The Russian Army of the Crimean War 1854-56 (Men-at-Arms)

Book Description

'We must all fight for Holy Russia!' declared the Russian officers at the outbreak of the Crimean War. Despite the immensity of the Russian forces that fought in this conflict, however, their dispersion over vast distances, along with poor roads and contrary weather, contributed to their defeat. Still, many regiments won much-deserved battle honours; from the navy emerged a number of heroes, including Admirals Kornilov, Nakhimov and Istomin. This book details the forces that served the Tsar in the defence of the Crimea, with chapters on Army organization, the Army of the Caucasus, the Imperial Navy, army life, tactics and Russian heroes.

British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea

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Interesting Thesis
A Superb Overview
Thought provoking

British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea
Scott Myerly
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Russian Army of the Crimean War 1854-56 (Men-at-Arms)

ASIN: 0674082494

Book Description

In the theater of war, how important is costume? And in peacetime, what purpose does military spectacle serve? This book takes us behind the scenes of the British military at the height of its brilliance to show us how dress and discipline helped to mold the military man and attempted to seduce the hearts and minds of a nation while serving to intimidate civil rioters in peacetime.

Often ridiculed for their constrictive splendor, British army uniforms of the early nineteenth century nonetheless played a powerful role in the troops' performance on campaign, in battle, and as dramatic entertainment in peacetime. Plumbing a wide variety of military sources, most tellingly the memoirs and letters of soldiers and civilians, Scott Hughes Myerly reveals how these ornate sartorial creations, combining symbols of solidarity and inspiration, vivid color, and physical restraint, enhanced the managerial effects of rigid discipline, drill, and torturous punishments, but also helped foster regimental esprit de corps.

Encouraging recruitment, enforcing discipline within the military, and boosting morale were essential but not the only functions of martial dress. Myerly also explores the role of the resplendent uniform and its associated gaudy trappings and customs during civil peace and disorder--whether employed as public relations through spectacular free entertainment, or imitated by rioters and rebels opposing the status quo. Dress, drills, parades, inspections, pomp, and order: as this richly illustrated book conducts us through the details of the creation, design, functions, and meaning of these aspects of the martial image, it exposes the underpinnings of a mentality--and vision--that extends far beyond the military subculture into the civic and social order that we call modernity.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting Thesis.......2003-04-13

This slightly ponderous book presents a number of interesting questions. The main point it tries to make is that the military has often been used as a symbol to both inspire and control the public in Great Britain. The author painstakingly explains how the British army attempted to mould its soldiers into a certain disciplined caste that would prove relilable in all circumstances. While other countries have allowed their military to become all pervasive and dominant, in Britain the army always maintained a close loyalty to the Crown. The power of the Crown was tempered by Parliament, which meant that the army would never assume a dominant position in British affairs.

That the military was useful as a means to control in social discontent in the early 19th century cannot be denied however. Before there was a reliable Police Force, the army was instrumental in maintaining the public order. This in turn ensured that the power of the elite was not threatened. The army was also an inspiration to many British thinkers and industrialists of the period, who looked upon its regimentation as an example to be followed in civilian affairs. Even fashion owes much of its influence to the army in this period. The ever popular term "Dressing to the Nines" was coined from the sharpe appearence of the 90th Foot. While this book did address many interesting points concerning the relationship between the military and civilian life in Britain, at times the material seemed a bit redundant.

There were also some gaps. More emphasis should have been placed on the development and use of military bands, their music, as well as their ceremonial use. The employment of bands went very far to popularize the view of the military to many and should have been discussed at greater length. Pomp and Ceremony remains an important element in British society today, and continues to showcase the military, despite many evident cut-backs. The development of many of the great Tattoos, Military Music Spectacles etc., were instrumental in presenting a favorable impression toward the British public. While many of these events would be developed in a later period, they surely had their start in the time covered in this book. Failure to mention this influence in more detail I think is the chief failing in an otherwise worthwhile book.

A Superb Overview.......2000-06-28

There is little that Myerley's treatment of Briish uniforms and its corresponding manifestation in the evolution of army gear. Indeed, Myerley does a first-rate job in making comparisons between British society and and its counterpart in the military. Long overdue--at least at this level of quality!

Well written, a source which I find myself going back to time and again. Harvard Press is to be commended and Myerly congratulated. Excellent, Scott!

Thought provoking.......2000-04-21

It was only after I had read some way into this book that I realised that it must have been some kind of thesis. When did people start writing them so well?

