The Disappointed Idealist

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The War Of The Roses by Sarah Gristwood My rating: 3 of 5 stars As much as I don't like Philippa Gregory's works and their totally inaccurate stance on history, there is one thing that she did right: she revived general interest in British history, including some periods of time that, despite their obvious drama and spectacular events, were not really that familiar to people that were not history geeks. I am referring, of course, to the Wars of the Roses, which is my favorite subject in history for various reasons (I cannot think of any other period of time so rich in drama, spectacular turns of events and twists and turns that would make any movie script writer envious - with the added bonus that they all actually happened). This book is obviously inspired by Philippa Gregory's books and, if you have read them or watched The White Queen two years ago and have become interested in what the reality behind the fiction is, this could be r...

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts My rating: 4 of 5 stars What I like most about this book is that, although the author is clearly fascinated by Napoleon, he does not stop from describing even the less pleasant aspects of his rule and personality. This leads to the book being quite objective, from start to finish, with maybe a touch of an admiring tone. The book focuses more on Napoleon's military skills and touches less of his personal life, but that is to be understood. The battles are described in great detail and someone fascinated with tactics and military will like this book, regardless of their opinion of the main subject. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know more of Napoleon - it is accessible enough to not require much knowledge of history but accurate enough to please even the more pretentious readers. It contains enough information for everyone, quotes and notes that complete the overall picture and is as objective as it can be. View all my reviews

I'm sure we've all had this dilemma at some point. When your significant other is not getting along with your friends, who is it that gets to take priority? And worry not, whenever they are not getting along - no matter how good you are at skating on thin ice - at some point you will need to prioritize one over the other. In most of the cases, I'd recommend that friends take priority. Friends are for life in most cases. Only one significant other will be for life. But if you're at the point where your significant other might actually be the one? I would judge which of them respects my choices more. In the end, who I choose as my friend and who I choose as my significant others are both choices I made. They may not like each other, but they should respect my choice in liking both of them. Knowing they don't like each other and actually getting involved in open argument are two different things. So, if they don't like each other, but manage to stay civil t...

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Thomas Sowell goes against the general trend of ideas promoted by today's society in this book and I appreciate that quite a lot. There is, indeed, a general fear (that he actually consistently criticizes) of attacking certain ideas that means that most of the intellectuals of today (as he very well points out) are actually, with different words, promoting the same trends and ideas. It takes guts to go against the trend and I like it. Generally speaking, the themes of this book revolve around the fact that intellectuals are people who speak without practical experience which means that in most cases, no matter how smart they are, they do not really know what they are talking about. But because they sound like they know what they are saying, they are influential in creating policies that in the end hurt the very people they are claiming to defend. I tend to agree with this idea. I also agree that in many cases the...

I am again using Cracked as an inspiration for a blog post, but hell. Whatever works. It all starts from  this article . It really makes a good point, as far as I am concerned, but I would raise yet another point. What movies do, is that in most cases they split the movie characters in The Good One and The Evil One. There are certain nuances, like The Good and Weak One who is afraid to fight unless properly motivated, the Evil Stupid One and the Evil Smart One. But basically you know around the half-time who you should root for and who will, eventually win the fight (because movies where the Evil One wins are rather rare - and even there the movie will leave a ray of light available, like in the True Detective Season 2 finale). The reality, however, is never that simple. You will not be able to tell who the Evil One is, the Evil One is rarely an actual person and it will rarely be as simple as just getting rid of the Evil One. OK, there are exceptions. There's Hitler, for...

...and I have seen two kinds of reactions:  1. People turning their Facebook profile pictures in rainbow colours  2. People dissing the whole situation with arguments like "next stop we'll be marrying animals", "it's not normal", "marriage is for religion", "marriage is for reproduction", bla bla bla  I fall under neither of the above two categories.  As a start-up point of my beliefs on gay rights, you can read my post on  categorizing people . I feel the need to expand on that with the recent explosion of social network statuses on the subject. So here we go: 1. Before we go any further, I would like to establish that gay people are  people . That means that they have the same rights as all the others (no more, but no less), same right to be upset as anyone would be when someone posts a public post saying that they are "anomalies" and so on. If you are wondering why some gay people make such a fuss about this, i...

The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 by Ian N. Wood My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is an essay. If you are specialized in history and are familiar at least to the intermediate level, with the history of the 5th to 7th centuries, this is a good thing. If you are someone who is interested in the subject (which would probably be the reason why you would buy it) but have not read much on the period, I would recommend keeping this shelved up for a later date. The Merovingians were a complicated family, with lots of brothers who all are named Dagobert, Clovis, Childeric or Chilperic, have different mothers and ruling different parts of a kingdom that somehow evolved as a whole. It's difficult to keep up with all the splits in the kingdom, the brothers, their sons, their nephews and even the regions in themselves which are different from generation to generation. Add to that a very thorough analysis of the religion, culture and aristocracy of the time, and this book has made for...

The King's Rose by Alisa M. Libby My rating: 2 of 5 stars The author is not a bad writer but I found the book rather naive. Everything is written from Catherine's point of view and, I guess, we can take the view that we all justify ourselves one way or another, even when we do bad things. But I find it hard to reconcile the ingenue tone that Catherine is supposedly using when recounting what is happening with what we know of her. The author is trying to present the Catherine-Thomas Culpeper story as some great love story, while presenting Francis Dereham as some creepy guy lurking in the shadows... but the affair with Dereham lasted for years, yet during the book never it is explained what Catherine ever liked about him. She states on more than one occasion that she was above him and talks as if she never meant to marry him, but in those days intercourse with a man without even wanting to marry was a serious sin. So either she was depraved (therefore not an ingenue) - and be...