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The Riddle of the Rosetta by Jed Buchwald and Diane Josefowicz was published last year and is probably the most up to date book on the topic you can find. I don't think it covers much past the initial decipherment process though.
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Jan 5, 2022 04:28
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Currently reading: A Vietcong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang It is highly readable and such a breath of fresh air. Even Ken Burns' Vietnam is laden with Western propaganda. Any other recommendations up this alley? I want to read more history from the people who lived it, without the imperialist lean.
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Jan 26, 2022 23:36
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I'm looking for a book my father mentioned, he must have read it somewhere around 2000-2005 so published before then. It was about military history, possibly about Basil Liddle-Hart and his ideas about warfare in the 30's. The only detail I can remember him talking about was that allied command, or the people who did their heavy thinking for them, had realized that German weapons and equipment were far superior to anything they could give a British soldier by the time the war was likely to happen. They decided that the only counter they had was volume - individually an allied soldier might not be able to fire as fast as a German, but he should never run out of bullets, so allied solders always had far more weapons and equipment than they might really have needed, if you see what I mean. I might be mis-remembering quite a lot of this.
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Jan 27, 2022 06:19
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escape artist posted:Currently reading: Don't have any other recommendations but that's a great book and my go-to whenever someone wants a view of the Vietnam War from the other side.
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Jan 27, 2022 22:52
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escape artist posted:Currently reading: It’s not a biography but The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won a Pulitzer Prize. I have not read it yet, but it’s gotten rave reviews from people I know who’ve read it and it’s always great to get points of view about the war, from the north and the south, by Vietnamese themselves.
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Jan 27, 2022 23:07
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Solaris 2.0 posted:It’s not a biography but The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won a Pulitzer Prize. I have not read it yet, but it’s gotten rave reviews from people I know who’ve read it and it’s always great to get points of view about the war, from the north and the south, by Vietnamese themselves.
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Jan 28, 2022 00:12
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You might want to read Perfect Spy, about Pham Xuan An, a reporter with the International Herald Tribune and Life Magazine and a Viet Cong spy.
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Jan 28, 2022 00:44
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As a Vietnam War books guy, a lot of good choices mentioned already. The Perfect Spy and The Sympathizer are a lot of fun. Some others which I liked were The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation by Tran Tu Binh, which was part of a North Vietnamese oral history project in the early 60s to record the successes of the old comrades against the French, as part of ramping up support for the next war against the Americans. Hanoi's War by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is based on recent work in Vietnamese archives, and follows General Secretary Le Duan and his primary deputy Le Duc Tho as the two leaders of the Communist effort. It's serious academic history, so a little dry, but it shows how North Vietnam never lost sight of its primary objective of a unified Communist Vietnam, and how its strategy adapted to circumstances. And finally, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace by Dang Thuy Tram is the diary of a North Vietnamese doctor who was killed in action during the war, which was plucked from the mass of intelligence analysis and became a best-seller in contemporary Vietnam. It's a picture of a smart, dedicated, sentimental young woman fighting for what she believes in.
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Jan 28, 2022 04:38
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What are the best books currently available in English about the Allied invasion of Sicily?
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Jan 28, 2022 05:15
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Gripweed posted:What are the best books currently available in English about the Allied invasion of Sicily? Rick Atkinson covers it in detail in the day of battle however his whole Liberation trilogy, which also covers the North African and Western Europe campaigns, is excellent.
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Jan 28, 2022 05:27
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Biffmotron posted:And finally, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace by Dang Thuy Tram is the diary of a North Vietnamese doctor who was killed in action during the war, which was plucked from the mass of intelligence analysis and became a best-seller in contemporary Vietnam. It's a picture of a smart, dedicated, sentimental young woman fighting for what she believes in. This sounds so good that I'm going to buy it and read it right now.
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Jan 28, 2022 05:30
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I finished a book about Gordievsky which I liked, The Spy and the Traitor. Hit me with some more non-fiction cold war spy stuff.