It isn't encumbered with that annoying pseudo-intellectulese that people who generally present theses are so proud of to confuse the reader. In fact the points it does present are in strikingly simple and wonderfully readable.

The issue Myerly discusses is the development of the British army in the first half of the nineteenth century, basically the Napoleonic Wars until Crimea and it is a fascinating period.

He discusses the changing attitudes to discipline, uniform, recruiting and life in general in the army - but also the effects the army had on civilian life and vice versa.

There is an enormous bibliography at the end of the book, followed by extensive footnotes (some 100 pages). If you don't like footnotes then I can assure you they don't interfer with the reading in the text but help do help to clarify issues for those that want to delve deeper into an issue.

The only reason I have marked the book down from 5 stars was really a bit trivial, I found the last couple of chapters a bit repetitive - or they seemed so to me. I could barely put the book down for the first 5 or so chapters, and it really got me thinking.

Book Description

Gervase Howard, a young nurse serving under Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, returns home to care for a young nobleman who lies in a comaâ€”the only man she has ever loved, but who is married to someone else.

Customer Reviews:

LOVED this book!.......2006-02-17

This is the most interesting historical fiction romance type story I've ever read. I couldn't put it down. I checked it out from the library but half way through the book I decided that I would buy it so I can read it again. And again. And again. I highly recommend it!

A surprising good book.......2004-12-22

Young Gervase Howard is a sheltered girl when she enters the Wingate household and meets Davis Wingate. After Davis marries the selfish Roberta, Gervase leaves the Wingate household and goes to work for Florence Nightingale and Gervase follows her to the Crimean where Gervase meets Davis again. But following an accident Gervase is once back to Wingate Hall to take care of Davis.
I enjoyed this book, I really liked the parts about Florence Nightingale, This was really good book that should not be missed.

This book deserves 10 stars!!!.......2004-07-21

This has to be the best book I have ever read! I could not put this book down and read it in two days. I wish I could give this book 10 stars. This is the first book I've read of Gilbert Morris and will definately not be the last.

Surprise!.......2004-07-06

This is a wonderful book with a SURPRISE! ending. Anyone will enjoy this book about a young woman who nurses soldiers in the Crimean War.

Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856

Average customer rating:

The hearlding of World War 2
Surprisingly good history...
Fascinating Read - Not enough about the combat
Good but not Enough
Anglo-centric but otherwise excellent

Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856
Trevor Royle
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312230796

Amazon.com

The mid-19th-century Crimean War, pitting England, France, and less powerful allies against Russia, was one of the first major international wars in history. In the execution, it was none too inspiring. As Trevor Royle writes in his sweeping study of the conflict, "it encompassed maladministration on a grand scale and human suffering, if not without parallel then at least minutely recorded by the watching war correspondents"--the war being the first as well to have been widely reported. It was, a contemporary British journal put it, a war of "lions led by donkeys," young men commanded by doddering veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns who served in an unlikely alliance. The English officers, Royle writes, could never shake the habit of calling their French comrades "the enemy," and never quite trusted them, either.

The result was carnage: not only the loss of a good portion of the Light Brigade in the most famous--but not the most inept--incident of the war, but also the destruction of whole regiments left to blunder about in the fog and smoke, thanks to their commanders' inadequate intelligence-gathering efforts. Not much changed at war's end. In the eventual peace treaty, France and England and Russia kept their territories more or less intact, and the struggle for power between Russia and the neighboring Ottoman Empire, in whose defense France and England had ostensibly gone to war, stretched out for another generation. It ended with a Russian victory that allowed Russia to assume control of Turkish holdings in the Balkans, which, Royle notes, lay the seeds for still another international conflict, World War I.

Royle does a fine job of negotiating through the many complexities, diplomatic and military, of the Crimean War. His descriptions of battlefield tactics (or the lack thereof) are among the best in the literature. More comprehensive than Robert B. Edgerton's Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War, Royle's Crimea is likely to stand as an enduring work on this strange, wasteful conflict. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

The Crimean War is one of history's most compelling subjects. It encompassed human suffering, woeful leadership and maladministration on a grand scale. It created a heroic myth out of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade and, in Florence Nightingale, it produced one of history's great heroes. New weapons were introduced; trench combat became a fact of daily warfare outside Sebastopol; medical innovation saved countless soldiers' lives that would otherwise have been lost. The war paved the way for the greater conflagration which broke out in 1914 and greatly prefigured the current situation in Eastern Europe.

