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Nathaniel's Nutmeg |
This tells the story of the spice trade in the 16th century and the desperate race between the Dutch and English to control the Spice Islands. It makes for a gripping tale - lots of grisly detail about the awful punishments that were doled out on board ship and the hardships the sailors had to endure, assuming they survived the journey. I'll never take a jar of nutmeg for granted again.
(Caroline Winstanley - bwl 15 October 2002) |
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Paradise Lost - Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance |
Giles Milton is an historian gifted with the common touch and in this account, which he unfolds through the memories of the survivors, he brings vividly to life the terrible fate that was inflicted in 1922 on Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. I found it almost unbearably harrowing and heartbreaking, not a book for the faint hearted.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 50 March 2009) |
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Samurai William - The Adventurer who Unlocked Japan |
This is a swash-buckling tale of derring-do. In 1611, spurred on by a letter to London merchants from an English mariner who had been marooned in Japan for more than ten years, seven adventurers were dispatched to find him and use his skills to exploit the riches of this forbidden country. But when they arrived, they found he had gone native. Fantastic research, page-turning writing, absolutely my sort of book.
(Tony May - bwl 27 December 2004) |
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Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan |
William Adams washed up in Japan aboard a disease-ridden and semi-derelict Dutch ship. However, being both resourceful and adaptable, he took to this strange and fabled new world and soon found himself being used as a powerful counter-weight to the influential Portuguese Catholics. Too valuable to lose, he became advisor, samurai and window on the outside world, eventually assisting with an embryonic English Trading Factory whose records provide much of the detail to this fascinating history.
(Clive Yelf - bwl 71 Winter 2014) |
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