|
Tupping Liberty posted:I have recently become really interested in Japanese-American Internment in WWII. I have "Infamy" "Looking Like the Enemy" and "Farewell to Manzanar" on my to-read list, but does anyone have other recommendations? I'd be interested in a good nonfiction historical account of the internment myself as well, though I'm still looking for some more nice sizable French Revolutionary histories ala Simon Schama's Citizens. I might just reread Citizens since I read it what feels like a billion years ago and remember enjoying it as a kid, but the more I hear people refer to it now it's with talk of how politically biased it is, so maybe it'll have lost its charm for me.
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 06:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 22:53 |
|
|
TheFallenEvincar posted:I'd be interested in a good nonfiction historical account of the internment myself as well, though I'm still looking for some more nice sizable French Revolutionary histories ala Simon Schama's Citizens. I might just reread Citizens since I read it what feels like a billion years ago and remember enjoying it as a kid, but the more I hear people refer to it now it's with talk of how politically biased it is, so maybe it'll have lost its charm for me. I'm slowly working through my soft-cover copy of Citizens right now whenever I can deal with the falling-apart spine and general hatefulness of physical books too large for their spines, and the bias is there (but all historians have bias so... so what? Be aware of it and read on) and the dude can WRITE. It takes a lively, beyond-interesting era of history and its characters and writes the gently caress out of 'em. It's very enjoyable, though I'm basically infuriated that I cannot buy it in e-book form in America (found a store in the UK that sells it in e-format but gently caress that tap dance). I hope his The Story of the Jews is as lively because that's in the queue.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 18:31
|
|
TheFallenEvincar posted:I'd be interested in a good nonfiction historical account of the internment myself as well, though I'm still looking for some more nice sizable French Revolutionary histories ala Simon Schama's Citizens. I might just reread Citizens since I read it what feels like a billion years ago and remember enjoying it as a kid, but the more I hear people refer to it now it's with talk of how politically biased it is, so maybe it'll have lost its charm for me. It's always worth keeping in mind that Schama cut his teeth studying the Dutch 'revolutionary' tradition and he's pretty pissed about the fact that the French didn't seem to give a poo poo about it when the two interacted.
|
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 18:34
|
|
|
Ah, I'll just dive back into it then. I do remember loving the ride and his writing... No e-books though?! drat, I'm gonna have to find my original mustyass gigantic hardcover of it, hopefully not reclaimed by a revolutionary committee of spiders in my closet somewhere.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 18:40
|
|
|
What recommendations do you have for books on The Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2015 01:51
|
|
|
Boomer The Cannon posted:What recommendations do you have for books on The Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Ghost Wars by Steve Coll is a great history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from the US/CIA perspective. It doesn't focus exclusively on it, but at least half the book is devoted to it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2015 03:22
|
|
|
Boomer The Cannon posted:What recommendations do you have for books on The Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? For the Falklands I have The Battle for the Falklands by Hastings & Jenkins. It alternates chapters between the political effort to mediate the situation and the military efforts. I also have The Falklands War 1982 by Middlebrook. It's been awhile since I read them but I remember they were good overviews of the conflict
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2015 13:30
|
|
Boomer The Cannon posted:What recommendations do you have for books on The Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Boyce, The Falklands War.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2015 13:39
|
|
|
Any decent cold war books but from the soviet union perspective? I read a thread on this somewhere, and it seemed like both sides were actually deathly scared of eachother but of course would never admit to it, and the USSR was more worried about the US being the instigator since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Since reading that, my interest in the subject has returned. Maybe there's a book out there can go more in depth to it (or totally disprove what I thought was true)?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2015 20:34
|
|
|
I am a history teacher so I have read my fair share of history books, nearly all of them fantastic. My all time favorite is Devil in the White City - which is non-fiction but reads very much like a historical fiction novel.  This book deals with the Chicago World's Fair and deals with the duality of Gilded-Age city-life, specifically of course: Chicago. One narrative deals with Daniel Burnham and friends: the architects of the Chicago World's Fair (The White City) and their meticulous nature in crafting the a fair that will trump the famous Paris World's Fair (Eifel Tower being the crowning achievement) The other, more visceral narrative follows the accounts of Herman Webster Mudget AKA "Dr." H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who uses the hussle and bussle of the fair to cover up a series of Ripper-like killings. ~All~ of the book is non-fiction, using a painstakingly amount of documentation to create.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2015 02:08
|
|
|
Avocados posted:Any decent cold war books but from the soviet union perspective? I read a thread on this somewhere, and it seemed like both sides were actually deathly scared of eachother but of course would never admit to it, and the USSR was more worried about the US being the instigator since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Since reading that, my interest in the subject has returned. Maybe there's a book out there can go more in depth to it (or totally disprove what I thought was true)? I can't totally vouch for it since I'm still reading it but The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin is a very in-depth history of the Cheka/KGB.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2015 13:34