Customer Reviews:

The hearlding of World War 2.......2006-12-20

The Crimean war shattered the peace of Europe that had been established since Napoleon and set the course for World War 1. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the advances of Russia are prominent in the war. The famed charge of the light brigade occurred during this war and the trench warfare of World War 1 can be seen. This was really fought over a very small amount of land and in hellish terrain. The book is very well written and does an excellent job of discussing how the war progressed. Overall an excellent book and one that I would recommend.

Surprisingly good history..........2006-11-07

Were it not for Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, it is arguable whether the Crimean War would have much notoriety. It wasn't overly long, there were very few set-piece battles and no individual heroes of note. It was, among european wars of history, a middling confrontation. How much better, then, is Trevor Royle's treatment with the excitement he brings to it.

Sensing Ottoman dissolution, tsarist Russia makes a play to position itself for benefit. Alarmingly, this could include access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. Having none of it, Britain and France combine to contest Russia's territorial ambitions. Negotiations rapidly break down and Sevastapol is invested. What follows is a story of British incompetence, French duplicity, and Russia's teetering access to military means.

Royle weaves throughout the event the high intrigue behind the scenes where unilateral diplomacy, oneupmanship, and the perfidious maneuvering of supposed allies rules the day. On the war front, he portrays the sad lot of the British soldier. In stark contrast to the French, the British military was grossly underfunded, medical care was appallingly poor, conditions were squalid, and soldiers died of disease in droves. The comparatively healthy ones simply starved.

With Sevastapol fallen, Russia was compelled to consider armistice while conniving diplomats in Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London brokered an inadequate peace. Accordingly, the relatively minor Crimean conflict set the table for future hostilities and presaged the disintegration of the Ottoman empire. Indeed, it was in a corner of the splintered Ottoman empire that a single shot rang out to begin a world war. Trevor Royle does an exemplary job in bringing Crimea to us and, in so doing, prepares the inquisitive reader for the explosive century to come. 4+ stars.

Fascinating Read - Not enough about the combat.......2006-02-05

This is a very interesting book about an incredibly influential war. Despite the fact that the Crimean War was quite short and almost no great swaths of territory changed hands, this short, bloody little conflict had a huge impact on the formation of modern Europe. Trevor Royle's account of the war is a wonderful read. He covers the causes of the war (interesting enough, despite all the real politik, it was about a set of keys and a silver star in a church), the war itself and the aftermath. The details are wonderful and don't override the flow of the story. The only shortcoming comes during the presentation of the battles. Since there are so few, you'd think we'd get more details, but unfortunately the battles are somewhat glossed over. This doesn't so much detract from the book as, instead, it leaves you hungry for more. I found the natural links drawn by the author of Crimea as a progression from the Napoleonic style of war to the more modern American Civil War, which lead right into the mechanistic nightmare of World War I to ring true in more ways than simply because of the dates involved. Time to dig back through old issues of Military History Quarterly to find some articles on the battles so I can enjoy a much more thorough context for the war, thanks to this book.

Good but not Enough.......2004-06-27

As a reader already observed, this book is, to begin with, very anglo centered as it happens with boring regularity with almost every anglosaxon historian, no matter the issue. French partner in this war appears, of course, how it could be otherwise, but always as if from a side, as a distant guy that by chance was there. I think the subjet is the Crimean war or should be so, not England in-war-in-Crimea.
From a sheer military point of view the book lacks too much. Battles are more or less described, but maps are a joke and the equipment of both sides scarcely mentioned and poorly defined. A reader of this kind of books want to know more: want to know details about personal weapons, artillery, technical innovations, uniforms, etc. It is the more so as the author himself recognizes this was the first modern war, an intermediate step between Waterloo and the slaughters of I World War. There is some of all of it, but prone to be poor and cursorily explained. Even more, the autor makes a serious mistake confusing the innnovation of the Minie bullet -to be used with muskets already in use- with a supposedly new "Minie rifle" that never existed.
Nevertheless, the political side of the war -french again appearing as a guest and often under a disdainful light- is well developped and informative. Same with many personalities, including, this time, french officers.
Last but not least, the quality of the paper in this paperback edition is the worst I have ever seen in this kind of binding. I doubt it will resist more than 10 years in a shell. For the same reason the discrete number of photos available -not acceptable in a book about the first photographed war in history- are a miserable account of bad quality and neglect.

