The best books on the Crimean War

“The white queen is coming”. In April of 1891, May French-Sheldon—a 44-year-old, white American woman—left her husband back in London while she set out to “conquer” Africa at the head of an expedition of 140 African porters dressed in a ballgown of white silk topped with a tiara and waist-length blonde wig, carrying a whip coiled at her back, two hip pistols, a ceremonial sword, and an alpine staff from which flew a banner emblazoned with the Latin phrase: “noli me tangere” (“touch me not”).

After four months exploring the lakes at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, this flamboyant Victorian-era traveler returned to publish a narrative of her travels in East Africa from “sultan to sultan” illustrating the effectiveness of what she deemed a “womanly” form of (less violent) colonial conquest.

A hostage incident becomes critical. Police negotiations have failed. The potential for violence has escalated. London Police Constable Brian Davies, a well-trained and experienced officer, discharges his firearm and rescues the victim, but the aftermath of his action seems unending. A life was saved, but some in authority doubt the propriety of PC Davies’ response. While the victim seeks healing from her harrowing encounter, PC Davies finds himself at the mercy of the British judicial process. As one reviewer commented, “There’s more than one hostage in this book.”

A treat for Anglophiles, this legal and forensic drama is the concluding novel in The Witness trilogy.

During the mid-eighteenth century, Britain and her North American colonies were embroiled in bitter and protracted fighting with French Canada and its Native American allies. In 1759, when this ‘French and Indian War’ was at its height, the celebrated New England ‘ranger’ Major Robert Rogers was sent on a hazardous mission far behind enemy lines to destroy the village of St Francis, home of the implacably hostile Abenaki tribe.

Rogers executed his orders with ruthless zeal but was obliged to make a punishing retreat through hostile territory during which he and his men suffered terrible hardships before reaching safety. The ‘St Francis Raid’ made Rogers a hero among his countrymen, but the Abenaki remembered him very differently, as the ‘White Devil’. Providing a detailed narrative of the attack on St Francis and its aftermath, ‘White Devil’ also aims to put that episode into context by exploring the conflicting frontier societies and the savage irregular warfare that evolved in response to a backwoods environment. Based upon archival research, it seeks to give a lively, balanced, and nuanced account of an episode that remains controversial today. 

Poor Odin only just started existing and already has a Universe to decorate, a smug Tree to ignore, and two competitive brothers who think they’d make better All-Fathers. His wife, who knows the future, won’t tell him a word because of his cheating, which he hasn’t even invented yet. Horrible things such as celery, mosquitoes, Loki’s dubious sense of humour, and people keep happening at him. The esteemed egg whisk and highly regarded feather duster? Not so much. There are only two sensible things the All-Father can do: 1) hang from the judgy Tree for nine days with a spear through his side and 2) drink from the Well of Wisdom, whose guardian, Sir Daddy Mímir, likes one-of-a-kind gifts. In his head, Odin’s idea seems wise…

The majority of the original wetlands in the US have vanished, transformed into farm fields, or buried under city streets. The Marsh Builders delves into the intertwined histories of wetlands loss and water pollution. 

The book’s springboard is the tale of a citizen uprising in Humboldt County, California, which led to the creation of one of the first US wetlands designed to treat city sewage. The book explores the global roots of this local story: the cholera epidemics that plagued 19th-century Europe; the researchers who invented modern sewage treatment after bumbling across the insight that microbes break down contaminants in water; the discovery that wetlands act as powerful filters for the pollution unleashed by modern humanity.

In Wounded, Emily Mayhew tells the history of the Western Front from a new perspective: the medical network that arose seemingly overnight to help sick and injured soldiers. The number of soldiers wounded in World War I is, in itself, devastating: over 21 million military wounded, and nearly 10 million killed. On the battlefield, the injuries were shocking, unlike anything those in the medical field had ever witnessed. The bullets hit fast and hard, went deep, and took bits of dirty uniform and airborne soil particles in with them. Soldier after soldier came in with the most dreaded kinds of casualty: awful, deep, ragged wounds to their heads, faces, and abdomens. And yet the medical personnel faced with these unimaginable injuries adapted with amazing aptitude, thinking and reacting on their feet to save millions of lives.

The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg’s starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture, which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy, health, individuality, religion, and sexuality. Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, medieval steam baths, castles and tenements, and in bathrooms of every description.

Filled with amusing and sometimes startling anecdotes, The Dirt on Clean takes us on a journey that is not always for the squeamish. And there’s no reason to feel superior to our less than pristine ancestors: our modern understanding of “clean" is no more rational and in some ways more dangerous than those that came before us. Ashenburg’s tour of history’s baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves — what we desire, what we ignore, what we fear, and a significant part of what we are.

In 1862 London, the body of a famous surgeon is found in an old operating theatre. The bookish Inspector Slaughter must discover the killer with help from Nightingale nurses, surgeon's dressers, devious apothecaries, and even stage actors in a world where anesthesia is new, working-class audiences enjoy Shakespeare, and women reformers solve society's problems.

Before Margaret died in 1952 at the age of 42, she had published almost one hundred children’s books. Many may recognize the titles of her books such as Goodnight Moon or The Big Red Barn, but most don’t know that Margaret was a leading figure in a children’s literature revolution. Fairy tales and fables were often part of the school curriculum in the 1930s, which served to reinforce diminished roles for girls and violence as a way to resolve conflicts. As part of a movement to create more “democratic” literature for children, Margaret studied what caught a child’s attention, then wrote stories and poems that reflected a child’s own world.

No one in history has provoked more controversy than Napoleon Bonaparte. Two centuries after his death those who love or hate him still debate his legacy. Was he an enlightened ruler or brutal tyrant? Was he an insatiable warmonger or a defender of France against the aggression of the other great powers, especially Britain and Austria? He remains fascinating both because he so dramatically changed the course of history and had such a complex, paradoxical character.

If the art of power is about getting what one wants, then Napoleon was among history’s greatest masters. He understood and asserted the dynamic relationship among military, economic, diplomatic, technological, cultural, psychological, and thus political power. No previous book has explored deeper or broader into his seething labyrinth of a mind.