Reviews

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan

ilanahoffer's review

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informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

anushatamhane's review against another edition

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informative

3.0

sammibreads's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

2.0

The book includes very well known ideas of manipulation of history and backs it up with numerous historical examples. These examples bled seamlessly into each other showing the similarities between often poorly compared countries. Though many of the examples were new to me the book still did not meet my expectations. I had hoped for a deeper analysis of historical propaganda in ways new to me, which was not the case. I also felt the vast number of examples meant many were not well explained. It felt like the author expected you to know everything and thus what’s the point of reading a non-fiction book like that?

drfnpatri's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

libantoinette10's review against another edition

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slow-paced

2.5

briony99's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

2.0

alicia098's review against another edition

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The author makes contradicting statements that I find difficult to understand what she is trying to convey. The the tone I find to be quite condescending and somewhat ill-informed as she mentions that we focus to much on apologising for the past and that we should only focus on the present. Which is insensitive to many communities throughout the world that have suffered. As she also chastises historians today for partaking in cultural and society studies versus political and economic history. Which I disagree with as part of understanding history and different movements is to get the context through which these movements came about. She also goes on to state that such history is not 'real history'. 

fuzzy_succulent's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

jyotidshrestha's review against another edition

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4.0

Written by a Canadian, I throughly enjoyed the historical, cultural and modern day references used to expand the discussion. The author is very smart and clever to explore the topics and banter. This came across to me as a quick read podcast style discussion.

caitlinbooth's review against another edition

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informative tense slow-paced

3.0