Anglo-centric but otherwise excellent.......2003-09-14

I imagine it is hard not to see the Crimean War from a non-British perspective, because the other belligerents did not write their chronicles in English OR see the war as such a big deal. But what this book manages is to put the war into a wider Eropean context of great power rivalries and almost fanatical imperialism. So Russia wanted to join the imperialist club? France and Britain, hardly the best of friends, were horrified at the prospect. And as for Russia developing a strong Mediterranean presence, well, the Ottomans as well as the British and French couldn't allow that. GREAT READ.

The Drummer Boys Battle: Florence Nightingale (Trailblazer Books #21)

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The first modern nurse--Florence Nightingale

The Drummer Boys Battle: Florence Nightingale (Trailblazer Books #21)
Dave and Neta Jackson
Manufacturer: Bethany House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1556617402
Release Date: 1997-02-01

Book Description

Trying to provide for his family after his father dies, Robbie Robinson is thrust into the Crimean War as a drummer boy-and meets the courageous nurse Florence Nightingale. Ages 8-12.

Customer Reviews:

The first modern nurse--Florence Nightingale.......2001-02-10

I strongly recommend this book. This is a great book about a boy in the Crimean War who helped Florence Nightingale. This book makes you want to read more and more! It is one of the best books I have ever read--I was really inspired by the love and care that Florence Nightingale gave to the wounded and sick soldiers. It was kind of bloody in places, but it makes you pray and feel sorry for the bad conditions they were in. I have read most of the Trailblazer books, and this one is my favorite!

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (Penguin Classics)

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Mother Seacole's adventures makes you thirst for excitement

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (Penguin Classics)
Mary Seacole , and Sara Salih
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0140439021

Book Description

Written in 1857, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivaled Florence NightingaleÂ's during the Crimean War. Seacole traveled widely before arriving in London, where her offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war was met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, she set out independently to the Crimea, where she acted as doctor and Â“motherÂ” to wounded soldiers while running her business, the Â“British Hotel.Â” Told with energy, warmth, and humor, her remarkable life story and accounts of hardships at the battlefront offer significant insights into the history of race politics.

Customer Reviews:

Mother Seacole's adventures makes you thirst for excitement.......2006-08-13

Mary Seacole's reputation after the Crimean War certainly rivalled that of her counterpart Florence Nightingale but for a very long time she was a forgotten footnote in history, and this probably had a lot to do with the fact she was not a white middle class woman, but was instead the offspring of two races, that of a Scottish father and a black Jamaican mother.

She was a born healer and a woman of tremendous energy, she overcame official indifference and racial prejudice as she strove to prove her worth as a Nurse on par with Nightingale herself.

Seacole got herself out to the war by her own efforts and at her own expense, she risked her life to bring comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers; and became one of the first black woman to make a mark on British public life.

But while Florence Nightingale has gone down in history, Mary Seacole was relegated to obscurity until very recently.

This book tells her story in her own words, of her travels, her experiences, her life as a woman in colour living in a time of bigotry, prejudice and racial hatred.

It's a fantastic book and brings to life in its many pages a woman of courage and moral conviction that what she was doing with her life was the right thing to do. To me Mary Seacole optimises the Crimean War in a way that Nightingale never can. A book worthy to be read in schools in the way that Anne Frank is read even now in the 21st century.

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Day Two: See Day One

Eyewitness In The Crimea-Hardbound
Michael Mawson
Manufacturer: Greenhill Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856

ASIN: 1853674508

Book Description

The thoughts of an officer at the forefront of the fighting, portraying the daily hardships experienced by the soldiers.

Customer Reviews:

Day Two: See Day One.......2006-12-01

This volume is based on letters written back home from the period of time following Balaclava Battle of 1854. You get a quick idea of the rampant illness and boredom of life of being on the front lines in a police action of keeping an eye on the Russians in Turkey.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (Battles of the Nineteenth Century)

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The Charge of the Light Brigade (Battles of the Nineteenth Century)
Deborah Bachrach
Manufacturer: Lucent Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 1560064552

Average customer rating:

Good story, mediocre writing
Per Mare-Per Terram
Saga of the Royal Marines

Badge of Glory (The Royal Marines Saga)
Douglas Reeman
Manufacturer: McBooks Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590130138

Book Description

Travel through Britain's military history with a proud seafaring family, the Blackwoods, and the service tradition in which they make their careers—the Royal Marines. Captain Philip Blackwood of the Royal Marines rejoins his ship, the H.M.S. Audacious, in the summer of 1850. Sent out to Africa to eliminate the last strongholds of slavery, then on to the Crimean War.

