May HistoryCAT: Dynasties, Civilizations, and Empires

This month we have a topic allowing us to sample from the entire sweep of the historical record.

Dynasties

Ruling families, usually imperial or royal, but I think political dynasties like the Bushes or Kennedys would count too. (Or if you REALLY want to stretch the definition, there's always sports dynasties.) Some options to get you started:

FICTION



Becoming Marie Antoinette - Juliette Grey
Empress Orchid - Anchee Min
Fire From Heaven - Mary Renault
The First Princess of Wales - Karen Harper
The Heretic Queen - Michelle Moran
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Imperial Woman - Pearl Buck
Jahanara: Princess of Princesses - Kathryn Lasky
Kaiulani: The People's Princess - Ellen Emerson White
Lord of the Two Lands - Judith Tarr
Ramses: The Son of Light - Christian Jacq
The Secret Wife of King George IV - Diane Haeger

NONFICTION



American Dynasty - Kevin Phillips
Four Queens - Nancy Goldstone
The Habsburgs: To Rule the World - Martyn Rady
Princes at War - Deborah Cadbury
The Romanov Sisters - Helen Rappaport
The Warrior Queens - Antonia Fraser

Civilizations

Per Wikipedia, "A civilization is any complex society that is characterized by urban development, social stratification, a form of government, and symbolic systems of communication." That sure narrows it down!

FICTION



The Pericles Commission - Gary Corby
Pillar of Fire - Judith Tarr
Servant of the Underworld - Aliette de Bodard
The Sword Dancer - Jeannie Lin

NONFICTION



1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed - by Eric H. Cline
Ancient Athens on Five Drachmas a Day - Philip Matyszak
Carthage Must Be Destroyed - by Richard Miles
Lords of the Sea - John R. Hale

Empires

Frankly, I found it hard to define exactly where to draw the line between civilizations and empires in putting together this list, since empires happen when civilizations turn to conquest, as they so very often do.

FICTION



The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Roma - Stephen Saylor
Sharpe's Tiger - Bernard Cornwell
Silver Pigs - Lindsey Davis

NONFICTION



African Dominion - Michael Gomez
Edge of Empire - Maya Jasanoff
The Fate of Rome - Kyle Harper
Persian Fire - Tom Holland
The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford
SPQR - Mary Beard
The Twelve Caesars - Suetonius
White Mughals - William Dalrymple

Add your suggestions below, have fun exploring the past, and don't forget to add what you read to the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_HistoryCAT#May:_-_Theme:_Dynasties....

Thanks for the detailed introduction! I am spoilt for choice for this one and won't commit (yet)...

I have many choices, but I think I will go with Restoration, about the Stuarts, specifically Charles II.

P.S. So many more added to my wish list--great job!

Oh yes, so many choices!

I think I'll either read something on Ancient Greece, or go with something completely different and read something about a British dynasty - Tudors or Windsors. I have fiction and nonfiction about all of these.

I will see what I feel like in May!

Thank you for putting this together, and it's such a great topic/challenge!

I am planning on reading Empire by Devi Yesodharan which is a historical fiction novel about the Chola Dynasty in Southern India during the 11th Century.

Well there's plenty of scope here. No idea what to read quite yet. Still mulling this one over.

I'm reading SPQR for April's HistoryCAT (Ancient History), and had originally lazily thought it would take me so long I'd make it count for this challenge too (Empire...), but I think I'm probably going to get it finished in the next week (I'm managing half a chapter a day) and can't think of anything else on my TBR that would fit. So I'll probably sit this month out, but if anyone's wondering, I do recomment SPQR!

My online reading group's choice for May is Marius' Mules II: The Belgae by S. J. A. Turney, a novel in a series about the Roman conquest of Gaul.

I might also read Barbara Levick's biography of the emperor Claudius.

Ok, I think this will fit:
Victoria's Daughters / Jerrold M. Packard

I'm going to take a plunge into the ruling families side of things and read two biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine (she types hopefully):

Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
Eleanor of Aquitaine by Regine Pernoud

The first I've had on my TBR shelf for a few years, the second I read in high school because I had seen "The Lion in Winter" and was captivated by the story. No pun intended.

Note: right now, the touchstones are only capturing one of these books. I'll come back to edit this feature if I can.

I am going to make a suggestion for this category: The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott. It's the first in a four-part series, but can be read as a standalone. After seeing the mini-series I devoured all four books, which is saying something since they're meaty.

I've not yet chosen my read for this challenge...decisions, decisions.

I just started reading The Anarchy, which covers multiple empires in its focus on how the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the 18th century enabled the British East India Company's power grab claiming the subcontinent for the British Empire.

>12 susanna.fraser: Oh, that's on my wishlist! Looking foreward to your comments.

I'm reading Sicily by John Julius Norwich. He writes quite readable history, so I'm hoping this will be enjoyable.

I'm considering George Orwell's Burmese Days. I'll also try The Habsburgs again, but I've started it twice already, and found it dry and dull. So disappointing.

Also considering A Good Man in Africa and Flashman in the Great Game.

