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Idaholy Roller posted:I’d like a big juicy book on the French Revolution if anyone has a recommendation. Realised I know pretty much nothing about it. I recently read and enjoyed Peter McPhee's Liberty or Death. However, I believe that the standard popular work is Simon Schama's Citizens.
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Oct 14, 2018 19:33
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Nikita Khrushchev posted:What are some good books about the history of the various East India Companies? I don't know a ton of them but The Taste of Conquest by Micheal Krondi is quite good, and I've been meaning to check out The Honourable Company by John Keat
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Oct 16, 2018 01:16
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Is there anything good that covers the anti-apartheid conflicts in South Africa & Namibia as well as the fights for greater Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies? They seem pretty well connected but I can't find anything like this outside of big academic-looking tomes.
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Oct 16, 2018 15:40
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Strange Cares posted:I don't know a ton of them but The Taste of Conquest by Micheal Krondi is quite good, and I've been meaning to check out The Honourable Company by John Keat Thank you 
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Oct 18, 2018 00:28
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any recommendations for books on everyday life in the USSR?
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Oct 25, 2018 20:32
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chernobyl kinsman posted:any recommendations for books on everyday life in the USSR? There was one just mentioned in the "identify this book" thread but it was about immediately pre-Fall USSR
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Oct 25, 2018 20:40
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chernobyl kinsman posted:any recommendations for books on everyday life in the USSR? Depends, that's a big topic and it also really depends what time period you're looking at and how academic you want to get. One classic recommendation: Vera Dunham's In Stalin's Time, she used Soviet middle-class fiction to write about everyday life in the late Stalinist era (1940s-early 1950s), writing in the 60s and 70s, and a lot of what she found in the fiction has later been more or less supported by historians with access to more concrete sources in archives and so on since 1991. If you're interested in earlier, more dramatic times, Sheila Fitzpatrick's Everyday Stalinism is another classic work that looks at everyday life in the 1930s and tries to understand what life was like for ordinary Soviet people living through the Stalin Revolution, the famines, the purges, the terror, and so on. It's been a little while since I read it but I don't remember her getting too far into the weeds in the main parts of the book. If you have JSTOR access, it isn't a book but I really like Susan Reid's article "Cold War in the Kitchen" (in Slavic Review in 2002), it's a lengthy article (~40 pages) on consumption and everyday life in the Khrushchev era (50s-60s). Could be a good entry point into the subject if you don't want to jump right in with a more specialized book. If you want a weighty academic tome, Stephen Kotkin's Magnetic Mountain looks at the city of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s to try and understand, as the book's subtitle puts it, "Stalinism as a Civilization". A lot of it has to do with everyday life and how people in the peculiar circumstances of this new industrial city (basically re-founded during the Stalin Revolution to exploit the vast reserves of iron ore inside the titular Magnetic Mountain) dealt with and adapted to the new forms of life in the Stalinist Soviet Union. It's also like 700 pages long or something, and Kotkin dedicated the book to Michel Foucault so that tells you something about his approach. If you want to go less academic, i.e. easier to read, but still with a good level of scholarly rigour, I can highly recommend Kate Brown's Plutopia. It looks at two different cities, Ozersk in the USSR and Richland in the USA, that were founded to produce plutonium during the Cold War. A lot of the book goes into what life was like in the cities and how the two regimes basically used middle-class lifestyles and consumption to buy the loyalty of the people in the cities, not just for the sake of maintaining secrecy but also for persuading people to sacrifice their health and their local environment for the sake of the good life. It's really good. But, again, it's a more specific topic (one city, and a very unusual one, and half the book is about the US, though a lot of it is about the similarities between the two cities) and wouldn't be as relevant to understanding daily life in the whole USSR. I guess this is already too many recommendations, but I'll close with one more, that covers a much longer time period than the others but on a more specialized subject. Diane Koenker's Club Red looks at tourism in the Soviet Union as one path to consumption and the good life and a way to build loyalty to the regime. Tourism and vacations are obviously only one part of everyday life, but it's an interesting way to get a look at that topic through a specific lens if that's what you're after.