Customer Reviews:

Good story, mediocre writing.......2006-03-17

Reeman has a talent for writing nautical fiction in unusual settings - for example, his novels about the British navy in the two World Wars range from commerce raiders to midget subs. The Royal Marines series is no different, with this book set during the transition from sail to steam. (The second valume takes place in China during the Boxer Rebellion, another interesting and overlooked period.)

However, the characters are a bit one-dimensional, and more importantly, Reeman's dialogue is incredibly choppy. Its as if he writes a complete conversation and then goes back and deletes every third line. He also has a habit of abruptly telling the reader what he wants them to know, rather than bringing it out through action or dialogue.

If you are interested in the time period, or in the history of the Royal Marines, you will probably enjoy this book in spite of its limitations. I just wish I could combine the imagination and historical perspective of Reeman with the storytelling ability of a Patrick O'Brien or Bernard Cornwell.

Per Mare-Per Terram.......2002-04-26

"...Hoarse drum of the regiment..." The story of a man and his world; a world that might seem incomprehensible to many: self sacrifice for the common good; the struggle between heart and tradition; fraternal love; the way some of us see duty towards flag and country;

The unbreakable bond that develops amongst men in battle; the inexplicable admiration and adoration for the leader; after all, isn't he the one leading them to their potential death? Yet, still ".... the unexplained glory flies above them...." and they try to forget that in that ".... field where a thousand corpses lie..." some of their most beloved friends ceased to exist;

There's not many ways that can project the majesty of a pure soldier's heart, yet this effort is more than successful; In a historical journey it wanders from sail to steam, from on-board soldiers to Royal Marines... And the unique way to present that "...these men were born to drill and die..." made "per Mare et per Terram". Superb!

Saga of the Royal Marines.......1997-11-09

This is the story of a young officer in the Royal Marines during the transition from sail to steam. The hero is from a Marine family, yet is thinking of leaving the Service. This is the background for the adventures off the African coast and in the Med. You see some of the resistance to change in the outlook of the Navy to steam and the new and strange machines. Possibly the start of a series. If you have read any of Alexander Kent's Bolitho series, you will like this.

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The Great Stink
Worth the slog
The Great Slog (small spoilers)
The great stink of the Victorian underworld
Excellent Historically

The Great Stink
Clare Clark
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0151011613

Amazon.com

It takes a world of confidence to name your debut novel The Great Stink, and to set it in a sewer. Not even a modern sewer--charmless though that may be--but the crumbling, cholera-laden, rat-infested, fungus-rich sewers of London in the mid-Victorian period, from which pockets of deadly gas frequently burbled to the surface. Clare Clark's unsavory but completely absorbing first novel is a Dantean tour of this reeking underworld and its denizens: both the scavengers--human and animal--and the reformers, who brave the tunnels in the service of public hygiene and social progress after the 1858 Act of Parliament that called for the rebuilding of the sewer system.

The Great Stink juxtaposes two darknesses, both embodied in the filthy tunnels: the lawless desperation of the very poor, and the despair of madness. One of the junior engineers most useful in mapping the existing sewer is William May, a studious, methodical veteran of the Crimean War who manages to conceal from everyone but his wife the horrors he brought out of battle with him. The tunnels don't frighten William; they provide isolation and silence for the bloody rites that keep the Mr. Hyde in him at bay. It seems only a matter of time before William's self-destruction turns outward. Long Arm Tom, his counterpart among the poor, is a "tosher." He enters the tunnels illegally, scraping the sludge for coins or other booty, and trapping hundreds of rats for fighting against dogs at local taverns (all the rage for sporting gentlemen since dog fights have been outlawed). Kindness is a liability in Tom's world, but two acts of pity--one toward a dog, and one, more grudgingly, toward William--provide the resistance that changes the course of this otherwise relentlessly dire story.

