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buglord posted:My audible credit came in. I need your guys' help! Here are two really good and interesting Russian history books that I think are accessible to the layperson, tell a good story, but also have a sufficient level of research rigour that you can be pretty certain they're not feeding you bullshit. Former People by Douglas Smith, which is about the fates of two prominent Russian aristocratic families during and after the Russian Revolution. The Baron's Cloak by Willard Sunderland, which is about the life and times of Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a Baltic German noble who served in the Russian army, went kind of insane, and led a failed campaign against the Bolsheviks in Mongolia during the Civil War. A Writer at War by Vassily Grossman is also great. Outside Russia books, I also like Roger Crowley's City of Fortune on the Venetian Republic and I've recommended it to people in here before and they enjoyed it. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Mar 9, 2018 |
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Mar 9, 2018 22:02
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buglord posted:My audible credit came in. I need your guys' help! The Life of Greece (narrated by Stefan Rudnicki) or Caesar and Christ (narrated by Grover Gardener) by Will Durant Endurance by Alfred Lansing (narrated by Simon Prebble) Spain in our Hearts by Adam Hochschild (narrated by Henry Strozier) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (narrated by Scott Brick)
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Mar 9, 2018 22:48
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Looking for books on California political and cultural history. I’ve read most of Kevin Starr’s works. Anything with more of a focus on the Bay Area than Starr’s work is preferable. I’ve read Season of the Witch and it felt like a rich boomer’s love letter to the hippie era.
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Mar 10, 2018 01:59
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IBroughttheFunk posted:This is a 100% recommend from me. It's the most informative work that I've ever found on the surviving religious minority communities of the Middle East. Just wanna say that I finally got around to reading that Gerard Russell book and it was really great and fascinating.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:59
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Looking for books on California political and cultural history. I’ve read most of Kevin Starr’s works. Anything with more of a focus on the Bay Area than Starr’s work is preferable. I’ve read Season of the Witch and it felt like a rich boomer’s love letter to the hippie era. I liked California: An Interpretive History (it might say it's a "textbook" and it might be textbook prices but it's not really one in my opinion)
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Mar 11, 2018 08:50
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Any good books that cover the history of navigation at sea? I'm specifically thinking of either the Polynesians navigating the Pacific and/or the Europeans crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
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Mar 13, 2018 03:50
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cult member at airport posted:I'm specifically thinking of either the Polynesians navigating the Pacific Piggybacking on this request too. I did a little project on Polynesian seafaring in college and it still seems like magic even though I'm familiar with how exactly they accomplished it.
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Mar 13, 2018 04:00
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Quite far from Polynesia, but there are two on the search for the Northwest Passage that I love: Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage (Glyn Williams) The Man Who Ate His Boots (Anthony Brandt) Both focus on British efforts. Williams' is a bit more extensive in what all is covered - Frobisher, Hudson, Ross, Franklin, etc. Brandt's has more focus on Franklin. From what I remember Thor Heyerdahl's book about his Kon-Tiki voyage works as an appreciation of Polynesian techniques. Granted, I think I read Kon-Tiki in junior high. If anyone has any further historical navigation suggestions, I too, am interested.
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Mar 14, 2018 01:49
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Any recommendations on Frederick the Great, the Austrian War of Succession, Silesian Wars, or the 7 Years War? (They all kind of blend together)
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Mar 14, 2018 12:53
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vyelkin posted:A Writer at War by Vassily Grossman is also great. Seconded, this is a fantastic book.
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Mar 14, 2018 23:35
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BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Aug 31, 2018 |
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Mar 17, 2018 21:06
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Is there any good history of the Incas out there?
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Mar 18, 2018 01:07
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Minenfeld! posted:Is there any good history of the Incas out there? The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie is very good. It's focused on contact and the resistance against Spain but has some pre-contact stuff in it too.
