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Mr Shankly posted:Despite it being published originally in 1989, David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East," is I think still one of the better accounts on the subject. You can also consult James Gelvin's "The Modern Middle East" for chapters that deal with this period particularly. I think he has the best modern Middle East general survey book out there right now. Thank you for this, I was looking for something outside of the European angle so I purchased your second recommendation. I am asking for another recommendation, this time on any books on the British Raj and/or the Partition of India and Pakistan. While I'm not trying to fit a narrative, I would prefer one that doesn't glorify/whitewash the effects of colonization. For example, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India is not what I am looking for. I am curious about Freedom at Midnight by Collins/LaPierre, I really enjoyed O Jerusalem! by them. But any other recommendations or vetting of this potential read would be great, I am really paranoid about orientalism in books about India written by white people. edit: After some online research it seems Freedom at Midnight is poo poo, and based mostly on interviews from Lord Mountbatten who is portrayed as the main hero of the Indian independence movement. Give me some recs guys! Pron on VHS fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 05:21
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GalacticAcid posted:On a different front, I recommend Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast by Kevin Myers. The author is apparently a bizarre rightwinger, but his memoir of The Troubles is an excellent read from a distinct perspective. I loved this book too, it deserves a broader readership but I think the author's polemical views in his columns scares people away. The whole thing had a slightly dreamlike quality, making the Troubles seem absurd and tragic. The author doesn't put himself across very well in the book, he seems faintly neurotic, and he basically admits to sexual assault in that vignette with the IRA man's wife and her not-actually-consenting sister...
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Jul 8, 2013 13:27
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chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2013 19:38
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End Of Worlds posted:I'm looking for some English history. I've just gone through Dan Jones' The Plantagenets, which was great and Alison Weir's The Wars of the Roses. I'm working on Thomas Penn's Winter King which is a hell of a slog. Dude is just a dry writer. All the King's Armies - A Military History of the English Civil War 1642-51 by Stuart Reid
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Jul 11, 2013 20:29
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My nephew is getting ready to turn 10 and has a pretty intense fascination with a lot of the little WW2 figurines and miniatures his dad has gotten him. I was thinking about getting him a simple history of the war for his birthday and was looking for input. His reading level is pretty high though he is still a ten-year old. Are there books that would be suitable?
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Jul 15, 2013 19:31
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1stGear posted:My nephew is getting ready to turn 10 and has a pretty intense fascination with a lot of the little WW2 figurines and miniatures his dad has gotten him. I was thinking about getting him a simple history of the war for his birthday and was looking for input. His reading level is pretty high though he is still a ten-year old. Are there books that would be suitable? The Rape of Nanking
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Jul 16, 2013 03:02
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I would honestly try to find one of those illustrated books on ww2 that you would normally find in a library or something.
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Jul 16, 2013 03:10
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Hey I don't know if I'm better off asking in D&D but does anyone know of a good book about the black panthers?
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Jul 17, 2013 21:30
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I recently picked up The Black Count, a biography of Alexandre Dumas (all three) which is turned out to be pretty fascinating. The author tends to write a lot about his journey to find resources on the grandfather since the author one accidentally eclipsed his own father's fame - despite his main goal in life being to preserve the memory of his father who was the titular "black count "who he based almost all of his characters off of. I didn't even realize that he was black - let alone that he was one of the highest-ranking black officers in the Western World until Colin Powell.1stGear posted:My nephew is getting ready to turn 10 and has a pretty intense fascination with a lot of the little WW2 figurines and miniatures his dad has gotten him. I was thinking about getting him a simple history of the war for his birthday and was looking for input. His reading level is pretty high though he is still a ten-year old. Are there books that would be suitable?
