|
FingersMaloy posted:Is Gibbon's Decline and Fall... worth reading or is it a more a piece of history itself? Has it been eclipsed by modern scholarship? I read the abridged version and I enjoyed it immensely. It's a challenging work that is both entertaining and serves as a good example of how historiography has evolved over the centuries. He also does some things that were novel for the time like evaluating the veracity of his sources. However, it has been eclipsed by modern scholarship. I recommend it heartily though--just remember that you may want to take a look at a timeline on wiki or something so you know what's stood the test of time and what hasn't. There are some critiques of the book around as well that may be useful.
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2016 19:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 04:28 |
|
FingersMaloy posted:Is Gibbon's Decline and Fall... worth reading or is it a more a piece of history itself? Has it been eclipsed by modern scholarship? As a literary accomplishment and as a way of understanding future works on the fall of Rome, all of which are in some way responding to Gibbon.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2016 20:27
|
|
|
FingersMaloy posted:Is Gibbon's Decline and Fall... worth reading or is it a more a piece of history itself? Has it been eclipsed by modern scholarship? It's totally out of date historywise of course, but you get to read a fat autistic englishman talk about how orientally despotic the Byzantine Empire was, so it's good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:22
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:As a literary accomplishment and as a way of understanding future works on the fall of Rome, all of which are in some way responding to Gibbon. yeah. realise every work of history is putting out an argument and is not necessarily true or right and will get argued against and for until new discoveries are made or a cultural viewpoints shift.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 06:24
|
|
|
I wouldn't call it a novel, but I've been reading Forbidden City, USA. Its largely a bunch of interviews with acts and dancers in Chinese nightclub from 1930s onwards. Its really compelling with a lot of the interviews talking about why they got into the business or the trouble getting customers. One of the best stories is about a guy who quit doing shows because he would get drunk and cheat on his wife, finally calling it quits to try and improve his family life. Worth a look.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 08:51
|
|
|
fantasy zone posted:yeah. realise every work of history is putting out an argument and is not necessarily true or right and will get argued against and for until new discoveries are made or a cultural viewpoints shift. Pretty much every history since Gibbon has be having an argument with him.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 17:42
|
|
|
Thanks for your replies, goons.sbaldrick posted:Pretty much every history since Gibbon has be having an argument with him. Now I feel like I've missed out by not having read this sooner.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 19:58
|
|
|
FingersMaloy posted:Thanks for your replies, goons. Are you going to try the full six volumes or the abridged version?
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 20:34
|
|
|
Minenfeld! posted:Are you going to try the full six volumes or the abridged version? The last time I read an abridged version (Democracy in America) I really regretted it. Looks like the Penguin Classics six vol set is about 1300 pages. That will honestly take me 2 or 3 years to complete, maybe more, because I'll probably read something else in between volumes. Thanks again! Edit: haha looks like the first volume is 1200 pages. Guess I'm committing to the long haul FingersMaloy fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 21:54
|
|
|
Quote is not edit
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 22:01
|
|
|
FingersMaloy posted:The last time I read an abridged version (Democracy in America) I really regretted it. My Allen Lane set from the 90s is only around 3300 pages, with two books per volume. From what I can find, I believe the current Penguin printing is a reprint of this edition. C.M. Kruger fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Sep 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 07:07
|
|
|
I'm writing a paper on ISIS for an international relations class. Is there any books I should in particular I should use for a source?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 23:12
|
|
|
free basket of chips posted:I'm writing a paper on ISIS for an international relations class. Is there any books I should in particular I should use for a source? ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror is generally regarded as the best ISIS-related book
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 08:45
|
|
|
free basket of chips posted:I'm writing a paper on ISIS for an international relations class. Is there any books I should in particular I should use for a source? Don't use a book as a source for this not joking here go and research some papers and studies from foreign relation councils/ant terrorism think groups. You can usually find them easily enough on your own and im assuming your college has access to scholar paper websites things (can't remember what they are called rn but you know what i mean) any book out there about isis is going to be poorly researched and well immensely lacking and dumbed down to make a quick buck off a conference populace
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 11:59
|
|
|
fantasy zone posted:Don't use a book as a source for this not joking here go and research some papers and studies from foreign relation councils/ant terrorism think groups. You can usually find them easily enough on your own and im assuming your college has access to scholar paper websites things (can't remember what they are called rn but you know what i mean) Seconding this advice specifically. Also in general (and this is something I wish I had received as feedback the first time I turned in a college paper citing a book) you should try to find material to cite that is specific, high quality, and timely (which has different criteria for, say, ISIS as opposed to geometric algebra). Very rarely is a book going to hit all three criteria, and if it does you are only going to know it by engaging with the current scholarly field. It may be hard at first but it will improve your academic writing a lot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2016 17:43
|
|
|
Any goonpinion on David Fischer's Albion's seed or Fischer in general?
