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MonsieurChoc posted:So on a whim I got Leopold's Ghost and started reading it. I read this recently. You almost have to admire Leopold's evil genius in deceiving the world with bullshit about his humanitarian aims in the Congo, all while holding sole ownership and total power over it. I'm just glad I learned who E.D. Morel was from the book. Such a tenacious reformer.
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Mar 5, 2015 18:52
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It really is a startling achievement of the horrors of Belgian colonialism that when the other colonial powers found out about it they were fully morally outraged. 'You did what?! A trade in human hands?!'
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Mar 5, 2015 18:57
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There's a spectacularly hypocritical statue in Ostend near the beach, of Leopold II surrounded by...well, just look at it. (It makes me wonder if JK Rowling knew about it when she wrote the Ministry of Magic in Book 7 with the Magic is Might statue.) Rah rah, everyone loves him, locals and Africans alike, one big happy family. Now, look more closely at the Congolese gentleman on the far left  About ten years ago, an activist group cut his hand off in protest. The council decided not to repair the damage.
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Mar 5, 2015 20:31
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MeatwadIsGod posted:I read this recently. You almost have to admire Leopold's evil genius in deceiving the world with bullshit about his humanitarian aims in the Congo, all while holding sole ownership and total power over it. I'm just glad I learned who E.D. Morel was from the book. Such a tenacious reformer. The incredible act of trickery he pulled off to get the country in the first place sounds like a hollywood con movie. One with horrible consequences. It was this old thing (http://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/most-evil-companies/1/) that got me to get the book. It's a terrific read. It wasn't the first time I learned about the Congo, though. Back in 8th grade, I did an oral presentation on Lumumba that ended with a special projection of the movie by Raoul Peck to the entire class (our french teacher would show us various movies throughout the year, we also saw Apocalypse Now). And earlier this year I watched the amazing documentary Virunga on Netflix. Watch it, it's great. Man, poor Congo. Such a beautiful place, full of such atrocities.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxXf2Vxj_EU
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Mar 6, 2015 05:38
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So recently I read The Religion by Tim Willocks, and it's an awesome historical fiction book about the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans. Does anyone have any suggestions for a non fictiony (or another good fictiony) book on the siege?
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Mar 6, 2015 05:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:The incredible act of trickery he pulled off to get the country in the first place sounds like a hollywood con movie. One with horrible consequences. Lamumba is such a depressing capstone at the end of the book. I already knew about him from Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, but basically you have this colony finally getting a democratically elected, Congolese leader after all this Belgian rule, only for him to be assassinated by the ousted Belgian military and, of course, the neocolonial cancer that is the CIA. Then, as often happened, we replaced him with kleptocratic and brutal dictator and funded him annually with US tax dollars for decades.
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Mar 6, 2015 06:32
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Present posted:So recently I read The Religion by Tim Willocks, and it's an awesome historical fiction book about the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans. Does anyone have any suggestions for a non fictiony (or another good fictiony) book on the siege? I would really recommend Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley. It covers stuff like the battle of Lepanto as well as the siege so gives you a wider view of Malta's importance. Also, Francisco Balba di Correggio was an arquebusier who fought at the siege and later published a first hand account a couple of years later. Quite an in depth account and interesting to see him being slightly cagey about political issues surrounding the relief of the island for instance. "I have not touched upon things which occurred in the council, nor have I concerned myself with controversial matters - for these are things which I leave to more inquisitive men who are freer to do so than I am" Haha 
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Mar 6, 2015 10:55
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Beltfed posted:Haha
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Mar 6, 2015 15:12
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Does anyone have any suggestions for good Bronze Age collapse books?
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Mar 12, 2015 01:00
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MooselanderII posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for good Bronze Age collapse books? 1177 BC by Eric Cline. Sometimes a bit repetitive but other than that it's a good book with excellent source material, hth!