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Jul 17, 2013 22:20
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Starks posted:Hey I don't know if I'm better off asking in D&D but does anyone know of a good book about the black panthers? Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson is a good book about a black panther. It's an engrossing read and a powerful statement of radical black Marxism and a look at the dehumanizing aspects of prison. It's useful for understanding a militant black mindset. It is not a good look at the organizational structure of the Black Panther Party or its origins though, nor does it include much about Bobby Seale or Huey Newton, who were obviously considerably more instrumental to the BPs. Look up George Jackson to get an idea if you would be interested in reading more about him.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:13
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1stGear posted:My nephew is getting ready to turn 10 and has a pretty intense fascination with a lot of the little WW2 figurines and miniatures his dad has gotten him. I was thinking about getting him a simple history of the war for his birthday and was looking for input. His reading level is pretty high though he is still a ten-year old. Are there books that would be suitable? Night by Elie Wiesel. I'm serious: I read it in school around that age, it had a pretty big impact on how I felt about war at the time.
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Jul 18, 2013 03:00
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GalacticAcid posted:Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson is a good book about a black panther. It's an engrossing read and a powerful statement of radical black Marxism and a look at the dehumanizing aspects of prison. It's useful for understanding a militant black mindset. That definitely sounds very interesting and I'm gonna put it on my to-read list, but yeah I'm still looking for something that goes into more detail about the party itself.
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Jul 18, 2013 03:07
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Starks posted:That definitely sounds very interesting and I'm gonna put it on my to-read list, but yeah I'm still looking for something that goes into more detail about the party itself. There are a couple of recent, well-regarded general histories of BPP (I haven't read either). Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom (Goodreads Author), Waldo E. Martin Jr. (here's a q&a with the authors) Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party by Paul Alkebulan, a bottom-up history focusing on the party's grass roots activism (review here).
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Jul 18, 2013 03:28
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dokmo posted:There are a couple of recent, well-regarded general histories of BPP (I haven't read either). Thanks! After some research that first one looks like exactly what I'm looking for.
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Jul 18, 2013 06:25
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dokmo posted:Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom (Goodreads Author), Waldo E. Martin Jr. (here's a q&a with the authors) I actually finished reading that like the other day. Its pretty good.
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Jul 18, 2013 07:35
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barkingclam posted:Night by Elie Wiesel. I'm serious: I read it in school around that age, it had a pretty big impact on how I felt about war at the time.
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Jul 18, 2013 17:43
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Any recommendations about the history of comic books? I have Ten-Cent Plague but I'm sort of looking for something that covers comics in their entirety, though I wouldn't be adverse to some books that focus on individual characters.
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Jul 19, 2013 05:34
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Good recommendations on any of the following topics? • ancient Mesopotamia -- history of the city-states, mythology (Sumerian alien stuff need not apply), wars & political interactions • the American South, specifically Alabama, prior to and during the Civil War • history of hauntings, witch hunts, and demonic possession throughout Europe and America
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Jul 20, 2013 03:29
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bpower posted:I just finished Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. I bought it because I recently listened to Ben Carlin's podcasts about the Eastern Front Ghosts of the Ostfront. If you haven't listened to that I highly recommend it. It's his best work. Anyway OstKrieg is amazing. The scale of everything from the battles, the sacrifices, the ruthlessness of Stalin and Hitler to the depravity of Hitler's plans for the East shook me. I'm a month late here, but you might look into Robert Citino's The German Way of War, which is a very general study of the development of the Prussian-German operational style, or his The Path to Blitzkrieg, which focuses more on the evolution of Reichsheer doctrine in the interwar years. Dennis Showalter's Hitler's Panzers takes a good look at German armored operations. For a more critical take on how the Germans weren't as great as they are often assumed to have been, David Stone's Shattered Genius focuses on the German General Staff during the war. I haven't gotten around to reading it myself, but I hear it's good.
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Jul 22, 2013 06:43
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quote:• history of hauntings, witch hunts, and demonic possession throughout Europe and America I'm not really sure what kind of book you're after here, but I'll suggest a few that might be of interest. Norman Cohn's 'Europe's Inner Demons' is an essential history of the European witch-hunts. Also 'Witchcraze', by Anne Llewyllyn Barstow puts the question of gender front and centre. Carlo Ginzburg's 'Ecstasies' is a typically broad-stroke Ginzburgian look at witches and folk-belief that forms a neat counter-point to Cohn. Similarly, 'The Night Battles', also by Ginzburg is quite good. 'Satan the Heretic' by Alain Boureau is a good, short book on the explosion of interest in demonology that occurred in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Filled with neat little stories about demon summoning. And of course 'Religion and the Decline of Magic' by Keith Thomas.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:03
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Does anyone have suggestions for books about Quebec history? I have A People's History of Quebec but am finding it a bit of a slog. Perhaps a more targeted book, if any exist?
