolutely gripping and confounding - however much you think that entomology isnt your thing, it will be,, I promise. It's a huge book about amazing creatures. And Ed Wilson was a lovely committee colleague at Harvard when I was there.      source
Persuasion book cover
Persuasion
The Complete Novel, Featuring the Characters' Letters and Papers, Written and Folded by Hand
Jane Austen, Barbara Heller - 2022-10-04
Goodreads Rating
This special edition invites fans inside the world of Anne Elliot. It includes the full text of Persuasion, plus gorgeous, removable replicas of the characters' letters and other paper ephemera.Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot remains one of the literature's most unforgettable confessions. It is the jewel at the heart of Persuasion, Jane A...
Simon Schama
2021-09-25T03:08:27.000Z
@CassCookson the book is so wonderful - autumnal, stained with sorrowing regret, intense with its quietness .. makes Emma look lurid and contrived by comparison and P n P too stagey      source
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Napoleon book cover
Napoleon
Ruth Scurr - 2021-06-15
Albert and the Whale by Philip Hoare
Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel
Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
James Joyce and Italo Svevo by Stanley Price
Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
The Armada by Garrett Mattingly
The Sea Around Us by Rachel L. Carson
American Scripture by Pauline Maier
Empire and Information by C. A. Bayly
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan D. Spence
The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan by Vartan Gregorian
A Certain World by W. H. Auden