Cathal J. Nolan. Allure of Battle.

The best book on warfare I have seen for a long time. Though heavily drawing on J. F. C. Fuller in structure and method, it relinquishes its romantic enchantment with Frederick the Great, Napoleon, his unabashed racism ("brutes" and "asiatics") and adds some fresh material. I am willing to excuse his forgetfulness that the capital of Russian Empire was St. Petersburg, not Moscow, and his totally uncritical opinions on Anglo-Saxon (UK and US) commanders and their methods of warfare. The latter probably appeared to placate the neocon Party cells now existing in any major publishing house, US or British. After all, the words like SNAFU, JANFU and FUBAR did not appear in the US Army/Navy WWII jargon out of nowhere.

But his brilliant insights, for instance, that Frederick the Great, though a great battle commander, achieved what he did mostly through careful diplomacy, smart war propaganda--British  broadsheets touted his "invincibility" and whitewashed his defeats--and a sheer luck of the death of the Russian Empress Elizabeth and chaos of an interregnum uncovers careful thinking and desire to avoid stereotypes, no matter how entrenched.  In fact, Frederick was the one who invented modern total war fought not only on the battlefield, but simultaneously on economic, diplomatic and propaganda fronts. Again, Nolan completely glosses over British defection of Frederick after their colonial designs on the French were fulfilled, the one he himself nicknamed "Perfidy of Albion". What was considered a clever exercise of Realpolitik, not only costed British its American colonies but also made Pitt unable to resist Russian, Prussian and Austrian expansion at the expense of Turkey and Poland. Cathal Nolan's book is highly recommended as an antidote to haphazardly researched and poisonously opinionated books, which are advertised through all search engines, first and foremost, on Amazon.

D. Acemoglu, J. Robinson. The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.

The book demonstrates how shallow political science thinking became in a post-neocon era. The authors could not but understand that their previous "Why Nations Fail" with its universal emphasis on institutions was simply counterfactual. But their new idea of the "Chained Leviathan" is only markedly better. As for "...Nations...", in 1914 the state with the most admirable and efficient institutions was Prussia, then the part of the German Empire. By 1918 it was no more. By 1945 even its territory was absorbed by its neighbors. In 1917, the Russian Empire, probably the worst governed of all Great Powers with the exception of Turkey and, may be, Austro-Hungary, disintegrated completely. Who could have thought that in short four years it will reincarnate itself as the Soviet Union and become a leading political actor for the 70 years thereafter?
       Certainly, the authors' new concept of Chained Leviathan (i.e. the efficient state whose goals are supported by the public) is more nuanced. But it is supported by specious and, sometimes, erroneous historical parallels. As statisticians know, if you pile up the number of explanatory variables, eventually you would find dependencies where none are present.
        The weakest point of their hypothesis, glorifying Anglo-Saxon societies beyond measure, as the pursuers of optimum between power of the people and power of the state, is the ignorance of demographic, religious but above all, local factors of the societal development. First, their story of "liberal capitalism under strong institutions" completely ignores the role of slavery in the US and colonial empire(s) of the UK in the economic well-being of the metropolises. The relationships between slaves, plantation owners, Northern factory owners and bankers were anything but liberal and voluntary. Similarly, the policies of the British Empire were military extortion of India and military extermination in Australia and New Zealand. Second, while they connect political and economic systems of Italian city-states with the Renaissance, their model miserably fails to explain why the most efficient for the time power-sharing systems of Northern Italy, Flanders, Burgundia and Lotharingia disappeared from the face of Europe. Nor Switzerland was ever the cradle of innovation. The obvious reason for the failure of Northern European princelings was vulnerability of their territory, strong rapacious neighbors and the weakness of central power not allowing creation of large standing armies.
           Closer to author's own home, in XV-XVII centuries, three powers were vying for the unification of the Eastern Slavic lands--Ottoman Turkey, Poland and Russia. Why Russia with much less efficient government and much less public participation succeeded where Poland failed? Part of this author's answer is that the most populous and economically significant territories of Turkey and Poland had the populations, which did not share the religious zeal of their overlords. The majority of Balkan subjects of the Sultan were Greek Orthodox and the majority of Ukrainians and White Russians detested Catholic religion of their Polish masters. Lithuania, nominally co-equal participant in the Polish Commonwealth, was the last European nation to accept Christianity. Vice versa, Russian elites shared Eastern Orthodoxy with their subjects and, following the Mongols, were pretty negligent concerning religious beliefs of the conquered peoples and servants of the State alike.
          Finally, not all oppression comes from the central governments and cannot be equalized with the government interference into private lives. The Chinese do not elect their government, but its interference in the lives of its citizens is nothing compared to Holland, Scandinavia and Switzerland. There are coercive institutions other than the Leviathan modeled by Hobbes after compact England. In many states, citizens view strong and absolutist central power not as the oppressor but as the most efficient protector against arbitrary rule by the local strongmen. It is very influential motive of the Russian history but the Spanish Empire, its successor Latin America and medieval France are the common examples. In XX Century America whatever legal protections blacks had in the South were
emanating not from their representatives, which they had none, but from the federal powers dominated by white Northerners, whom they did not elect and who ran roughshod over local laws.
         Once you impose all caveats and exemptions, the concept of the Chained Leviathan becomes the concept of the Beached Leviathan.

Simon Winder. Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country

Simon Winder does not belong to English academia, so the book is accurate and lively. French direct  incitement of and participation in Belgium's 1830 revolution and secession from Kingdom of the Netherlands is glossed over. His tempo of  meth head machine gunner putting entire European history of 1000 years, since the Treaty of Verdun between Charlemagne's heirs (843) into 500 pages makes appreciation of the book difficult.