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Jan 28, 2022 08:17
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Best book on the first Vietnam War in English or French? I'd prefer an academic account, preferably with a good bibliography.
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Jan 28, 2022 09:33
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wukkar posted:I finished a book about Gordievsky which I liked, The Spy and the Traitor. Hit me with some more non-fiction cold war spy stuff. Christopher Andrew's two books written with Vasilii Mitrokhin are both worth reading, they're histories of the KGB in the Cold War based on documents Mitrokhin (a former KGB archivist) smuggled out of the KGB archive. There's been some controversy over Andrew's own close ties with MI5 outside his work with Mitrokhin, but I think the books themselves are still good since they're primarily about what the KGB was doing based on KGB documents.
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Jan 28, 2022 14:58
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When I was in grad school I read Ghosts of War in Vietnam by Heonik Kwon, about how the perception of ghosts plays into various forms of Vietnamese memories of the war. It was really interesting.
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Jan 28, 2022 15:25
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Boatswain posted:Best book on the first Vietnam War in English or French? I'd prefer an academic account, preferably with a good bibliography. What you want is Embers of War by Fredrik Logevall which is a Pulitzer Prize winning book about the French-Indochina war.
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Jan 28, 2022 15:47
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Solaris 2.0 posted:What you want is Embers of War by Fredrik Logevall which is a Pulitzer Prize winning book about the French-Indochina war. Looks dope, thanks!
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Jan 29, 2022 01:27
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What are some recommended books about the history of Vietnam before WWII? Searching for Vietnamese history always leads to the wars against France and the US but that's not all that defines the country or its history and I'd love to know more about the colonial and pre-colonial past instead of just looking for various perspectives on the last half of the twentieth century.
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Jan 29, 2022 02:55
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Christopher Goscha's book is a general survey of Vietnamese history that was recommended to me by a historian specializing in SE Asia.
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Jan 29, 2022 03:12
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Minenfeld! posted:Christopher Goscha's book is a general survey of Vietnamese history that was recommended to me by a historian specializing in SE Asia. Can co-sign this https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-New-...aps%2C80&sr=8-6
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Jan 29, 2022 04:59
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It's a family memoir, and not entirely about the pre-WWII period, but Duong van Mai Elliott's "The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family" is pretty good. Her great-grandfather was an official under the last Emperor, her grandfather was a civil servant under the French, her father governor of Haiphong and later a South Vietnamese official, her sister a member of the Viet Minh, and she was a researcher with the RAND corporation who came to the US after the fall of Saigon. It's a good look at the history of a Vietnamese upper middle class family over the generations, the challenges they faced and the choices they made.
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Jan 29, 2022 05:01
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stereobreadsticks posted:What are some recommended books about the history of Vietnam before WWII? Searching for Vietnamese history always leads to the wars against France and the US but that's not all that defines the country or its history and I'd love to know more about the colonial and pre-colonial past instead of just looking for various perspectives on the last half of the twentieth century. The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Goscha is supposed to be very good, but it does not extend very far back.
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Jan 29, 2022 06:32
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I'm interested in reading The Story of Civilization but am worried that the historiography will be way too outdated. Should I put it off until I'm familiar with more modern research on the periods covered?
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Jan 30, 2022 03:46
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Maybe not a good fit for this specific thread but on the topic of Vietnam, are there any recs for overviews of postwar Vietnam to now, or 1980s-2010s Southeast Asia in general?
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Jan 30, 2022 04:39
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FPyat posted:I'm interested in reading The Story of Civilization but am worried that the historiography will be way too outdated. Should I put it off until I'm familiar with more modern research on the periods covered? I think with Will Durant you read it for the prose and for the man's philosophical musings, more than anything. You can probably skip volume 1, which condenses all the Asian history he knew into a single book.
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Jan 30, 2022 06:46
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It's just like reading Gibbon: you read it because it's well written and a literary high point.