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Oct 25, 2018 20:55
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chernobyl kinsman posted:any recommendations for books on everyday life in the USSR? The Gulag Archipelago 
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Oct 26, 2018 15:02
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chernobyl kinsman posted:any recommendations for books on everyday life in the USSR? You might also want to try Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, although it is more historical fiction. From my post in the What Did You Finish thread: The_Other posted:Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, a sort of historical fiction about the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev era, it uses both real-life and fictional characters. The book is divided into several parts with each part starting with an introduction written in an expository style, followed by three or four stories written in the narrative style. Essentially a prehistory of Perestroika.
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Oct 27, 2018 15:55
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The_Other posted:You might also want to try Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, although it is more historical fiction. From my post in the What Did You Finish thread: Red Plenty is good, yeah. Especially if you want to understand how (fictionalized) Soviets thought they were going to catch up to and then surpass the West, and then how they reacted when that didn't happen.
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Oct 27, 2018 17:06
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What should I read on the French revolution if 1) I already know the broad outline well enough that a popular introduction wouldn't be the right book 2) I am happy to read two thousand pages if needs be 3) most importantly, I expect the author to be sympathetic to the revolution, warts and all? I'm sure it would help if I could read French but alas
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Oct 30, 2018 22:55
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"I'm sympathetic to the Revolution, warts and all" I declare as several nuns are decapitated in front of me
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Oct 31, 2018 00:03
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chernobyl kinsman posted:"I'm sympathetic to the Revolution, warts and all" I declare as several nuns are decapitated in front of me oh so nuns being decapitated is supposed to be bad now??
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Oct 31, 2018 00:42
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A human heart posted:oh so nuns being decapitated is supposed to be bad now?? Makes it harder to put the Devil in Hell unless, of course, you're into that
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Oct 31, 2018 01:05
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chernobyl kinsman posted:"I'm sympathetic to the Revolution, warts and all" I declare as several nuns are decapitated in front of me I mean unless you treat every event ever as evil this is a silly position to take. Literally no event is clean it’s silly that the French Revolution is treated as some abnormality
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Oct 31, 2018 01:12
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Can I get something like that but for the Bolsheviks?
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Oct 31, 2018 01:17
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CharlestheHammer posted:Literally no event is clean it’s silly that the French Revolution is treated as some abnormality "Literally no event is clean" I mumble to myself as I fire load after load of grapeshot into a mass of writhing agonized civilians who refuse to die
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Oct 31, 2018 02:31
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oh man here we go things are LIT in the history book thread!
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Oct 31, 2018 05:46
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I didn't know sans-culottes even had internet access.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:52
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Wow sorry I didn't mean to post that in the Democratic Party Convention subforum. Can you recommend books about how credit cards are good instead
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Oct 31, 2018 11:19
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean unless you treat every event ever as evil Yes.
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Oct 31, 2018 12:19
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Ras Het posted:Wow sorry I didn't mean to post that in the Democratic Party Convention subforum. Can you recommend books about how credit cards are good instead You're surprised you got called out in the history book thread for asking for a hagiography of mass murder?
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Oct 31, 2018 13:09
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If you believe that the events that gave birth to the entire liberal/left/republican/socialist paradigm that most of the planet is bound to can be reduced to "mass murder", fine. And you might well be right, but nevertheless, I don't want to read your book on them
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Oct 31, 2018 13:20
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Mantis42 posted:Can I get something like that but for the Bolsheviks? I suggest the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course
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Oct 31, 2018 14:12
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Ras Het posted:Wow sorry I didn't mean to post that in the Democratic Party Convention subforum. Can you recommend books about how credit cards are good instead sorry this is the monarchist subforum
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Oct 31, 2018 14:27
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The Terror was good e: Not a book, just the Terror in general
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Oct 31, 2018 14:55
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Ras Het posted:If you believe that the events that gave birth to the entire liberal/left/republican/socialist paradigm that most of the planet is bound to can be reduced to "mass murder", fine. And you might well be right, but nevertheless, I don't want to read your book on them I recommended two books above. I'm unsure of what I've said to have you believe I'm reducing anything to mass murder. I'm simply commenting on your request for a book that treats an event's 'warts' sympathetically knowing that it involves mass bloodshed on all sides. One can be sympathetic to a cause without requesting to be spared from having to think critically about atrocity.