I just finished The Anarchy, which I thought very good and highly informative on it topic of the 18th century East India Company's rise to power, largely at the expense of the collapsing Mughal Empire.

I have finished The fate of Rome which I had planned for April, but it took me longer to read than I expected. It is about the end of the Roman Empire, so fits just as well here.

Victoria's Daughters / Jerrold M. Packard
3.75 stars

This is a nonfiction book about Queen Victoria and her daughters. Of course, there is info about her and her entire family, but the focus is on her five daughters: Vicky, Alice, Helena (known as Lenchen), Louise, and Beatrice. They all had very different personalities. Of course, Victoria wanted to keep one of her girls with her all her life – someone to be there and take care of her, particularly after she lost her husband, Albert, quite young.

3.5 stars for enjoyability – that is, it was good – but I gave it that little extra because of the sheer amount of information included. I do feel like this is a really good source to find information about Queen Victoria’s daughters. There were a few parts where I lost interest, mostly with German/Prussian politics, but I can see why it was included with Vicky married to a future Kaiser, so it absolutely affected her life.

Being Canadian myself, I was interested in Louise and Lorne’s years in Canada; also of interest were where a couple of the province and city names came from. I did find it started to get confusing when the focus started being on Victoria’s grandchildren. Partly because of the common, repeated names, but also just because there got to be so many! Luckily, the author did find ways to refresh my memory. I found it interesting at the end as the generations passed on to the next monarch(s) – something we usually don’t think about – those sisters became further and further away from the crown every time it passed on.

COMPLETED Marius's Mules II by S. J. A. Turney (Roman conquest of Gaul)

I completed Restoration by Rose Tremain. While it was not the book I had thought, Charles II did make appearances both at the beginning and end of the book. 4 stars

>20 Tess_W: That was one of the first audiobooks I ever got via my audible account many, many years ago; but I didn’t get around to it until last year! I don’t know why I waited so long! I really liked it and was disappointed to find out that the audiobook narrator, Paul Daneman only did that one title (the other three titles he is credited for are as part of an ensemble cast).

Oddly, as much as I liked the story, I have no inclination to read the sequels. It just feels like a stand-alone!

I have completed my read of Empire by Devi Yesodharan and while I loved the setting of 11th Century India and the interesting descriptions, the actual story was very broken up and it became obvious that this is most likely the first volume of a trilogy or series.

It wasn't the right time to read Burmese Days, so I'm about to start They Were Counted, which is set in the last years of Austria-Hungary and is written from the Hungarian perspective. I doubt that I'll finish it this month. It's the first book in The Transylvanian Trilogy and will lead in to WWI for the June HistoryCAT.

Finished They Were Counted. Loved it, and am looking forward to reading They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided.

Sometimes a novel by someone who was there can tell you more about a time and place than even well-researched non-fiction.

I finished When Christ and His Saints Slept, a historical novel telling in great detail the story of the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maude, and the founding of the Plantagenet dynasty, in 12th-century England.

>25 NinieB: that's a heart-breaker, but I loved it.

>26 fuzzi: I really liked that she made both Stephen and Maude sympathetic, while at the same time didn't gloss over their flaws.

Well, it had been my honest intention to read two biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine this month (one written and translated in the late 1960's, one published in 1999) for the Plantagenet dynasty. Since that didn't work out, I won't beat myself up, but will instead add them to the GeoKit challenge for Europe.

And I gotta say - reading these two biographies nearly simultaneously is fascinating. The first, by Regine Pernoud, gives more thought to what Eleanor did when and includes more details about the "White Ship" drowning of William the Conquerors hiers, as well as Robin Hood and his possible origins, while the latter, by Alison Weir, gives much more backstory on the noble lineages of Aquitaine, Blois, Champagne, France, and England.

>27 NinieB: Penman was a superb author, her books are chunksters but don't read as such. I still have several of her books waiting on my shelves, unread, for when I can devote some undivided attention to them.

>29 fuzzi: I have a couple more too!

>27 NinieB: and >29 fuzzi: I did have When Christ and His Saints Slept scheduled for this month, but I must admit I chickened out when I saw the size of it. I don't have the appetite for chunksters I used to. Not sure whether it's advancing age, deteriorating attention span, or I'm too worried about my ROOTs and other challenges.

>31 Robertgreaves: I had to consciously remind myself that the number of books I read is not the most important metric.

I read The Sisters who would be queen: the tragedy of Mary, Katherine, and Jane Grey by Leanda De Lisle. A brilliant story, interesting and intriguing. I heartily recommend it.

>31 Robertgreaves: they don't read like chunksters, you get sucked in and swept away.

I read This Place: 150 Years Retold by Various Authors, a graphic novel anthology retelling Canadian history through an Indigenous lens.

“See how Indigenous Peoples have survived a post-apocolyptic world since Contact” writes Alicia Elliot in the preface.

This has been a sad week in Canada as we have been forced to face the tragic history of residential schools. I am continually shocked by how little I know. This is a book that I could put in the hands of my teens knowing that it would be engaging and thought-provoking.

>35 HannahJo: Oh, that sounds interesting.

Yeah, it's so awful... Those 215 kids (plus so many more, I'm sure).