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Jul 23, 2013 07:28
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Is there a very general / readable history of Britain between say 1066 and the 19th Century? I want to finally get all the Henrys, Richards, etc clear in my head, and at least have a vague timeline on which I can place things like the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War, the Reformation, the wars with France etc.
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Jul 23, 2013 09:22
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TheBandersnatch posted:Does anyone have suggestions for books about Quebec history? I have A People's History of Quebec but am finding it a bit of a slog. Perhaps a more targeted book, if any exist? A friend tells me there aren't that many good general histories, most of which seem to be written in the 1980s for some reason. He suggests Quebec: A History 1867-1929 by Paul-André Linteau, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis by Kenneth McRoberts, and for a history focused on the nationalist aspirations of Quebec, The Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec by Susan Mann. I'll add that Mason Wade's 1955 scholarly monograph The French Canadians, 1760-1945 may be a little too dry for what you're looking for, but it seems to be in the public domain (available at archive.org).
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Jul 23, 2013 16:05
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Seams posted:I'm not really sure what kind of book you're after here, but I'll suggest a few that might be of interest. Norman Cohn's 'Europe's Inner Demons' is an essential history of the European witch-hunts. Also 'Witchcraze', by Anne Llewyllyn Barstow puts the question of gender front and centre. Carlo Ginzburg's 'Ecstasies' is a typically broad-stroke Ginzburgian look at witches and folk-belief that forms a neat counter-point to Cohn. Similarly, 'The Night Battles', also by Ginzburg is quite good. These are perfect. Thank you!
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Jul 23, 2013 21:04
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Panda So Panda posted:Good recommendations on any of the following topics? Marc van den Mieroop - The Ancient Mesopotamian City and A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC or Amelie Kuhrt - The Ancient Near East, c. 3000-330 BC, but thats written more for a scholarly audience, so it might be a bit dry. Panda So Panda posted:• history of hauntings, witch hunts, and demonic possession throughout Europe and America
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Jul 24, 2013 13:54
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Anyone have any suggestions for reading on the Dominican Republic?
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Jul 24, 2013 18:55
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Can anyone give me any recommendations of books about the early phase of the Pacific war from 1941 to 1942 or more specifically the Dutch East Indies campaign?
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Jul 25, 2013 16:59
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1stGear posted:My nephew is getting ready to turn 10 and has a pretty intense fascination with a lot of the little WW2 figurines and miniatures his dad has gotten him. I was thinking about getting him a simple history of the war for his birthday and was looking for input. His reading level is pretty high though he is still a ten-year old. Are there books that would be suitable? I don't know if these books are in his age range, but Usborne books are pretty awesome for kids (and I will admit...myself also!) You can scan some of the pages and see if you think they are at his level, and at the base of these links, you will find additional suggested WW2 titles: http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?id=3070 http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?cat=1&area=ILB&subcat=ILH&id=1722
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Jul 25, 2013 21:28
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Comrade Cheggorsky posted:Can anyone give me any recommendations of books about the early phase of the Pacific war from 1941 to 1942 or more specifically the Dutch East Indies campaign? Pacific Crucible by Ian Toll, starts with Pearl Harbor but ends at Midway. It goes into ABDACOM and the whole Philippines/NEI disasters. I thought it was very readable, it was written in a similar style to Rick Atkinson's WW2 trilogy which is also pretty good. There's also The Midway Campaign by Jack Greene, which despite the name covers pretty much the same period. I haven't read this one yet but apparently it goes more in to the technical analysis rather than narrative.
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Jul 26, 2013 14:29
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Charlie Mopps posted:Marc van den Mieroop - The Ancient Mesopotamian City and A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC Thanks for these! Much appreciated!