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Mar 12, 2015 09:42
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I haven't read 1177 BC yet, but it's on my list. Robert Drews' The End of the Bronze Age is pretty good. It's limited by its hypotheses about why everything went tits-up at the end of the Bronze Age, and I'm sure there's more current research since 1995, but it's pretty good for what it is.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:41
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Finished King Leopold's Ghopst. RIP, Casement and Morel and George Washington Williams and Nzungu and all the others. Leopold really was the quintessential capitalist, with infinite greed and no morality.
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Mar 13, 2015 12:15
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Can anyone recommend something on the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
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Mar 15, 2015 14:44
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Gambrinus posted:Can anyone recommend something on the Troubles in Northern Ireland? David McKittrick's Making Sense of the Troubles for a comprehensive overview, then Ed Moloney's Voices from the Grave for a really incredible piece of oral history from two men on opposing sides. Anyone have a suggestion for a light, perhaps narrative history of the Napoleonic Wars?
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Mar 16, 2015 05:24
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End Of Worlds posted:David McKittrick's Making Sense of the Troubles for a comprehensive overview, then Ed Moloney's Voices from the Grave for a really incredible piece of oral history from two men on opposing sides. Ordered the McKittrick. Thanks.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:07
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It is funny how people will fall all over themselves to say how depressing and how it made them lose faith in humanity after reading Leopold's Ghost when history is littered by events that would make this seem trivial.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:15
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Stravinsky posted:It is funny how people will fall all over themselves to say how depressing and how it made them lose faith in humanity after reading Leopold's Ghost when history is littered by events that would make this seem trivial. The closer in time an awful thing is the more it hits people. Mostly because a lot of people have a default understanding of history that "of course a bunch of bad things happened in the long long ago but since we got electricity/cars/whatever arbitrray thing Things Changed".
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Mar 17, 2015 22:20
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Stravinsky posted:It is funny how people will fall all over themselves to say how depressing and how it made them lose faith in humanity after reading Leopold's Ghost when history is littered by events that would make this seem trivial. It's not necessary to belittle one people's suffering to legitimize another's. The Congolese Genocide was cruel and senseless. Dozens of events throughout history were. To argue which was more cruel and more senseless is immaterial, insensitive, and quite frankly, idiotic. No personal disrespect, I just find trains of thought like that to be foolish.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:26
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Ezzum posted:It's not necessary to belittle one people's suffering to legitimize another's. The Congolese Genocide was cruel and senseless. Dozens of events throughout history were. To argue which was more cruel and more senseless is immaterial, insensitive, and quite frankly, idiotic. That was not my point. It is weird to me that this one book is the one that gets people instead of (insert book on wars,genocides,ruthless capitalism, or whatever is happening right now that they can actively do something about but won't).
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Mar 17, 2015 22:41
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It doesn't help that it was perpetrated by Belgium, a seemingly inoffensive mayonnaise-and-frites-loving small country best known to popular culture as the one the Germans are always marching through to have it out with the French.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:54
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It's also an event that has absolutely no presence in the public consciousness, so I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people who read KLG have never heard of the Congolese genocide. That makes it new, and shocking, and severely disturbing. Like we've all grown up knowing about the Holocaust and we watched 9/11 happen; we're relatively inured to these events. They're godawful, yeah, but we've always been aware of them as Bad Things, so we had to fold them into our worldview as we were constructing it. Discovering a brand new Bad Thing you'd never heard about can rock that worldview.
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Mar 18, 2015 02:30
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I finally got around to starting The Guns of August and I've been building a little reading list in my head for when I'm finished. First and kinda unrelated I want to read something on the Shackleton expedition, which I just find fascinating and was occurring around the same time, then Paris 1919, which I remember hearing is good from the Hardcore History podcast. Then I want to double back and read about the Franco-Prussian war and Bismarck/German unification, which seem like kinda big deals that I really know nothing about. So I was hoping for recommendations on Shackleton, Franco-Prussia, and Bismarck. HighClassSwankyTime posted:1177 BC by Eric Cline. Sometimes a bit repetitive but other than that it's a good book with excellent source material, hth! Remembering this for later. Thanks!
