20 Books of Summer 2023

Summer is around the corner and that means Cathy of 746 Books will once again be hosting 20 Books of Summer. After lots of thought and second guessing I slapped together a collection of 20 books and five alternates I’d like to read this summer. All 20 are books I own, of which only two are Kindle editions. The five alternates are library books. Of course every year I do this challenge I never end up reading all 20 books and frequently deviate my original list. Fortunately for me Cathy is a forgiving host and lets all of us pretty much do whatever we want. Here’s this year’s intended 20 books. 

1. On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War by Bernard Wasserstein (2012)
2. Travels in Jewry by Israel Cohen (1953) 
3. 5 Ideas That Changed the World by Barbara Ward (1959)
4. The Emperor’s Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena by Julia Blackburn (1993) 
5. Golden Century of Spain 1501-1621 by R. Trevor Davies (1965) 
6. The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 by Moses Rischin (1977) 
7. Operation Chastise: The RAF’s Most Brilliant Attack of World War II by Max Hastings (2022) 
8. Going to Extremes by Joe McGinniss (1980) 
9. The Outbreak of World War I: Causes and Responsibilities edited by Holger Herwig (1991) 
10. The Undiscovered Self by Carl G. Jung (1959) 
11. The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara Tuchman (1985)
12. The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II by Edvard Radzinsky (1992) 
13. The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East by Olivier Roy (2008)
14. Europe Between Revolutions, 1815-1848 by Jacques Droz (1967)
15. The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us by Keith Lowe (2017) 
16. The Knowledge Web : From Electronic Agents to Stonehenge and Back — And Other Journeys Through Knowledge by James Burke (1999) 
17. Early Modern Europe: From About 1450 to About 1720 by Sir George Clark (1962)
18. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (2009) 
19. The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchick (2017) – Kindle
20. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (2015) -Kindle, not shown

And five alternates.

1. The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup (2019)
2. How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter (2022)
3. Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life by Amber Scorah (2019)
4. Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby (2020)
5. The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (2012)

This is the perfect opportunity for me to also tackle my to be read pile (TBR) while at the same time participate in other reading challenges like the TBR 23 in ’23 Challenge, Mt. TBR Reading Challenge, European Reading Challenge and Books in Translation Reading Challenge. With a number of these books published prior to 1980 this is also a great chance to promote my Old Books Reading Project.

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