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As a career historian most of the books I read are also about history. Do you have a favorite book about history?
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Apr 1, 2023 06:41
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Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is an easy read about some of the big names of early (50s-late 70s) computer science and was a book that really inspired me as a kid/teen to get into computer science. no photos, alas
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Apr 1, 2023 06:45
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Karl Heinz Roth's The "Other" Workers' Movement and the Development of Capitalist Repression from 1880 to the Present which is a study of the role unskilled workers played in the German working class, who were more inclined to either sabotage or wildcat strikes instead of the institutional mediation skilled workers sought (unions) - as well as repression of workers and how that evolved. I also love Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which is a total history of Mediterranean society in 15th-16th century and also the role geography played in the social organisation at the time, with a lot of fascinating insight into various aspects of life at the time.
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Apr 1, 2023 12:14
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I just finished Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine which explores a concept called disaster capitalism which originated from Milton Friedman's economic theories and the Chicago School, starting from Chile in the 70s and looking at Russia in the 90s, Iraq after 9/11, and New Orleans after Katrina. It made me furious and sad and quite convinced that her argument is sound. gently caress Milton Friedman and the 'free' market!
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Apr 1, 2023 12:35
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A Strange Aeon posted:I just finished Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine which explores a concept called disaster capitalism which originated from Milton Friedman's economic theories and the Chicago School, starting from Chile in the 70s and looking at Russia in the 90s, Iraq after 9/11, and New Orleans after Katrina. how doe she define disaster capitalism
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Apr 1, 2023 12:57
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sube posted:
This is probably the right answer, this book rules. Didn’t he write part of it from memory during WW2 or something?
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Apr 1, 2023 14:15
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A people’s tragedy, by Orlando figes, about Russia from 1891-1924, is a great overview of a really fascinating period. Crazy photos in there of cannibalism in the rural villages, etc Herodotus and Xenophon are both still really entertaining imo. Patricia Southern has some great histories of late Rome and a good one about Roman Britain. Beard’s SPQR is a pretty good summary. The Spanish Armada by Mattingly is incredible. The Lancashire Witches really opened my eyes to the kind of amazing investigative work that could be done with early modern sources.
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Apr 1, 2023 14:25
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buffalo all day posted:This is probably the right answer, this book rules. Didn’t he write part of it from memory during WW2 or something? Yeah a great deal was written based on memory, but he had access to the local library and could request books from the Red Cross. It's why when he has to cite the archives he often writes he can't find the source anymore. Braudel originally planed to write a kind of "counter-history" focusing on piracy, but his experience in detention made him re-structure the book around time in part.
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Apr 1, 2023 14:33
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History books are pretty rad. Please enjoy this passage from A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon where she writes about Cato the Elder's obsession with cabbage:  Man, the Roman's were weird af.
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Apr 1, 2023 14:41
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Gah actually the right answer is Caro’s 4 volume (and going  ) LBJ biography, which absolutely loving rules and should be read by all
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Apr 1, 2023 14:43
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buffalo all day posted:Gah actually the right answer is Caro’s 4 volume (and going he better finish it. unfinished book series are the worst. schlesinger's age of roosevelt is really good, but he just got to 36 since he spent his time afterwards stroking the dicks of every kennedy that gave him a bit of attention. he campaigned for like three kennedies and also wrote a bunch of books about them too
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Apr 1, 2023 14:48
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The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
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Apr 1, 2023 14:54
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sube posted:he better finish it. unfinished book series are the worst. schlesinger's age of roosevelt is really good, but he just got to 36 since he spent his time afterwards stroking the dicks of every kennedy that gave him a bit of attention. he campaigned for like three kennedies and also wrote a bunch of books about them too Dude is 87 and still planning to fly to Vietnam for research, what a badass
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Apr 1, 2023 14:56
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I recently finished Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books, by Geoffrey Roberts. It's a fascinating insight into Stalin's inner intellectual and makes clear whatever else he was, he was a serious reader and thinker who valued thought and analysis, and not an impulsive megalomaniac like so many of his contemporary dictators. As one review I read put it, "the more we know about him, the less we understand him."
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Apr 1, 2023 15:00
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I recently finished Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books, by Geoffrey Roberts. It's a fascinating insight into Stalin's inner intellectual and makes clear whatever else he was, he was a serious reader and thinker who valued thought and analysis, and not an impulsive megalomaniac like so many of his contemporary dictators. As one review I read put it, "the more we know about him, the less we understand him." One thing I learned from The Jakarta Method that ran counter to what I'd been taught in public schools was that Stalin urged many revolutionary forces (I recall China and Greece in particular?) to work with the liberal governments being funded by the US which...may have been a mistake on Stalin's part.