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Mar 18, 2015 04:39
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Stravinsky posted:That was not my point. It is weird to me that this one book is the one that gets people instead of (insert book on wars,genocides,ruthless capitalism, or whatever is happening right now that they can actively do something about but won't). I feel bad/cry every time I find out about a new horrible thing that happened in the past. I'm a real softie.
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Mar 18, 2015 05:11
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For the Franco-Prussian War, the classic is still very well regarded: Michael Howard's volume on it is excellent. There's a newer one by respected historian Geoffrey Wawro that also covers it (and he has one on the preceeding Austro-Prussian War as well).
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Mar 19, 2015 06:41
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Belgium isn't good for anything except waffles and fighting wars in. I say we abolish it entirely.
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Mar 20, 2015 05:15
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Stravinsky posted:It is funny how people will fall all over themselves to say how depressing and how it made them lose faith in humanity after reading Leopold's Ghost when history is littered by events that would make this seem trivial. Geez, feel better now about belittling both the Congolese Genocide and the person who felt bad after informing themselves about it? And your later snark about people doing nothing about current tragedies seems awfully assumptive regarding what the poster may or may not have done with their time so far. In short, maybe not be a rear end in a top hat? On topic, since it was asked, I've read Wawro's book and found it to be decently comprehensive and up-to-date on sources and research. Read quite drily, though, given the momentous nature of the events being covered. I'd give it a recommendation, if not a super-enthusiastic one. I don't think you'll find much better in English on it other than Howard's from the 1960's, which I found to be quite a bit Franco-centric.
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Mar 20, 2015 22:19
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It should also be mentioned that the Congolese genocide is one of the best examples for pointing out why colonialism sucks and why it's created so many awful problems in the world. It also highlights a ton of ways that globalization and the consumer market for commodities (in Leupold's case, rubber) can indirectly make life really lovely for lots of people out there. Not everyone knows that there's a very real human cost for living in a world where you get to have a supercomputer in your back pocket, and for a lot of people it's a pretty good shock when they realize it. edit: not to start an argument about the good/bad/evil of living in a first world society - it just doesn't hurt for people to know these things before deciding if they need to upgrade their 8 month old cell phone to this year's shiny new model, or any of the other 1001 random examples you could use to make the same point.
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Mar 20, 2015 22:51
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The book itself ends with a really good look at all the similar atrocities that were going on at the same time and did not get the same media campaign Congo got. As well, as going into how things really did not change as much as they should have afterward.
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Mar 23, 2015 02:03
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Look Sir Droids posted:Looking for recommendations on a book covering the War of the Roses through the Tudor ascension. I had just picked it up when you posted this and I didn't want to recommend it until I finished reading it, but I enjoyed 'The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors' by Dan Jones. It was a nice narrative history and a pretty easy read.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:09
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Mr_Roke posted:I had just picked it up when you posted this and I didn't want to recommend it until I finished reading it, but I enjoyed 'The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors' by Dan Jones. It was a nice narrative history and a pretty easy read. I'm pretty sure this was published in the US under the much less exciting title of The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors. It shares that title with Alison Weir's, uh, The Wars of the Roses. I've only read the latter - it's good, but (iirc) oddly stops either right before or immediately after Richard III's ascension, leaving out Bosworth and Henry VII's seizure of the throne. Jones' The Plantagenets is excellent, so his Wars is probably exactly what you're looking for.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:32
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Mr_Roke posted:I had just picked it up when you posted this and I didn't want to recommend it until I finished reading it, but I enjoyed 'The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors' by Dan Jones. It was a nice narrative history and a pretty easy read. Dan Jones' stuff is pretty darn good, especially if you know very little about the subject going into it and need someone to set out all the whos, whys and whats for you in a very readable, clear fashion. He finally managed to make the fairly convoluted lineage of Henry Tudor and his claim to the throne seem clear to me. In honour of the fact Richard III is getting reburied today, I'm reading Alison Weirs' The Princes In the Tower, about the disappearance of poor Edward V and his little brother and have come to agree with her conclusion that Richard is probably responsible for that particular dark and murderous deed, though her claims about Richard wanting to marry his niece, Elizabeth, failed to convince entirely.
