Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (CUP, Aug 31 2015). ‘The story of the beliefs and practices called ‘magic’ starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino – whose work on magic was […]

Peter Marsden, Your Noblest Shippe: Anatomy of a Tudor Warship (31 Jul 2015, The Mary Rose Trust) This volume is concerned primarily with a detailed description of the Mary Rose and how she operated as a functional warship. Commencing with a discussion of the place of the Mary Rose in the development of warships; her […]

De Seve and Irwen, Operation Ajax: The Story of the CIA Coup that Remade the Middle East (Verso August 18, 2015). ‘The year is 1953. As the value of oil skyrockets, global power brokers begin to take interest in the political regimes of the Middle East. British agents have controlled Iranian oil exports for a generation, […]

E.R. Bills, Black Holocaust: The Paris Horror and a Legacy of Texas Terror (Eakin Press Aug 2015). ‘From 1891 to 1922, Texans burned an average of one person of color at the stake a year for three decades. These burnings typically featured carnival atmospheres with thousands in attendance, including men, women and children who later […]