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Jul 27, 2013 13:27
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Mr Crucial posted:Pacific Crucible by Ian Toll, starts with Pearl Harbor but ends at Midway. It goes into ABDACOM and the whole Philippines/NEI disasters. I thought it was very readable, it was written in a similar style to Rick Atkinson's WW2 trilogy which is also pretty good. Thanks for the recommendations, I will be sure to check these out.
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Jul 27, 2013 23:58
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Hey folks, I've never posted in here before, so be gentle. I just started and finished A Song of Ice and Fire, and as a result, I'm now fascinated by medieval history. Specifically, the Hundred Years War, the Crusades, the War of the Roses, and medieval weaponry: siege towers, trebuchets, all that good stuff. But I have no idea where to begin with history. I've got a firm grasp on basic Western Civilization. I've taken classes. But now I'd like to get hardcore into the Middle Ages. I'm interested in both the politics and the military aspects of these times. But I have no idea where to start. "Medieval History" is a category on Amazon.com with hundreds of books. I've got the TTC lectures on Medieval History. The Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. However, I'd like to have some books. Stuff I can read while I'm in bed. Diagrams and illustrations of where empires stood so I can have the best references.
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Jul 29, 2013 15:31
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Really you should just start with whatever strikes your fancy. But here are some books I would recommend off the top of my head: The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge 1453 by Roger Crowley Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownsworth Her Majesty's Spymaster by Stephen Budiansky The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli While The Prince is not necessarily history, it gives plenty of insight to how governments acted in the time of feudalism. Some of it may be non obvious and its a quick read anyway. Also if you are willing to move a little further east for the medieval history read The Ottoman Centuries by Lord Kinross. The Ottoman Empire was an important part of history for Europe and knowing what on and how they became what they were is pretty important.
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Jul 29, 2013 17:03
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Also: Penguin Classics has a good book called Chronicles of the Crusades you might wanna look into: it's two different first-hand accounts of crusades, one to Byzantine and another to Egypt.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:45
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escape artist posted:I just started and finished A Song of Ice and Fire, and as a result, I'm now fascinated by medieval history. Specifically, the Hundred Years War, the Crusades, the War of the Roses, and medieval weaponry: siege towers, trebuchets, all that good stuff. The starting place for 100 years war should always be Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. I read it again last year and it still holds up as one of the greatest history books I've ever read. I've yet to find a decent single-volume history of the Crusades that satisfied me. I like narrative histories that revolve around people, so James Reston Jr's Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade and Jonathan Phillips's The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople are two books that I really enjoyed, although they hardly touch on the grand scope of the Crusades in their global context. In a more interpretive vein, Jay Rubenstein's Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse did more to help me make sense of the crusaders' aims than any other book. Early modern Great Britain isn't really my thing, but I found Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses by David Santiuste to be a useful introduction. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's Annals of a Fortress: Twenty-Two Centuries of Siege Warfare is the history of an imaginary fort, told from the perspective of the fort. That description makes it sound crazy, but it's one of the best books on military history I've read.
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Jul 30, 2013 04:41
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So what are some good books about Ming-era China?
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Aug 12, 2013 04:03
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escape artist posted:Hey folks, I've never posted in here before, so be gentle. I must second A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. It’s loosely a narrative history as it follows the life of Enguerrand VII, Lord of Coucy – an incredibly rich French nobleman with strong ties to the English crown. And so we get a history of someone that’s fairly well documented and involved in both sides of the war as well as dealing with more provincial matters of the time. It’s got knights in shining armour, the black death, crusades, inquisitions, antipopes, sieges, peasant revolts, bizarre traditions and other medieval tropes. The scale of injustice and death at the time is astounding: large chunks of the population are blatted away by the plague, war is waged with eagerness by the nobility but paid for by the commoners through harsh taxes and being plundered by both friendly and enemy forces when the armies move through their land. The nobility, as ever, are detached from the rest of society and are confused and frightened by peasant revolts; and crush them mercilessly. All the while Tuchman makes sure to explain the motivations behind this kind of behaviour that seems incredibly cruel or naïve and this really helps to humanise what is otherwise a litany of death and suffering. It's the best history book I’ve ever read and I also initially came to it as a Song of Ice and Fire fan.