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Oct 31, 2018 16:23
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Ras Het posted:What should I read on the French revolution if The usual French rec for an extensive history of the Revolution is François Furet, and a fair few of his books have been translated, but his position is an explicit rejection of the so-called "Jacobin-Marxist" historiography & his big thesis in later years was that the Montagnards were the root of every totalitarianism, so everything he says about the post-93 era is pretty biased to say the least. On the more Jacobin-friendly end of the spectrum, I like Albert Soboul, whose work I'm fairly sure has been at least partly translated in English.
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Oct 31, 2018 16:30
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Ras Het posted:If you believe that the events that gave birth to the entire liberal/left/republican/socialist paradigm that most of the planet is bound to can be reduced to "mass murder", fine. And you might well be right, but nevertheless, I don't want to read your book on them You're talking about several different revolutions though, which of them do you want it to be sympathetic to?
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Oct 31, 2018 17:22
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lost in postation posted:The usual French rec for an extensive history of the Revolution is François Furet, and a fair few of his books have been translated, but his position is an explicit rejection of the so-called "Jacobin-Marxist" historiography & his big thesis in later years was that the Montagnards were the root of every totalitarianism, so everything he says about the post-93 era is pretty biased to say the least. On the more Jacobin-friendly end of the spectrum, I like Albert Soboul, whose work I'm fairly sure has been at least partly translated in English. Thank you my friend, I kinda knew it'd be you who'd come with the goods fishmech posted:You're talking about several different revolutions though, which of them do you want it to be sympathetic to? I'll let you know in two to four years when I actually get around to reading what I ordered
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Oct 31, 2018 17:30
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Ras Het posted:What should I read on the French revolution if https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2507/liberte Just replay it over and over again until you get the French Revolution you prefer
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Oct 31, 2018 17:53
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My girlfriend won't even play Wir Sind Das Volk as West Germany, that game would tear the household apart
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Oct 31, 2018 18:06
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Minenfeld! posted:You're surprised you got called out in the history book thread for asking for a hagiography of mass murder? This thread does this constantly. The only difference is you don’t agree with the ideals they expressed. This is a thread for history books not a place for you to air your personal political hang ups. Like on the last page someone recommended a book that gave the British side on the troubles. CharlestheHammer fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 23:53
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looking for a good book on the Armenian genocide. I expect the authro to be sympathetic to the cause of ethnic cleansing, warts and all
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Nov 1, 2018 01:21
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So uh do you think the entire Revolution is just la Terreur or are you just being a dick
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Nov 1, 2018 01:42
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I think he’s trolling or really dumb.
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Nov 1, 2018 01:46
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sorry, im sorry, i know the parts where they werent drowning women and children in the Nantes were really good and its unfair to judge the entire epoch of upheaval that we call the French Revolution by the occasional massacre and crime against humanity. im also very open minded about the khmer rouge, and i have severe brain damage
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Nov 1, 2018 04:15
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ok im done now but all of you jacobins need for real to examine the state of your conscience and your soul lmao
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Nov 1, 2018 04:27
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chernobyl kinsman posted:sorry, im sorry, i know the parts where they werent drowning women and children in the Nantes were really good and its unfair to judge the entire epoch of upheaval that we call the French Revolution by the occasional massacre and crime against humanity. im also very open minded about the khmer rouge, and i have severe brain damage you're talking like a huge doofus and The Terror isn't really comparable to the mass killings under Pol Pot at all
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Nov 1, 2018 06:10
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In one Pentti Linkola book he's like "what they're doing in Cambodia seems good, but I haven't really looked into it"
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Nov 1, 2018 13:49
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