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Mar 18, 2018 10:29
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Finished off 'Hillbilly Elegy' by JD Vance, where do I go from there? I've got a copy of 'Darkness Comes to the Cumberlands" coming, but what other Appalachian history/social books exist?
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Mar 20, 2018 01:17
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You could read this sort-of rebuttal to JD Vance: https://beltpublishing.com/collections/notches-a-belt-publishing-imprint/products/appalachia
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Mar 20, 2018 01:26
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Boomer The Cannon posted:Finished off 'Hillbilly Elegy' by JD Vance, where do I go from there? I've got a copy of 'Darkness Comes to the Cumberlands" coming, but what other Appalachian history/social books exist? Ramp Hollow by Steven Stoll isn't a long read, but it's dense. It'll stick with you for a while.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:31
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Boomer The Cannon posted:Finished off 'Hillbilly Elegy' by JD Vance, where do I go from there? I've got a copy of 'Darkness Comes to the Cumberlands" coming, but what other Appalachian history/social books exist? Not exactly focused on Appalachia, but it is still mentions it, I enjoyed Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History Of Class In America." It's wholly focused on, well, poor whites from colonization onward. E: coincidentally, Amazon lists it alongside "Elegy" as "frequently bought together," so I wasn't too far off.
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Mar 25, 2018 22:43
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I've been looking around for a good book (or books) on the history of Hispaniola as a whole, or Haiti and the Dominican Republic separately. Most of the titles I can come up with tend to focus on the 2010 earthquake, anyone have a good suggestion of a book to look for?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:06
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Anyone have any recommendations for food/cooking history? Preferably focusing on America and/or the cultures that influence(d) America. I've recently read The Third Plate by Dan Barber, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin to give you an idea of what I'm interested in. And it would be cool to read a history of the industrial food system that might be a little more even handed.
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Mar 29, 2018 18:10
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camoseven posted:Anyone have any recommendations for food/cooking history? Preferably focusing on America and/or the cultures that influence(d) America. I've recently read The Third Plate by Dan Barber, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin to give you an idea of what I'm interested in. And it would be cool to read a history of the industrial food system that might be a little more even handed. It's been a long time since I read it, but I liked "Kitchen Literacy" by Ann Vileisis. It covers a lot of that sort of thing, such as in advertisements and packaging, for example how modern canned foods feature packaging featuring farms and rural areas to evoke an image unlike the reality of industrialized factory farming. This is basically the exact opposite of advertisements when canned foods were new, which focused on the image and ideas of science and factories cleaning and sanitizing the dirty grubby fruits and vegetables. "Cod" by Mark Kurlansky focuses on the fish in the northern Atlantic, and talks a bit about the impact of fishing on various cultures (one example, it was a cheap source of protein that slaveowners in the Carribean could feed the slaves, and thus cod fishing indirectly helped maintain slavery). He also wrote "The Big Oyster" which is like a history of New York City as seen through the lens of "oysters as a resource". You may also be interested in "Salt", but it's a lot more global in scale.
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Mar 29, 2018 20:40
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Beef Hardcheese posted:It's been a long time since I read it, but I liked "Kitchen Literacy" by Ann Vileisis. It covers a lot of that sort of thing, such as in advertisements and packaging, for example how modern canned foods feature packaging featuring farms and rural areas to evoke an image unlike the reality of industrialized factory farming. This is basically the exact opposite of advertisements when canned foods were new, which focused on the image and ideas of science and factories cleaning and sanitizing the dirty grubby fruits and vegetables. "Salt" and "Cod" were both very informative, entertaining reads. Kurlansky may be a one-trick pony, but it's a great trick ("Paper" was very good, too, but obviously not about food).
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Mar 29, 2018 22:21
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cult member at airport posted:Any good books that cover the history of navigation at sea? I'm specifically thinking of either the Polynesians navigating the Pacific and/or the Europeans crossing the Atlantic Ocean. camoseven posted:Anyone have any recommendations for food/cooking history? Somebody asked about New France / Quebec history way back in this thread and I didn't see an answer. I'm going to try to get some ideas for this here, I'm an Anglo-Canuck temporarily living in Ville de Quebec and my colleagues are almost all Quebecois going back many generations (they have Opinions about tortiere and about poutine, for example).