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2016 13:32
|
|
|
Kuiperdolin posted:Any goonpinion on David Fischer's Albion's seed or Fischer in general? resounding eh for albion's seed. it's very very clever but it got something of a mixed reception from scholars at the time of its publication and has not fared over well since, critically
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 13:32
|
|
|
Kuiperdolin posted:Any goonpinion on David Fischer's Albion's seed or Fischer in general? In more recent timeframes I finally got around to reading Command and Control, which I'm sure has been mentioned in the thread. Holy crap, could not stop reading until I finished it at 4 AM. Currently reading the drier but equally gobsmacking One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin Kruse, which is about the huge success that opposition to the New Deal found when it wrapped itself in religion and funded the hell out of it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 09:12
|
|
|
K thanks guys.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 12:27
|
|
|
Has anybody read River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson? I just started it but thus far I'm really impressed with the crisp writing and analysis.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 20:49
|
|
|
Found out my local secondhand bookstore has a bunch of Robert K. Massie books, what's the general opinion about him around here?
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:Found out my local secondhand bookstore has a bunch of Robert K. Massie books, what's the general opinion about him around here? I've enjoyed his books. I believe he has a good reputation for pop history.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 03:44
|
|
man
|
They're pretty solid. His Peter the Great bio is one of my favorites, and castles of steel is a classic too
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 06:12
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:Found out my local secondhand bookstore has a bunch of Robert K. Massie books, what's the general opinion about him around here? Pretty high; I've read a couple of his. They're pretty big investments in terms of time, and I really hope you like the minutiae of how various members of the minor aristocracy relate to one another, but I still recommend them, particularly Dreadnaught and Castle of Steel, and the one on Peter the Great.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 22:36
|
|
|
GalacticAcid posted:Has anybody read River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson? I just started it but thus far I'm really impressed with the crisp writing and analysis. I'm reading it right now for a seminar.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2016 21:05
|
|
|
I asked this ages ago and didn't get any responses so I'd like to try again. Does anyone have any recommendations for something on pre-Colonial Africa. I'm specifically interested in West Africa (both the large Sahel empires and the smaller forest kingdoms) and the Somali and Swahili areas of the Indian Ocean coast but realistically I'll take anything. I've read a bit about colonial and post-colonial Africa and I'm really interested in finding out more about the cultures as they were before they were colonized.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 04:58
|
|
|
stereobreadsticks posted:I asked this ages ago and didn't get any responses so I'd like to try again. Does anyone have any recommendations for something on pre-Colonial Africa. I'm specifically interested in West Africa (both the large Sahel empires and the smaller forest kingdoms) and the Somali and Swahili areas of the Indian Ocean coast but realistically I'll take anything. I've read a bit about colonial and post-colonial Africa and I'm really interested in finding out more about the cultures as they were before they were colonized. I found a reading list (this is something I've been looking into as well) https://history.wisc.edu/prelim_precolonialafrica_pierce.pdf Books I've read about the colonial era that went into quite a lot of detail about West African cultures: The Diligent, by Robert Harms Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640, David Wheat Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World by James H. Sweet
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 16:18
|
|
|
FingersMaloy posted:Is Gibbon's Decline and Fall... worth reading or is it a more a piece of history itself? Has it been eclipsed by modern scholarship? I would absolutely recommend it. As other's have said, he set the bar for further scholarship and arguments about Rome's decline. I might be crazy, but I absolutely love Gibbon's writing style, old as it is. It's somehow crisp and to the point while being enormously descriptive. It's also an incredible accomplishment- I read the unabridged version over a year and the amount of random details scattered throughout is incredible.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 21:05
|
|
|