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Jan 30, 2022 20:00
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Boatswain posted:Looks dope, thanks! Just wanna double-down on this recco; Embers of War was a fantastic, illuminating read.
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Jan 30, 2022 20:08
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Minenfeld! posted:It's just like reading Gibbon: you read it because it's well written and a literary high point. Books like this are also a fine starting point if you have very little detailed information about the topic and understand you're not seeing the latest thought on the subject. It can also be really helpful in understanding later works and why more modern historians are taking the tack they do.
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Jan 31, 2022 15:35
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City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York by Tyler Anbinder is an excellent and readable history of New York City immigration. I learned a lot about the waves of Irish and German migrants and how the most popular countries of origin changed so much over the decades because of laws and policies. Very readable and keeps the narrative moving.
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Jan 31, 2022 17:37
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Biffmotron posted:As a Vietnam War books guy, a lot of good choices mentioned already. The Perfect Spy and The Sympathizer are a lot of fun. I want to add one more to this list. I haven't read it yet, but a few weeks ago I was listening to an interview with Pierre Asselin, author of Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 Podcast interview link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pierre-asselin-vietnams-american-war-history-cambridge/id425214664?i=1000457102262 Granted, Pierre is not Vietnamese (he is from Quebec) but he is one of the first westerners to get access to the state archives back in the 1990s, and this book is the culmination of that research. It dives into the Vietnam Communist Party's struggles to consolidate power after their victory over the French, the side-lining of Ho Chi Minh by Le Duan, and the decision to support the Southern Communists (Viet Cong) and the road to war with the US to reunify the South.
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Jan 31, 2022 20:18
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What should I read to get up to speed on the Punic wars?
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Feb 2, 2022 01:11
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No. 1 Juicy Boi posted:What should I read to get up to speed on the Punic wars? Adrian Goldsworthy has a book on them.
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Feb 2, 2022 01:43
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Adrian Goldsworthy has a book on them. Seconding this recommendation, its called The Fall of Carthage, and it's a great book.
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Feb 2, 2022 03:13
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I'm curious about the perspective of the minor German states towards German unification 1848-1871. What diplomatic maneuvers were made? How did attitudes and political motivations shift? What were the leaders thinking as they finally decided to join Prussia? How much reluctance was there?
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Feb 10, 2022 20:43
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vyelkin posted:Christopher Andrew's two books written with Vasilii Mitrokhin are both worth reading, they're histories of the KGB in the Cold War based on documents Mitrokhin (a former KGB archivist) smuggled out of the KGB archive. There's been some controversy over Andrew's own close ties with MI5 outside his work with Mitrokhin, but I think the books themselves are still good since they're primarily about what the KGB was doing based on KGB documents. I missed this but A Legacy Of Ashes about what gently caress ups the CIA are is a great read. It's apparently biased because it doesn't talk about all the great successes the CIA had [citation needed] and only focuses on them failing.
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Feb 11, 2022 03:21
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I am reading through some of his own writing, and I would very much like to read a biography of John Muir. Any recommendations?
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Feb 11, 2022 22:54
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whats some good books on Antietam? been reading the sears book and its great but i am curious about others. also maybe some interesting books about that period. like i love This Republic of Suffering, so something like that maybe. i have been on a civil war kick since i started played war of rights. EDIT. also any good books about lincolns lawyer years/ court cases. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 12, 2022 23:30
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Dapper_Swindler posted:whats some good books on Antietam? been reading the sears book and its great but i am curious about others. Bruce Catton's account of the battle in Mr Lincoln's Army is extremely good, it dominates the rest of the book.
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Feb 19, 2022 01:57
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I know I'm looking for a unicorn here, but is there any single volume work on Russia as it evolved from Tsarist regime to WW1 to Lenin to Stalin to WW2 to Cold War?
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Feb 19, 2022 02:07
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You must be a virgin, because you just found Suny's The Soviet Experiment.
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Feb 19, 2022 02:31
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