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Mar 29, 2018 22:22
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camoseven posted:Anyone have any recommendations for food/cooking history? Preferably focusing on America and/or the cultures that influence(d) America. I've recently read The Third Plate by Dan Barber, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin to give you an idea of what I'm interested in. And it would be cool to read a history of the industrial food system that might be a little more even handed. Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson is an oddly entertaining book about the history of cooking utensils and methods. Sometimes a few topics overstay their welcome, but the content is far more interesting than youd expect on a historical book about forks and chopsticks and copper pans (and microwaves and fridges in later chapters). ExecuDork posted:Related to this, between the oven/stove/cooker thing in a museum I saw here from circa 1930, and a recent discussion in a thread in GWS I've decided I want to know more about how people cooked at home in previous decades / centuries. I'm struck by how thoroughly standardized today's kitchens are, but there must be a zillion variations on "make food hot" that have been considered "of course this is what we do" for many different cultures. Anybody got any reccs? MeatwadIsGod posted:Spain in our Hearts by Adam Hochschild (narrated by Henry Strozier) buglord fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 22:42
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buglord posted:Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson is an oddly entertaining book about the history of cooking utensils and methods. Sometimes a few topics overstay their welcome, but the content is far more interesting than youd expect on a historical book about forks and chopsticks and copper pans. Seconded, I really enjoyed the heck out of that one. "If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home" by Lucy Worsley does the same but for the typical English home over the centuries. I'm reeeeeeeeal glad I live when I do.
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Mar 29, 2018 22:48
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Just finished Red Famine and while there isn't much more to be said in praise of the book than what's out in the press, I was really blown away by the scope of the Soviet responsibility that Applebaum outlines. There's also some interesting discussion about what constitutes "genocide" and the political implications for modern day Ukraine.
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Apr 2, 2018 18:52
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Most of the praise for the book in the non-specialist press has been positive, yeah, but reviews of the book by academic historians have been more critical of Applebaum's take on the intent behind the famine: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/2203 You might also want to look into Stephen Kotkin's latest book Waiting for Hitler (the first few chapters at least) for a slightly different outline of what happened.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:36
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Anything about the War of the Spanish Succesion? Preferably by non-spanish authors.
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Apr 17, 2018 20:45
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Any recommendations on a good single volume covering the Thirty Years War?
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Apr 18, 2018 04:29
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Europe's Tragedy.
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Apr 18, 2018 05:27
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I'll second that.
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Apr 18, 2018 20:34
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So I read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes a while ago, and quite enjoyed it. Wasn't too dry, but still was informational. Definitely recommend if anyone is interested in that topic. It goes from the first explorations in the atom, all the way up to the Manhattan Project itself. I feel like it gives you a nice overview and feel for the people involved as well. It focuses more on the American research into the bomb, for obvious reasons. But it does talk a little bit about what other nations such as Japan and Germany were doing as well. Overall, great read. I listened to the audiobook of it, and I thought it was well done and well voiced. Also, anyone have any suggestions regarding books about breaking the Enigma code, and that whole project with Alan Turing?
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Apr 25, 2018 17:37
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I'm reading the Ghost Map by Steven Johnson and I'm two chapters in and I want to give it a mention here because it's so dang good. Informative, good at painting a picture of the time, and it's got a bunch of excerpts from first-hand accounts of this cholera outbreak. Gruesome reading, too, but it's not out to wallow in the gore - instead it paints a horrifying picture and moves on to explain how the doctors and priests were trying to figure out why/how this was happening.
