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Vivian Darkbloom posted:In modern scholarship on the Vietnam War, have any writers gained much access to the Vietnamese archives, or done many interviews with the PAVN & NLF leadership from the era? The generals' perspective would be interesting but it always seems to be absent. Some recent serious scholarship drawing on Vietnamese archives is Lien-Hang T. Nguyen's Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam, which focuses mostly on Le Duan and Le Duc Tho as upper level political leadership. As might be expected, the top level archives of the Politburo and General Staff are closed to external researchers, but a lot of the material is copied in lower level archives, though those are often poorly catalogued and otherwise hard to do research in, though through bureaucratic malaise rather than explicit policy. I read a lot of Vietnam War histories and I haven't come across much from the perspective of the Communist side, particularly at the level of senior officers. Giap wrote a book about the First Indochina War, which is cheap on Kindle. And personally, one of my favorite books is Truong Nhu Tang's A Vietcong Memoir, which is a senior South Vietnamese's account of his war, though from an eventual position of disenchantment and exile.
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# ? Jun 7, 2021 06:17 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:37 |
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Also, and this is probably not what you want, but check out two books "The Perfect Spy" and "The Spy who Loved Us", both biographies of Pham Xuan An, a correspondent for Time, Reuters, and the International Herald Tribune who was also secretly a spy for North Vietnam.
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# ? Jun 7, 2021 11:53 |
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:In modern scholarship on the Vietnam War, have any writers gained much access to the Vietnamese archives, or done many interviews with the PAVN & NLF leadership from the era? The generals' perspective would be interesting but it always seems to be absent. Yes. Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965
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# ? Jun 7, 2021 17:27 |
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I gifted myself the huge, illustrated version of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and wanted to *humblebrag* some pics here: Compared to the paperback of Tooze (still sad I can't find a hardcover version of that one) All kinds of paintings, posters and proclamations from the era John Brown Honest Abe, pre-beard
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# ? Jun 10, 2021 18:14 |
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I’m finishing up Ghost on the Throne and really enjoying it. I read Peter Green’s bio of Alexander about a decade ago. Classical history owns but I don’t know where to go from here. Maybe a book on Ptolemaic Egypt? Or the history of Athens?
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# ? Jun 10, 2021 18:45 |
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Hammerstein posted:I gifted myself the huge, illustrated version of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and wanted to *humblebrag* some pics here: That looks great! I got the paperback last week and while the book is great, the pictures are poor quality, many of the maps are practically unreadable
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# ? Jun 11, 2021 19:15 |
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el3m posted:That looks great! I got the paperback last week and while the book is great, the pictures are poor quality, many of the maps are practically unreadable I got the ebook version and the maps are useless in that format. I've been watching the animated maps by the American battlefield trust on YouTube to help understand the battles. Thanks to everyone in the thread who recommended the book, I'm really enjoying it.
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# ? Jun 12, 2021 08:36 |
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el3m posted:That looks great! I got the paperback last week and while the book is great, the pictures are poor quality, many of the maps are practically unreadable The maps in this are really nice, I can really recommend the book, it's a new jewel in my book case. I read several history books on the Kindle in the last years and I started re-buying them as hardcover whenever possible. I don't know how to express it, but reading in an actual book just makes everything more real and I noticed I memorize things better when I read them in a book, than on an electronic device. There's a very nice hardcover edition of Glantz's "When Titan's clashed" currently available. Also the new German paperback of Overy's "Russia's War" is almost on par with hardcover editions. Speaking of WW2: I'm currently on a WW2 - Pacific Theatre reading binge and I would love something that's like Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", but for Japan. So far I read Toland's "Rising Sun", Spector's "Eagle against the Sun", Toll's Pacific trilogy, "Shattered Sword" by Parshall/Tully and Ienaga's "Pacific War 31-45". I already asked in the Grognard and the Milhist thread, but no suggestions so far. Hammerstein fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jun 12, 2021 |
# ? Jun 12, 2021 10:07 |
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Hammerstein posted:
Nice I just got Battlecry of Freedom myself! …as an audio book
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# ? Jun 14, 2021 19:25 |
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Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me wondering - is there any such thing as a non-sensationalized, non true- crimey history of the Manson Family?
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# ? Jun 15, 2021 01:09 |
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Fighting Trousers posted:Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me wondering - is there any such thing as a non-sensationalized, non true- crimey history of the Manson Family? Listened this few years back from Audible. Was very informative especially from murders to trial and sentencing. https://www.amazon.com/Helter-Skelter-Story-Manson-Murders/dp/0393322238
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# ? Jun 16, 2021 14:57 |
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Jeff Gunn's bio is a completely sober account of what happened.