|
|
Avocados posted:Any decent cold war books but from the soviet union perspective? I read a thread on this somewhere, and it seemed like both sides were actually deathly scared of eachother but of course would never admit to it, and the USSR was more worried about the US being the instigator since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Since reading that, my interest in the subject has returned. Maybe there's a book out there can go more in depth to it (or totally disprove what I thought was true)? MeatwadIsGod posted:I can't totally vouch for it since I'm still reading it but The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin is a very in-depth history of the Cheka/KGB. With this stuff you just have to be v. aware that Chris Andrew is very ideological, given his close ties to the intelligence community and his political views. He can also be a real boor in person. But he is also the dominant writer in his area for now, so you can't do without him. The book on the Mitrokhin archives is in two volumes, and there is also a book with Andrew & Gordievsky called KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev and other volumes with him. There's a good intelligence book on the Cuban Missile Crisis called by Alexander Fursenko and Timothy Naftali called One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev Kennedy, Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1958–1964 as well.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2015 14:11
|
|
|
Is there a go-to book on the Korean war that anyone can recommended? My knowledge of it so far consists of the fact that the British government couldn't really afford it and from mash.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 20:52
|
|
|
If there are details that weren't covered in Mash then those details aren't worth knowing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
Austen Tassletine posted:Is there a go-to book on the Korean war that anyone can recommended? My knowledge of it so far consists of the fact that the British government couldn't really afford it and from mash. "The Coldest Winter" by the guy who did "The Best and the Brightest" is decent, but obviously very Amero-centric. "The Korean War" by Bruce Cummings is also good, but is overly-biased (I believe) towards the NK. That said, it does a better job than the above at giving the historical context of the Korean War, and goes into good detail on the preceding two decades of poo poo you really should know if you're trying to understand the Korean War itself. "Brothers at War" seems to be the most well-regarded modern all-rounder, but I can't speak to it myself, I've bought it but haven't read it yet.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 22:07
|
|
|
smr posted:"The Coldest Winter" by the guy who did "The Best and the Brightest" is decent, but obviously very Amero-centric. Max Hasting's Korean War book was pretty decent from what I remember, although it has been quite a while. The Coldest Winter is more of an extended indictment of Ned Almond and MacArthur, although they both certainly seem to deserve it, and is very readable as David Halberstam was a great writer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 23:11
|
|
|
As someone for whom Chinese history is an enormous blindspot, where do I start with all that Three Kingdoms stuff? Should I just read Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I've heard you need to have an existing knowledge of Chinese history to get into that and that it's more of a legendary mythos anyway. I really want to get into more pre-1700s Chinese and Japanese history but it's hard to figure how/where to start and a lot of it seems frustratingly mythological.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2015 22:43
|
|
|
TheFallenEvincar posted:As someone for whom Chinese history is an enormous blindspot, where do I start with all that Three Kingdoms stuff? Should I just read Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I've heard you need to have an existing knowledge of Chinese history to get into that and that it's more of a legendary mythos anyway. Take this with a grain of salt because this is coming from a background of doing a similar project with German history, but I'd flat out start with the mythology. Once you've done that then swing around and pick up some academic works on the very early stages of the civilizations an work forward from there. Having a grip on the mythology/religion makes the rest of it make a hell of a lot more sense. Imagine, for example, trying to make sense out of the late Roman Empire or Merovingian/Carolingian Europe if you didn't know gently caress all about Christianity.
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2015 16:18
|
|
|
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is really good but I would not read it if you just want to cover history. Mythology is linked very closely to early history and you can not really shake it and instead accept it as part of how people viewed themselves. Almost every civilization was descended from some gods or something along those lines. There are some good general overview type history books I can recommend if you would like unless you want something specifically dealing with the three kingdoms time peroid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2015 17:32
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Take this with a grain of salt because this is coming from a background of doing a similar project with German history, but I'd flat out start with the mythology. Once you've done that then swing around and pick up some academic works on the very early stages of the civilizations an work forward from there. Having a grip on the mythology/religion makes the rest of it make a hell of a lot more sense. Imagine, for example, trying to make sense out of the late Roman Empire or Merovingian/Carolingian Europe if you didn't know gently caress all about Christianity. This is actually good advice because it will help you frame the thought process and beliefs of the chinese who unless you live in an asain region have a completely different culture than you.