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Apr 28, 2018 19:20
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spiderbyte posted:So I read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes a while ago, and quite enjoyed it. Wasn't too dry, but still was informational. Definitely recommend if anyone is interested in that topic. It goes from the first explorations in the atom, all the way up to the Manhattan Project itself. I feel like it gives you a nice overview and feel for the people involved as well. It focuses more on the American research into the bomb, for obvious reasons. But it does talk a little bit about what other nations such as Japan and Germany were doing as well. Overall, great read. I listened to the audiobook of it, and I thought it was well done and well voiced. This is unrelated to your post but I think the sequel Dark Sun is a better read, if you haven't gotten to it. Less about physics and more about the Soviet espionage stealing the atomic and hydrogen bomb research.
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Apr 29, 2018 08:12
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I just read Paul Ham's Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was good, focuses mostly on the political and strategic circumstances that led job to the bombing and accounts from survivors and what happened after, especially with regards to Russia. There's a bit about the science and the scientists also. Really enjoyed it.
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Apr 29, 2018 10:02
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Grand Fromage posted:This is unrelated to your post but I think the sequel Dark Sun is a better read, if you haven't gotten to it. Less about physics and more about the Soviet espionage stealing the atomic and hydrogen bomb research. Didn't even know it existed, I'll check it out. Thanks
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May 1, 2018 18:26
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spiderbyte posted:So I read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes a while ago, and quite enjoyed it. Wasn't too dry, but still was informational. Definitely recommend if anyone is interested in that topic. It goes from the first explorations in the atom, all the way up to the Manhattan Project itself. I feel like it gives you a nice overview and feel for the people involved as well. It focuses more on the American research into the bomb, for obvious reasons. But it does talk a little bit about what other nations such as Japan and Germany were doing as well. Overall, great read. I listened to the audiobook of it, and I thought it was well done and well voiced. Seconding this audiobook recommendation. Learned a ton. Currently listening to “The Path Between the Seas” about the Panama Canal. Good stuff.
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May 4, 2018 05:46
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Currently listening to “The Path Between the Seas” about the Panama Canal. Good stuff. Is that voiced by McCullough? I sometimes turn on Ken Burns' Civil War just to hear him narrate.
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May 4, 2018 06:38
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:update: this series is good as hell, extremely dense, and avoids many purple prose pitfalls history authors can fall into Hey, this post sold me on checking out the first volume and drat, this is some fine writing and a lot of information. I've now got a strong image of what France was like to govern and live in in 1328 just from the first chapter, and it's surprisingly easy to read? For once, a history book that is dense and actually interesting instead of being dry.
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May 4, 2018 15:00
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dublish posted:Is that voiced by McCullough? I sometimes turn on Ken Burns' Civil War just to hear him narrate. Nah, narrated by Nelson Runger, same guy who read Truman. He is excellent.
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May 4, 2018 15:55
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I thought I'd do a short write up on a book I'm currently reading. "Marked for Death - The First War in the Air" by James Hamilton-Paterson is a thorough study in this first truly great air war in human history (we tend to not count the improvised bombing raids raids during the First Balkan War of 1912). Hamilton decides not to do the regular historical schtick though; instead of going through the war from start to finish, he adresses different aspects of it in thematic chapters. So there'll be one chapter regarding the different air forces stance on pilot training ("what training?" the early RFC seemed to think) and another chapter revolved around the slow realisation that standardisation and streamlining was needed regarding airplane construction. Hamilton jumps back and forth in time with these issues, with plenty of quotes from pilots of the days, some of them quite famous, such as Cecil Lewis (who went on to start up this little thing called the British Broadcasting Company), who ran away from school to enlist as a 16-year old. There's also plenty of material taken from W.E. Johns, who ended up writing the Biggles series of books, of which I clearly 100% know nothing about at all I swear. I should note that while he does touch upon both sides of the air war, most of his sources seem to be British. So if you're the WWI equivelant of a Wheraboo I guess you won't be happy. It's very interesting so far! I've only reached about halfway through the book but I look forward to read more from it. 
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May 4, 2018 17:33
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