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# ? Jun 16, 2021 23:45 |
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Fighting Trousers posted:Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me wondering - is there any such thing as a non-sensationalized, non true- crimey history of the Manson Family? Semmi related Leslie Van Houten, one of the Manson family girls who participated in the LaBianca murders, is on the podcast Ear Hustle its an interesting listen, as are all their shows.
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 00:08 |
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cloudchamber posted:Jeff Gunn's bio is a completely sober account of what happened. yeah. i take Jeff Guinns books over Bugliosi. i mean Bugliosi good but he definitely paints Manson as way smarter and manipulative which isnt fully wrong but since the dude was the prosecutor for the case, he has his biases. the whole manson murders always struck me as manson looking to keep his weird gently caress orgy going longer since it was starting to frey hard and he thought he murdered a drug dealer so he wanted to make a bigger crime to draw attention off.
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 01:47 |
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what are some good books about the napoleonic period
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 03:36 |
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Stairmaster posted:what are some good books about the napoleonic period You really can’t beat the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian for a meticulously researched portrait of the period that are also some of the best historical novels ever written in their own right. They even have their own thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3393240
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 03:48 |
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 03:49 |
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Stairmaster posted:what are some good books about the napoleonic period It's a bit dated but I will always recommend Will and Ariel Durant's Age of Napoleon. It focuses more on social, political, and cultural history than military so you may need to account for that. Seconding Patrick O'Brian. It's the best historical fiction I've ever read by a wide margin. He's incredibly steeped in the period and just about every naval action is a recreation of a real one. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jun 17, 2021 |
# ? Jun 17, 2021 13:44 |
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Also get the Jim Jones book by Jeff Guinn, it’s fantastic, his new one about Pershing’s invasion of Mexico and Bonnie and Clyde.
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 14:51 |
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Stairmaster posted:what are some good books about the napoleonic period The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History https://www.amazon.com/Napoleonic-W...la-670380731500
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 16:04 |
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I don't know if there's a better place to share this, but I want to recommend Fred Birchmore's Around the World on a Bicycle to anyone who's interested in memoirs, circumnavigation, bicycles, and 1930s history. It's a beautifully written book and an easy read. Perfect for a cool morning on the patio with some coffee. A bit about Birchmore: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fred-birchmores-amazing-bicycle-trip-around-the-world-1462409/ Book is here: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820357287/around-the-world-on-a-bicycle/
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# ? Jun 17, 2021 16:07 |
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Hammerstein posted:I don't know how to express it, but reading in an actual book just makes everything more real and I noticed I memorize things better when I read them in a book, than on an electronic device. I never have had that sort of "geographic" recollection about anything I've read in etexts, even ones that preserve the pagination of the physical text. I mean etexts do have the advantage of being searchable. Which is absolutely not to be scoffed at. O lord, as someone who spent time having to use a physical card catalogue and the loving Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, searchable texts are not to be maligned. But I absolutely believe that I retain information differently when I read it on an screen instead of on a printed page.
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# ? Jun 19, 2021 01:37 |
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Will I learn macroeconomics principles from reading The Wages of Destruction?
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 04:49 |
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FPyat posted:Will I learn macroeconomics principles from reading The Wages of Destruction? Well you’ll learn a crash course on what NOT to do.
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 14:48 |
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Is this the only book about China in WW2? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0...&ref_=pd_gw_unk And are there any others anyone recommends?
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 21:29 |
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There's also Shanghai 1937 by Peter Harmsen about the battle for that city and The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang about the atrocity, but yea I don't know any better books covering the whole of it than that one.
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 21:37 |
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Hammerstein posted:I gifted myself the huge, illustrated version of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and wanted to *humblebrag* some pics here: That’s a good looking book.
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 22:04 |
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No Wave posted:Is this the only book about China in WW2? I judge all books about China in WW2 by how much emphasis they put on the Flying Tiger, so I can tell you there are some others. Unfortunately, I can't remember what the best Flying Tiger books were.
