Took me a while but I've finally finished Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 by Charles Emmerson. Review copied from my goodreads -

>4/5

>Rather good but unusual for a history book. The chapters go year by year and are divided by season (Autumn 1917, Summer 1919) etc. Each year gets 80-100 pages apart from 1924 which is a short (15 page in the paperback) epilogue giving the situation for each person the book focuses on in that year. The style of the book is almost present tense and chronological so like 'Moscow - Lenin arrives and starts preaching his belief in peace and bread' then 'The Western Front - The French army begins to mutiny over poor leadership and bad conditions'. The book is also heavily focused on famous individuals, some political (Lenin, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson etc), others cultural or scientific (Hemmingway, Einstein, Freud etc). This approach does the advantage of showing their story over the course of several years, such as how Hitler changed from army runner to failed putsch leader or Lenin going from political exile to Russian leader to being side lined by Stalin due to poor health. It also has the advantage of showing the political change over the course of several years and how much had changed. There is some stuff on American racial politics at the time, including famous lynchings or race riots, but it is more focused on disputes within the various American black movements (basically how much Marcus Garvey and Du Bois despised each other). Good amount of sources and select bibliography, a lot of endnotes as well but a bit hard to read (probably to save space since there is a lot of them).

>There are some downsides to the book. The style means there isn't much analysis like in a traditional history book. It is heavily focused on North America and Europe, plus Turkey (through the eyes of Mustpaha Kemal/Ataturk) and a little bit of Palestine (but the book is already 600 pages of main text plus 150 pages of notes and bibliography so fair enough). Depending on your interests some people or topics might not interest you and be very boring, I ended up basically skipping anything on Freud or the Dada artistic movement. Personally I vastly preferred the political side of things. I also found the book at times to be sort of vague on specific dates of events or names of people (For example the anti-treaty IRA assassinated a British general during the Irish nationalists peace negotiations with the UK government, but the book just refers to him as a British general instead of giving an actual name, it was Henry Wilson btw)

To clear out some space on my British history shelf and for a more casual read I am now reading Portillo's Hidden History of Britain by Michael Portillo. I am mostly done (3 chapters / 40 pages left) so this is basically my final thoughts (not copied and pasted) and I won't be mentioning it after this -

>3/5

>I either got it for free or very cheap. If you aren't British for context the author was a former prominent conservative politician in the 90s, lost his seat very suprisingly in the 1997 election, and nowadays does railway/travel/history documentaries for old people. The book was written alongside one of these documentaries which I haven't watched. The basic premise is that the author goes to somewhere attached to Britain's history, such as a prison, hospital, or military site, but is either no longer in use or is being turned into something else (like housing). He talks a bit about the history and interviews people who are either experts on the place or have a connection to it (such as a prisoner or a descendant of villagers forced out of an area as it was turned into military training site etc). Occasionally brings up his time in politics, especially in the defence themed bits, and what thoughts he brings from that.

>Overall the book is fine I guess. The writing is pretty entertaining and the areas chosen are interesting. There is nothing particularly bad about the book but it is not a must read and not worth specifically seeking out, and for create some more space I won't be keeping it.