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Apr 1, 2023 15:05
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buffalo all day posted:Dude is 87 and still planning to fly to Vietnam for research, what a badass his statements just remind me a bit too much of georg rr martin, where i've given up ever expecting him finishing the series. but hopefully i'm wrong. i want to the watch the documentary about him, the trailers were quite cute
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Apr 1, 2023 15:12
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I like picking up random old looking history books at sidewalk sales the tiny bookstores around here like to have. Found some cool poo poo like Mystery Cults of the ancient world which goes into the various mystery cults (duh) in greece and rome and how they evolved. A good look at how fluid religion was in the classical era. Sometimes you just get weird poo poo like a book about the everyday lives of people of the fertile crescent that had a bunch of stuff about more mundane things in sumer/akkad/babylon but it was obsessed with tying it all in to the bible. For a book from the 70s it felt like a weird anacronism.
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Apr 1, 2023 15:40
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Necrobama posted:One thing I learned from The Jakarta Method that ran counter to what I'd been taught in public schools was that Stalin urged many revolutionary forces (I recall China and Greece in particular?) to work with the liberal governments being funded by the US which...may have been a mistake on Stalin's part. Stalin was capable of pragmatism in foreign policy far beyond what the stereotype of him would have you believe. The man believed in the inevitability of world revolution and the communist end-state of history, but he wasn't a fanatic or ideologue. Before the war he had any number of positive things to say about the US, particularly compared to the capitalist states of Europe, as he saw the younger democracy of the US as more dynamic in states where elements of the old feudal order lingered. And during WWII he hoped not only for smooth wartime cooperation but also that a wider understanding could be reached for the postwar world that would allow the two emerging superpowers to, well, not do what ended up happening. Somewhat ironically, it turns out that at least initially he was less a hardcore Cold Warrior than his American equivalents.
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Apr 1, 2023 18:25
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My favorite history book is The Silmarillion
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Apr 1, 2023 18:36
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Necrobama posted:One thing I learned from The Jakarta Method that ran counter to what I'd been taught in public schools was that Stalin urged many revolutionary forces (I recall China and Greece in particular?) to work with the liberal governments being funded by the US which...may have been a mistake on Stalin's part. Not really accurate re: Greece - the USSR only accepted Greece being within the English sphere of influence after the communists (EAM) themselves recognized this, they also supported the ill-fated DSE uprising and were main sources of aid. For China, yes. sube fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 1, 2023 |
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Apr 1, 2023 18:47
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sube posted:Not really accurate re: Greece - the USSR only accepted Greece being within the English sphere of influence after the communists (EAM) themselves recognized this, they also supported the ill-fated DSE uprising and were main sources of aid. For China, yes. Stalin had kinda sorta given the nod to Britain about Greece during the Moscow Conference of 1944. 
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Apr 1, 2023 20:53
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I mostly (but not exclusively) read Ancient History. Here's my recs: My favorite primary source is Caesar's accounts of his wars, followed by Xenophon, both Hellenika and Anabasis My favorite intro books are Tom Holland's Persian Fire and Rubicon, which are accessible accounts of some of the most dramatic moments from the classical mediterranean. They're not going deep on scholarship, mostly just being summaries of the primary sources in engaging and clear language, but that's perfect for an intro I'll try to remember to gather my thoughts on my favorite of the more scholarly stuff later
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Apr 1, 2023 21:29
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cheetah7071 posted:I mostly (but not exclusively) read Ancient History. Here's my recs: Have you checked out Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic? It's a fantastic and accessible history of the Second Punic War and Roman/Carthaginian conflict more generally.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:37
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Have you checked out Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic? It's a fantastic and accessible history of the Second Punic War and Roman/Carthaginian conflict more generally. no, but it sounds neat. thanks!
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Apr 1, 2023 21:38
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Have you checked out Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic? It's a fantastic and accessible history of the Second Punic War and Roman/Carthaginian conflict more generally. It's one of his few books worth a drat.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:42
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Oh on books with more deep scholarship, I really liked Soldiers and Silver, which convincingly argues that in the late hellenic/early roman period, state extraction from their populace was something of a sliding scale between taxation and conscription, where you couldn't max out both, and the states with the most success in the period were the ones that more heavily emphasized conscription at the cost of taxation. At one end you have Rome, which essentially didn't tax but expected their conquered Italians to provide full armies, and on the other you have Ptolemaic Egypt, which maxed out taxation, by running a colonial state where a thin stratum of hereditary Macedonian aristocrat-soldiers extracted wealth from a large population of disarmed Egyptian workers. Carthage, Macedon, and the Seleucids were all somewhere in between these extremes.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:46
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Stalin had kinda sorta given the nod to Britain about Greece during the Moscow Conference of 1944. The Moscow Conferece occured after the Caserta Agreement between EAM, Greek government in exile and the British in September 1944, which accepted the Greek government in exile's authority. It's a contested topic in historiography though, but worth noting that anticommunists such as Nikos Marantzidis emphasise the Soviet role with EAM / DSE to portray them as foreign forces. sube fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Apr 1, 2023 |
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Apr 1, 2023 21:51
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It's one of his few books worth a drat. I'm not familiar with the rest of his bibliography, tell you the truth. I just got introduced to it while visiting my parents last year and once started couldn't put it down.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:57
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 This book is absolutely phenomenal. It's a history of how, across the 19th Century, "failure" went from something that happened to a business to a word that described what someone was. It basically works as a whole overview of 19th Century hustle culture ("get ahead culture") and how that made its way into the very basics of how we speak. Includes things like the development of the credit rating system (describing someone as "first-rate" or "second-rate" comes from literally logging what sort of business loan someone would qualify for), how that ties into the development of the US security state, and also wild stuff like people complaining during the Civil War like "by being in debt I am essentially a slave myself only it is worse since I'm white and therefore naturally accustomed to freedom." All around great book.
