New resources and books for September
Wednesday 29 September 2021
Student Access
With the autumn term well underway now, don't forget that you can give your students access to the History Inthinking site as part of your subscription. This will allow you to:
- Give students direct access to some - but not all - pages on the site.
- Create various types of tasks for your classes or for individual students.
- Give online feedback, monitor student progress, and view grades in the online grade book.
Details on how to set this up is on the left hand side of the home page under the heading Student Access.
Site update
As ever, we have continued to add to existing pages; in addition we have uploaded a new A grade Extended Essay:
EE Sample 5. Causes of the Algerian War (New criteria A grade)
To what extent did the French Defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 lead to the outbreak of the Algerian War, 1 November 1954?
And we have re-organised and added to the Paper 2 section on Cold War Crises:
History books just published
Margaret Macmillan is publishing a book this month on the importance of understanding the impact of War: About War: How Conflict Shaped Us - very relevant to students studying for Topic 6 or Topic 11, Paper 2 on the causes and practices of wars.
You can see MacMillan talking about her new book here:
Another interesting book just out (and very relevant to students studying independence movements in Africa for Topic 8, Paper 2) is White Malice: the CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa by Susan Williams which looks at the intervention of the CIA in Ghana and the Congo following their independence.
And finally a book about unsung heroes who rescued Jews during the holocaust:
'The Just, published this year in English, recounts how up to 10,000 men, women and children fled the Holocaust. At the heart of the story is Zwartendijk and the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who improvised an improbable escape route from Lithuania to the Japanese port of Tsuruga and beyond'
Guardian Review (see below)
History in the news
Another holocaust story has been in the news this week:
Ukraine's forgotten 'Holocaust by Bullets' (BBC News)
The country is still grappling with how to remember one of the worst massacres of World War Two.
And this fascinating story of 'The epic adventures of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet' raises issues about the importance of artefacts in history as well as the rightful ownership of such artefacts:
The epic adventures of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet (BBC News)
How an ancient story of a superhuman king ended up in all sorts of unexpected places.