Kuiperdolin posted:Any goonpinion on David Fischer's Albion's seed or Fischer in general? good summary http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/ quote:I don’t know. But I highly recommend Albion’s Seed as an entertaining and enlightening work of historical scholarship which will be absolutely delightful if you don’t fret too much over all of the existential questions it raises.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2016 01:30
|
|
|
nikitakhrushchev posted:I found a reading list (this is something I've been looking into as well) https://history.wisc.edu/prelim_precolonialafrica_pierce.pdf Thank you for this, I'm going to be picking a lot of these up when I'm back in the States in a few months. Still hoping for something about the Indian Ocean coast, the development of trade with the Arab world and India is really interesting to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2016 13:43
|
|
|
clean ayers act posted:I would absolutely recommend it. As other's have said, he set the bar for further scholarship and arguments about Rome's decline. I might be crazy, but I absolutely love Gibbon's writing style, old as it is. It's somehow crisp and to the point while being enormously descriptive. I've already started Volume 1. The intro was really good and connected Gibbon's thought to a lot of his nonhistorian contemporaries, a lot of whom, I've read so I'm excited to work through it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2016 15:47
|
|
|
On the subject of the Indian Ocean coast of Africa, I'm thinking about picking up https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Swahili...s=swahili+coast and https://www.amazon.com/Modern-History-Somali-Eastern-African/dp/082141495X/ref=la_B001HCVRBG_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477971744&sr=1-1 Anyone ever read them?
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 04:43
|
|
|
What are your guy's favorite history audiobooks? It can be about anything. I don't mind listening to something completely niche as long as it's presented well.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 06:42
|
|
|
An obvious answer, but you might enjoy Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 13:50
|
|
|
The history audiobook I've probably listened to more than any other is A Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (narrated by Stefan Rudnicki). It's a pretty in depth history of the CIA from its foundation after WWII to the mid 2000s. Lots of the materials in it were only declassified in the early 2000s, and the sections dealing with CIA-backed coups in the '50s are especially detailed. It also contains (as far as I know) one of the most accurate transcripts of recordings from the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 14:51
|
|
|
MeatwadIsGod posted:The history audiobook I've probably listened to more than any other is A Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner Here's what seems to be the CIA's postion: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...ory-of-cia.html
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 22:19
|
|
|
Yeah it's actually that review that put tje thing on my radar. But I wasn't really convinced.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 22:59
|
|
|
Kuiperdolin posted:Yeah it's actually that review that put tje thing on my radar. But I wasn't really convinced. I read through the book at a crazy fast pace. You can tell the author enjoys the material, and it's filled with all sorts of cultural or social stuff you tend not to find in other histories, or at least the histories I tend to read. The writing's great, and most of it seems to ring true. In the same vein, I also enjoy Page Smith's huge multi volume history of America because both books spend a great deal of time dealing with people, rather than a few individuals or the same old rehash of events, and deals with what the people ate, read, how they danced, why, customs, names of towns and their meanings, thought patterns, naming conventions, etc., I found it all pretty fascinating.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 03:22
|
|
|
Anyone know some good books on the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church? Are Henry C. Lea's three volumes worth the read?
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 17:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 04:28 |
|
InevitableCheese posted:Anyone know some good books on the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church? Are Henry C. Lea's three volumes worth the read? It's not pop history at all but my attitude is: start medieval so you get the right context. Hamilton's The medieval inquisition is the classic scholarly text but it's kind of hard to get without a good library. Same for The formation of a persecuting society by Moore. Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany is an extremely good German case study and seems to be available cheaply used; it's also quite short.
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2016 00:58
|
|