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Apr 1, 2023 22:01
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Anyone who’s interested in the causes of WWI (or anyone whose read the guns of august) should read the sleepwalkers. Amazing book.
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Apr 1, 2023 22:01
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Stalin had kinda sorta given the nod to Britain about Greece during the Moscow Conference of 1944. Oh also, since I love being pedantic: everything surrounding the percentage agreement is very disputed. Generally, its importance has been overstated, as it was not returned to at all afterwards - and, anyway, the extent of Soviet agreement is also questionable, as Stalin only ticked the Romanian portion and Churchill wrote a letter to Stalin explaining why he had made this particular offer later on, which shows it was probably rejected (why write a letter explaining the why if the other side agreed to it?).
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Apr 1, 2023 22:06
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buffalo all day posted:Anyone who’s interested in the causes of WWI (or anyone whose read the guns of august) should read the sleepwalkers. Amazing book. Sleepwalkers is very good, but also it's very oddly sympathetic to Austria-Hungary? Like he exceptionalises Serbian nationalism and even compares it to 9/11 once lol
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Apr 1, 2023 22:14
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sube posted:how doe she define disaster capitalism The theory is that people don't want free market reform because it causes intense disruption and leads to immense wealth inequality and removes the ability of sovereign nations to actually help their people because they end up enslaved to the IMF and World Bank. So because people would never vote for the abolition of price controls and subsides that provide them with a decent life, you have to make such changes in the aftermath of a massive shock, like the coup in Chile, and you have to then maintain it with forms of repression, either physical torture or psychologically. Basically, the people who benefit from cracking open a new market aren't the people who live there; in Iraq for example the multinational companies didn't use Iraqi labor at all, so they had no support system, no jobs since the state firms were privatized, and no protections from 'market forces' which leads to increased poverty and decreased quality of life for huge chunks of the population.
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Apr 1, 2023 22:22
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Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies (two volumes) is essential reading for all people, but especially for historians, feminists, and communists. Theweleit analyzes the writing of Freikorps soldiers and officers to tease out the psychological underpinnings of fascism. His investigation and conclusion are second to none and he is deft at avoiding weeds except to lead you into them and back out. Filled with photos, paintings, poetry, art, it's a great if long read. Don't skip.
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Apr 1, 2023 22:44
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sube posted:Sleepwalkers is very good, but also it's very oddly sympathetic to Austria-Hungary? Like he exceptionalises Serbian nationalism and even compares it to 9/11 once lol Iirc he’s mostly sympathetic in the sense that he acknowledged that “continued survival” was, like, a valid interest for the A-H government to have and that it was facing existential threats, and a Serbian nationalist organization (backed by factions in the Serbian government) assassinating the heir to the throne was actually really provocative!!
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Apr 1, 2023 22:45
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Some excellent recs itt, want to read more history so will be chasing some of these up John Julius Norwich's history of the popes is a fun read once you get past the fact that hes very close to the subject matter (iirc in the preface he just casually drops that his dad used to work for the vatican in some capacity for a bit) and he gives the modern popes a lot of leeway for dodgy poo poo
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Apr 1, 2023 22:55
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buffalo all day posted:Iirc he’s mostly sympathetic in the sense that he acknowledged that “continued survival” was, like, a valid interest for the A-H government to have and that it was facing existential threats, and a Serbian nationalist organization (backed by factions in the Serbian government) assassinating the heir to the throne was actually really provocative!! it's still a good book though, it has a lot of depth. just sometimes he gets lost in the weeds trying to analogise it to assad / kosovo war
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Apr 1, 2023 23:17
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Crucible of War by Fred Anderson is a really solid one volume book about the French and Indian War aka the prelude to the American Revolution. It's probably my favorite military history book aside from Shattered Sword which also is incredibly loving good.
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Apr 1, 2023 23:22
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reading adam tooze's The Deluge currently and it's a really well-presented argument so far about USA's unwilligness to assume its role as global power, despite being the economic hegemon, leading to the WW2. i love his writing style already from his The Wages of Destruction
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Apr 2, 2023 11:02
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I cannot recommend enough Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767 by Thorkild Hansen. Was translated from Danish in the 1960s and covers a long forgotten expedition to Yemen by Danish explorers to trace the stories from the Old Testament. The group were a bunch of bickering well educated people who ended up hating each other. The expedition...did not turn out well. Well written and a fascinating subject, diving both into the regional history and nuances but also the interpersonal conflicts between the expeditionary members based entirely on their letters and samples sent back to Copenhagen.
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Apr 2, 2023 17:50
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