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Mar 26, 2015 18:44
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As an unsolicited recommendation, I'd highly recommend The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. Just finished it today. I went into it having no idea that the Soviet Union had developed the most advanced biological weapons program in the world (illegally), and I also had no idea of how far our own program had gotten until the Nixon administration dismantled it. It really paints a scary picture of the piss-poor state of nuclear and biological weapons security during and after the Soviet Union, in addition to going in depth on the American and Soviet command and control systems for nuclear first strikes and retaliation. It focuses almost exclusively on the 1980s and forward, and I came away with some newfound respect for Reagan - something I didn't consider probable. Even though he clung way too tightly to the Strategic Defense Initiative (or Star Wars) considering all his military advisers on the matter told him what a fantasy it was, you really got the impression he hated the mere existence of nuclear weapons and wanted to do everything he could to eliminate them. I'd recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the Cold War or nuclear proliferation. Now, for a request, can anyone recommend me a book that goes into detail on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus? I've read Tom Holland's Rubicon and listened to the Hardcore History series on the Roman Republic, but that's about it. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 05:58
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I posted asking this in the Recommendation thread as well, because I'm looking for both fiction and non-fiction, but I'll ask here too: What are some good, exciting books about spies in Nazi-occupied territory during WW2?
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Mar 30, 2015 06:35
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Hedrigall posted:I posted asking this in the Recommendation thread as well, because I'm looking for both fiction and non-fiction, but I'll ask here too: I really enjoyed Agent Zigzag, if only because Eddie Chapman was nuts. Pretty sure the author of that book has done a few others centered on WWII espionage, though I can't speak to the historical rigor of any of them, since I'm not an expert myself.
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Mar 30, 2015 14:40
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End Of Worlds posted:I'm pretty sure this was published in the US under the much less exciting title of The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors. It shares that title with Alison Weir's, uh, The Wars of the Roses. I've only read the latter - it's good, but (iirc) oddly stops either right before or immediately after Richard III's ascension, leaving out Bosworth and Henry VII's seizure of the throne. Cool. I'll go with the Jones one. Bums me out Weir's leaves out the Tudors. Her Elizabeth I bio is great.
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Mar 30, 2015 15:49
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Silver2195 posted:[And the Band Played on] I've read that some important parts of its interpretation, including its grasp on epidemiology from a scientific point of view, have been questioned by many academics. Still probably worth reading. Belatedly, the main point of contention is the focus on Patient Zero and the implication that "it was this guy that bought AIDS to America". Which probably isn't true, but Patient Zero is an important case that lead to many becoming infected.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:07
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End Of Worlds posted:Anyone have a suggestion for a light, perhaps narrative history of the Napoleonic Wars? Echoing this request.
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Mar 31, 2015 20:28
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Handsome Ralph posted:Echoing this request. It might be medium rather than light, but I would always recommend The War of Wars, by Robert Harven It's utterly fantastic.
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Apr 1, 2015 00:11
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AdjectiveNoun posted:It might be medium rather than light, but I would always recommend The War of Wars, by Robert Harven It's utterly fantastic. That's perfect, thanks!
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Apr 1, 2015 01:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:If you really want to up your self-radicalization and utter contempt for western politics, follow Leopold's Ghost up with Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba and Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. Those two will basically take you through the Belgians pulling out of the Congo and the CIA subsequently arranging for the death of one of the greatest politicians Central Africa has ever seen through to the collapse of the state in the 90s and its decent into the churning hellhole of civil war and economic exploitation that it is now. You get this same feeling from reading Rick Perlstein's trilogy on American Conservatism after getting through Before The Storm his book about Barry Goldwater I got about 100 pages into Nixonland before I had to take a break because of how depressing and aggravating it was reading the exact same racist criticism that were deployed against the Civil Rights Movement being reused on everything after the Ferguson protests. To change gears, does anyone have any good recommendations on books about the Satan Panics of the the 70s-the early 90s and any books one that daycare center in California that was accused of Satanism in the 80s?
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Apr 1, 2015 06:26
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