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A list of books read in 2016 in bibliographic format.
My 2016 reading appetites continued along the historical from my 2015 Reading List but also saw a shift towards highlighting specific personalities in terms of monographs and place-based histories. Among my fascinations were Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Vikings, and a foray into Lithuanian history.
- Davis, Jefferson. 2010. The Rise of the Confederate Government. New York: Barnes & Noble. (continued from 2015)
- Howard, Billee. 2015. We-Commerce: How to Create, Collaborate, and Succeed in the Sharing Economy. New York: Perigee.
- Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
- Asbridge, Thomas. 2014. The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones. New York: HarperCollins.
- Jones, Dan. 2014. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors. New York: Penguin.
- Turner, Ralph V. 2009. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Weir, Alison. 2008. Eleanor of Aquitaine. New York: Ballantine Books.
- Lacy, Robert & Danny Danziger. 1999. The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At the Turn of the First Millennium, An Englishman’s World. London: Little, Brown and Company.
- Meade, Marion. 1991. Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography. New York: Penguin Books.
- Davis, John W. 2016. The Trial of Tom Horn. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
- Pierson, George Wilson. 1996. Tocqueville in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Trump, Donald J. 2015. Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Ballantine Books.
- Gallagher, Winifred. 2016. How the Post Office Created America. New York: Penguin Press.
- Hill, Napoleon. 2010. Think and Grow Rich: Original 1937 Classic Edition. Lexington: SoHo Books.
- Haywood, John. 2016. Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793 – 1241. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- Fried, Johannes. 2016. Charlemagne. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [translated by Peter Lewis].
- Rowell, S.C. 2014. Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Vardys, V. Stanley and Judith B. Sedaitis. 1997. Lithuania: The Rebel Nation. New York: Westview Press.
- Taylor, Alan. 2016. American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750 – 1804. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Cheney, Lynne. 2014. James Madison: A Life Reconsidered. New York: Viking Press.
- Hicks, Leonie V. 2016. A Short History of the Normans. New York: I.B Tauris.
My favourite surprise reads were: Thomas Asbridge’s The Greatest Knight and John Davis’ The Trial of Tom Horn. Both of these books came to me completely unexpected while knocking about for something entirely different. The Greatest Knight was a stupendously well-written account of the life of William Marshall of England who served 5 famous Plantagenet kings and queens. I found The Trial of Tom Horn sitting in a bookstore in Texas while visiting and it just jumped off the shelf at me. What an intense read, its story line so compelling I couldn’t put it down!
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