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# ? Jun 21, 2021 14:34 |
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Mantis42 posted:There's also Shanghai 1937 by Peter Harmsen about the battle for that city and The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang about the atrocity, but yea I don't know any better books covering the whole of it than that one. so is rape of nanking not accurate. i remember reading it mostly is but chang made some weird mistakes about atrocities that didnt happen(i think the baby stuff and decapitation contest) or she got some names wrong or some poo poo. i know it was enough that the IJA apologists basically drove her to suicide.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 02:32 |
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so is rape of nanking not accurate. i remember reading it mostly is but chang made some weird mistakes about atrocities that didnt happen(i think the baby stuff and decapitation contest) or she got some names wrong or some poo poo. i know it was enough that the IJA apologists basically drove her to suicide. It was required reading in one of my college history courses, so that would be interesting.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 02:50 |
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so is rape of nanking not accurate. i remember reading it mostly is but chang made some weird mistakes about atrocities that didnt happen(i think the baby stuff and decapitation contest) or she got some names wrong or some poo poo. i know it was enough that the IJA apologists basically drove her to suicide. Well the decapitation contest literally ran in a Japanese newspaper, so
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 03:35 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:It was required reading in one of my college history courses, so that would be interesting. i doubt the critques are some magic bullet or some poo poo. i just remember reading that while the book is mostly accurate, it had some glaring issues and nationalist right in japan went bug gently caress on her which compounded with a bunch of other issues pushed her to thinking she had no way out.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 12:00 |
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Dapper_Swindler posted:nationalist right in japan went bug gently caress on her. If anything this lends it some extra credibility
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 12:25 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:If anything this lends it some extra credibility oh yeah agreed. i just remember other historians having issues with it too but i still recommend the book to people.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 12:32 |
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I have no prior knowledge of this, but the impression I get from skimming some reviews is that Chang's description of the atrocities themselves are pretty accurate but that the book is seriously flawed when she tries to blame the violence on some underlying Japanese culture and claim that no Japanese person has ever felt sorry about them afterwards, in part because she apparently didn't do much (maybe not any?) research with Japanese-language sources and so doesn't accurately represent the state of Japanese scholarship on Nanking or its historical memory in Japan, and is overly credulous of Chinese-language sources that had obvious motivations to portray the Japanese as worse than they were. Here's a passage from one review, for instance: Joshua A. Fogel in the Journal of Asian Studies posted:Her description of the Japanese assault on Nanjing is generally good, though flawed by occasional wild assertions. In this connection, the author apparently believes everything her many informants tell her; there is little critical sifting of information from her interviewees. Related to this is the author's unquestioning approach to Chinese documents. Unfortunately, it seems like the book's flaws ended up harming her cause more than its merits helped them, since the Japanese right was able to point at these issues and say "look, see, the people who claim there was a genocide have to make stuff up to justify their claims" even though her description of the atrocities themselves wasn't in serious question.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 14:07 |
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whats a good book on the pilgrims/puritains in america? and also salem witch trial. i have always found them interesting folks despite being weird reactionaries. vyelkin posted:I have no prior knowledge of this, but the impression I get from skimming some reviews is that Chang's description of the atrocities themselves are pretty accurate but that the book is seriously flawed when she tries to blame the violence on some underlying Japanese culture and claim that no Japanese person has ever felt sorry about them afterwards, in part because she apparently didn't do much (maybe not any?) research with Japanese-language sources and so doesn't accurately represent the state of Japanese scholarship on Nanking or its historical memory in Japan, and is overly credulous of Chinese-language sources that had obvious motivations to portray the Japanese as worse than they were. yeah that's about what i remember hearing.
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# ? Jun 27, 2021 18:10 |
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Any general recommendations about the Russo-Japanese War? I realized most of what I know about it comes from histories of the 1905 Revolution and felt real dumb for a bit there.
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# ? Jun 28, 2021 18:01 |
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Dapper_Swindler posted:whats a good book on the pilgrims/puritains in america? and also salem witch trial. i have always found them interesting folks despite being weird reactionaries.
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# ? Jun 28, 2021 18:27 |
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Very frustrating that the Oxford History of the United States remains glaringly incomplete.
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# ? Jun 29, 2021 07:24 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:37 |
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grassy gnoll posted:Any general recommendations about the Russo-Japanese War? I realized most of what I know about it comes from histories of the 1905 Revolution and felt real dumb for a bit there. I can't help you with the military side, but Japanese historian Masayoshi Matsumura has two books about Japan's public diplomacy during the conflict: Baron Suematsu in Europe During the Russo-Japanese War and Baron Kaneko and the Russo-Japanese War. Very readable histories of two Meiji leaders attempting to convince Americans and British that Japan represented the West in a war against Asian barbarism. And their troubles dealing with the yellow peril idea that was spread around the time.
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# ? Jun 30, 2021 02:18 |