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Aug 12, 2013 16:51
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Recently finished Niccolo's Smile by Maurizio Viroli. It's a biography of Niccolo Machiavelli. Author set out to try to show Machiavelli's human side and not only political machinations he was famous for. Resulting book is a quick, fun read that, at least for me, managed to clear up some misconceptions about the man. The book is quite entertaining. Obviously it is fun to read about Machiavelli's political maneuvering and his analysis of crazy events that transpired around him. The unexpected joy comes from anecdotes from his private life. While Machiavelli is stereotypically remembered as a cold, calculating politician he was also a pretty hilarious rear end in a top hat. One of my favorite stunts he pulled was when he was tasked with negotiating some kind of jurisdiction problem with monks in some monastery. While there, he also was supposed to find a suitable preacher who could preach in Florence. Machiavelli not only wasn't very religious but also had quite low opinion on clergy. So he agreed to do this because it was a chance to gently caress with people. He immediately decided he would find the most hilariously mental preacher possible. As for negotiations, he decided it was a good chance to eat well for a couple of days. He asked a friend to send important looking courier with some documents he described as of utmost importance to the impressed monks. This ruse worked so well he asked his friend to keep sending a courier with bullshit so he could gently caress with monks some more. He had to leave eventually, as the head monk became suspicious when the courier once came not only with "important" documents but also a giant cake. Another fun tidbit was when a friend described in a letter to Niccolo how he slept with a beautiful woman. Machiavelli responded with a bizarre story where he hosed some lady in the dark and then decided to find out what she looked like and it essentially turned into renaissance Hakan post. On more serious note, what struck me is how much idealism there was in this guy who is viewed as a poster boy for political cynicism. In his writings he merely tried to describe how an effective ruler should act to serve his country. It was important to him that rulers serve the good of the people and not just themselves. His love for republic was quite touching, really. There are two downsides to the book that I can think of. First, Viroli has some serious man-crush on Machiavelli and the gushing gets occasionally annoying. Secondly, the book loses some steam at the end. To be fair that's primarily because the end of Machiavelli's life was pretty boring and depressing, especially after all the fun poo poo he saw and got up to when he still had power. All in all, it's a recommend. It's probably not the most comprehensive book on Machiavelli but I felt it was just the right length to remain compelling. Historical novels keep popping up in this thread so I'm going to mention Ground Is Burning by Samuel Black. It follows the lives of Cezare Borgia, Machiavelli, Leonardo Da Vinci and also, uhm, some lady. I had Niccolo's Smile fresh in my memory so it was neat that his characterization lined up pretty well. Points of view of Leonardo and Cezare are also pretty good. I am pretty undecided about Dorotea, who is the aforementioned lady who was real but her story in the book was almost completely made up by Black. The book is at its best when main players get to interact with each other. Overall pretty solid but not amazing.
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Aug 15, 2013 14:37
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Just finished Zoroastrians Their Religious Beliefs and Practices by Mary Boyce. Picked it up because even though Zoroastrianism was a major religion that dominated the middle east for quite some time I knew next to nothing about it. The grand majority of the book was about the history of the empires that had Zoroastrianism as their state religion though. And above all kind of dry. Its not something I would really recommend but I found it interesting. I know that this may be a little outside of the scope of the thread but does anyone have any recommendations for books covering world religions. I am woefully ignorant about anything that isn't Christianity/Judaism or Greek/Norse/Roman mythology.
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Aug 21, 2013 05:23
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Tekopo posted:I've bought What Hath God Wraught but before I start it, what's the focus of the book? I was looking into something concerning the Mexican War since I couldn't find much else at my local bookshop. Does it go a lot into detail concerning that era or is the focus a lot more broad? I know this is from a while ago, but no, it really doesn't focus much on the Mexican War until the late pages (like page ~740). I would instead suggest A Country of Vast Designs: James K Polk, The Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent. I would still recommend reading What Hath God Wrought though, and any other Oxford History of the US books.
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Aug 21, 2013 22:59
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