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2015 17:56
|
|
|
Is there a good general world war 2 history book?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 02:04
|
|
|
Abu Dave posted:Is there a good general world war 2 history book?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 02:45
|
|
|
Abu Dave posted:Is there a good general world war 2 history book? I enjoyed Antony Beevor's The Second World War. It's sufficiently broad and accessible. He also wrote a good book on Stalingrad if you want something more specific.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 03:08
|
|
|
FMguru posted:I'm fond of Keegan's The Second World War, although it's more than 25 years old and has probably been superseded by newer scholarship. If it's anything like his book on the American Civil War, is was probably superseded by older scholarship as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 03:13
|
|
|
dublish posted:If it's anything like his book on the American Civil War, is was probably superseded by older scholarship as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 03:20
|
|
Abu Dave posted:Is there a good general world war 2 history book? Weinberg's A World At Arms.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2015 11:50
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:Weinberg's A World At Arms. This. A fantastic book, best one-volume work produced so far, and the only one that treats the war as truly global with a focus on how each theater's major events reverberated into the other theaters. And quite readable.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2015 15:25
|
|
|
TheFallenEvincar posted:Ah, I'll just dive back into it then. I do remember loving the ride and his writing... Amazon has a Kindle version of this book? Right here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
Thanks guys. I'll check out A World at Arms. I started Inferno by Max Hastings a bit but it assumed I knew alot of stuff I didn't, which was frustrating.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 00:36
|
|
|
Hastings is very Anglocentric. I remember picking up Inferno and thinking that it had more English perspectives on the invasion of Poland than it had Polish ones. I could be misremembering. It was 3 or 4 years ago, and I dropped it pretty quickly in favor of Beevor's book which came out around the same time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 01:25
|
|
|
I'm going in with 0 reference, I was looking for a text that like explains not super in depth like what happened between the end of WWI and 2 to cause the conflict. Inferno just jumps straight into Germany invading Poland and not explaining why or anything. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 01:33
|
|
|
Abu Dave posted:I'm going in with 0 reference, I was looking for a text that like explains not super in depth like what happened between the end of WWI and 2 to cause the conflict. Inferno just jumps straight into Germany invading Poland and not explaining why or anything. Inferno isn't a general overview. Hastings says so right in the introduction. It's a book written more about how the war was viewed and experienced by everyday people.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
Seconding "A World at Arms". I haven't finished it yet, but I was really impressed with how everything was interconnected. Is there a similar book for World War I? I've heard Keegan recommended, but I'm hoping for something a little more narrated, à la "A World at Arms".
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 16:09
|
|
|
I just finished Spycatcher by Peter Wright and highly enjoyed it. I really liked reading the bits about the modernization of MI5/6, and the various missions. Any similar books that go into that sort of detail for other intelligence services?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 16:35
|
|
|
Any suggestions for something readable on the development of money, stock/bond markets, and more complex aspects? I've read Debt by Graeber, Money: A Biography, but now I'm drawing a blank as where to move next. I feel like reading some biographies of innovators in the markets would be the next best bet?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 21:43
|
|
COOL CORN posted:Seconding "A World at Arms". I haven't finished it yet, but I was really impressed with how everything was interconnected. I don't think there is an accepted definitive monograph covering the whole of WW1 still - as a result, it has to be attacked from many angles.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 22:13
|
|
|
Kafka Esq. posted:Any suggestions for something readable on the development of money, stock/bond markets, and more complex aspects? I've read Debt by Graeber, Money: A Biography, but now I'm drawing a blank as where to move next. I feel like reading some biographies of innovators in the markets would be the next best bet? This might not be exactly what you're after, but try A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States by Stephen Mihm. It's about how money had to work in the United States between when the last national bank with money printing authority was shut down, and the civil war when federal paper currency was finally a thing again. And it goes in-depth on why running a near-modern country on thousands of different private bank's currencies was a clusterfuck.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 22:32
|
|
|
Stuff like that, which shed a light on how money actually works, is exactly what I'm looking for.
Kafka Esq. fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Aug 30, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 23:11
|
|
|
Kafka Esq. posted:Stuff like that, which shed a light on how money actually works, is exactly what I'm looking for. Then you might also be interested in Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. It's essentially about why the monetary policies that the American and several European central bankers made during and after WWI had a major hand in everything falling apart and the Great Depression happening. With especial focus on why their general policies of sticking to reclaim a gold standard was absolutely horrible economically.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 23:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 22:53 |
|
|
COOL CORN posted:Seconding "A World at Arms". I haven't finished it yet, but I was really impressed with how everything was interconnected. I haven't read A World At Arms but I really enjoyed "A World Undone" http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436309630&sr=8-1&keywords=World+Undone
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2015 23:54
|
|