The very weak-stomached may need a cup of mint tea or a bowl of potpourri beside them as they wade through the sewer with Tom and William. Clark has spared readers none of the stink, nor the sharp pleasures of suspense. --Regina Marler

Book Description

It is 1855, and engineer William May has returned home to his beloved wife from the battlefields of the Crimea. He secures a job transforming London's sewer system and begins to lay his ghosts to rest. Above ground, his work is increasingly compromised by corruption, and cholera epidemics threaten the city. But it is only when the peace of the tunnels is shattered by murder that William loses his tenuous hold on sanity. Implicated in the crime, plagued by visions and nightmares, even he is not sure of his innocence. Long Arm Tom, who scavenges for valuables in the subterranean world of the sewers and cares for nothing and no one but his dog, Lady, is William's only hope of salvation. Will he bring the truth to light?

With extraordinarily vivid characters and unflinching prose that recall Year of Wonders and The Dress Lodger, The Great Stink marks the debut of an outstandingly talented writer in the tradition of the best historical novelists.

Customer Reviews:

The Great Stink.......2007-08-19

This is an excellent book. Clare Clark has done the homework. Takes you right into this period of time in London. I never knew until reading this book about the horrendous pollution to the Thames. You are transported back ...almost smelling the stench, experiencing through the gut wrenching prose, the atmosphere and the sewers. I was transfixed! I did not want the book to end. I realize this review does not even touch upon the plot, but I wanted to comment on what affected me about this book, not to say that the plot is not well thought out and executed. By the way, my daughter bought and shared Clark's subsequent novel, The Nature of Monsters, and it is another great, engrossing novel, back in the same period in London (I believe), dealing with the strange beliefs of the time regarding birth defects. I recommend it, as well as the Great Stink, to everyone. You will not be disappointed.

Worth the slog.......2007-08-18

The Bookschlepper recommends The Great Stink by Clark but be forewarned: you can't snack and read this book at the same time! Two men deal with the sewers of mid-19th C. London. One is an engineer with PTSD from the Crimean War. One is Long Arm Tom who raids the sewers of rats for pub entertainment. After a serious drought, the powers-that-be decide a new sewer system is needed and the monumental effort beneath the city is undertaken. In the old sewers, flushed by the tides into the Thames, murder occurs, corruption simmers. Life among the newly-formed middleclass and the huddled masses is shown in stark light and the ever-present smog. Slog through the descriptions; Clark sets up the story vividly. The resolution in quick and a bit serendipitous but this is fiction. Most memorable character: Lady, a pink-eyed ratter, duplicated by the pink-eyed lawyer.

The Great Slog (small spoilers).......2007-05-02

What a disappointment. Although I love historical thrillers (Dan Simmons' "The Terror" grabbed me and never let go), I had to force myself to finish "The Great Stink." Clare Clark may be a wonderful historian, but she doesn't seem to have any flair for story-telling. Her pacing is off: for a disproportionate chunk of the book she gives us interminable and repetitive descriptions of the sewers and her protagonist's cutting episodes (with a side order of dog-vs.-rat fights), and then rather hastily wraps up all the loose ends in an implausibly neat "happy" ending.

Worse, I found it impossible to feel for the protagonist, William May, because Clark fails to bring him to life. He's nothing but a case study; she doesn't do an adequate job of building him as a character before and separate from his psychological problems. "When he's in his right mind, he likes to do botanical drawings" does not a convincing human being make.

As another reviewer mentioned, the only character I was taken with was the dog.

The great stink of the Victorian underworld.......2007-03-16

In this debut novel, Clare Clark has combined historical fiction, suspense and a battle for sanity. From within three levels of darkness (experiences in the Crimean war, working in the sewers of London in the mid 19th century and fighting for his sanity because of his experiences of both) William May may seem an unlikely hero.

Add to the mix a gritty portrayal of life amongst the London poor, the very real events of 'The Great Stink' in 1855 (which ultimately led to the rebuiding of London's sewers) and the stage is set for an interesting novel.

Warning: William May's self destructive tendencies will be very confronting for many. The description, which lends it authenticity, is not for the faint-hearted. Many of us will recognise it and understand it immediately.

I would not recommend this book to the squeamish. I would recommend it to those who like some factual underpinning for their fiction and who seek to descend into the Victorian underworld.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Excellent Historically.......2007-01-18

This marvelous book should have been kept to the issue on hand: the rank pollution and hideous odors of the River Thames, right in the middle of London. The source of their drinking water was 'ripe' with rotting animal and vegetable matter. The solution to the unbelievable horror of the contaminated river and drinking water would have filled this well researched novel. The murder mystery breaks the mood of the book. But, this history of the People and City of London in the 19th century is rich in the many fascinating details of life of all Londoners. A totally worthwhile read. If you read History, read this.

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