Vivian Darkbloom posted:

In modern scholarship on the Vietnam War, have any writers gained much access to the Vietnamese archives, or done many interviews with the PAVN & NLF leadership from the era? The generals' perspective would be interesting but it always seems to be absent.

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

In modern scholarship on the Vietnam War, have any writers gained much access to the Vietnamese archives, or done many interviews with the PAVN & NLF leadership from the era? The generals' perspective would be interesting but it always seems to be absent.

Hammerstein posted:

I gifted myself the huge, illustrated version of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and wanted to *humblebrag* some pics here:

el3m posted:

That looks great! I got the paperback last week and while the book is great, the pictures are poor quality, many of the maps are practically unreadable

el3m posted:

That looks great! I got the paperback last week and while the book is great, the pictures are poor quality, many of the maps are practically unreadable

Hammerstein posted:

The maps in this are really nice, I can really recommend the book, it's a new jewel in my book case.

I read several history books on the Kindle in the last years and I started re-buying them as hardcover whenever possible. I don't know how to express it, but reading in an actual book just makes everything more real and I noticed I memorize things better when I read them in a book, than on an electronic device. There's a very nice hardcover edition of Glantz's "When Titan's clashed" currently available. Also the new German paperback of Overy's "Russia's War" is almost on par with hardcover editions.

Speaking of WW2: I'm currently on a WW2 - Pacific Theatre reading binge and I would love something that's like Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", but for Japan. So far I read Toland's "Rising Sun", Spector's "Eagle against the Sun", Toll's Pacific trilogy, "Shattered Sword" by Parshall/Tully and Ienaga's "Pacific War 31-45". I already asked in the Grognard and the Milhist thread, but no suggestions so far.

Fighting Trousers posted:

Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me wondering - is there any such thing as a non-sensationalized, non true- crimey history of the Manson Family?

Fighting Trousers posted:

Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got me wondering - is there any such thing as a non-sensationalized, non true- crimey history of the Manson Family?

cloudchamber posted:

Jeff Gunn's bio is a completely sober account of what happened.

Stairmaster posted:

what are some good books about the napoleonic period

cloudchamber posted:

Dapper_Swindler posted:

Stairmaster posted:

what are some good books about the napoleonic period

Fighting Trousers posted:

Stairmaster posted:

what are some good books about the napoleonic period

Hammerstein posted:

I don't know how to express it, but reading in an actual book just makes everything more real and I noticed I memorize things better when I read them in a book, than on an electronic device.

FPyat posted:

Will I learn macroeconomics principles from reading The Wages of Destruction?

Hammerstein posted:

I gifted myself the huge, illustrated version of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and wanted to *humblebrag* some pics here:

Compared to the paperback of Tooze (still sad I can't find a hardcover version of that one)



All kinds of paintings, posters and proclamations from the era





John Brown



Honest Abe, pre-beard

No Wave posted:

Is this the only book about China in WW2?

Mantis42 posted:

There's also Shanghai 1937 by Peter Harmsen about the battle for that city and The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang about the atrocity, but yea I don't know any better books covering the whole of it than that one.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

so is rape of nanking not accurate. i remember reading it mostly is but chang made some weird mistakes about atrocities that didnt happen(i think the baby stuff and decapitation contest) or she got some names wrong or some poo poo. i know it was enough that the IJA apologists basically drove her to suicide.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

so is rape of nanking not accurate. i remember reading it mostly is but chang made some weird mistakes about atrocities that didnt happen(i think the baby stuff and decapitation contest) or she got some names wrong or some poo poo. i know it was enough that the IJA apologists basically drove her to suicide.

Fitzy Fitz posted:

It was required reading in one of my college history courses, so that would be interesting.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

nationalist right in japan went bug gently caress on her.

Fitzy Fitz posted:

If anything this lends it some extra credibility

Joshua A. Fogel in the Journal of Asian Studies posted:

Her description of the Japanese assault on Nanjing is generally good, though flawed by occasional wild assertions. In this connection, the author apparently believes everything her many informants tell her; there is little critical sifting of information from her interviewees. Related to this is the author's unquestioning approach to Chinese documents.

[...]

The most disturbing element of Chang's work is her insistence that postwar Japan continues to hide its past. Would that it were so simple. She claims that research in Japan on the Nanjing massacre can be "career-threatening, and even life-threatening" (p. 12) to the researcher. In fact, she claims, Chinese scholars' fears have kept them from examining Japanese records on the war, and the PRC usually refuses to allow research on the topic out of fear for its citizens' safety in Japan. This is either nonsense or fear based on nonsense. Dozens of Japanese scholars are now actively engaged in research on every aspect of the war. Indeed, we know of many details of the Nanjing massacre, Japanese sexual exploitation of "comfort women," and biological and chemical warfare used in China because of the trail-blazing research of men such as Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Awaya Kentaro, and Kasahara Tokushi. There are vocal forces on the extreme right, some even in the LDP, who continue to deny or severely downplay the Nanjing massacre, but no serious China or Japan historian is among them. Virtually all Japanese textbooks do tell the story of the war—yes, there were efforts to downplay that history, but what Chang does not recognize is that those efforts have failed. Chang knows much of this—she interviewed some of these figures for her research—but in reaching her conclusions, she remains deaf, and that is a great insult to the same people who have devoted their professional lives to supposedly deathdefying research. To say that "the Japanese as a nation are still trying to bury the victims of Nanking—not under the soil, as in 1937, but into historical oblivion" (p. 220) is unnecessarily unnuanced and, indeed, inaccurate and unfair.

vyelkin posted:

I have no prior knowledge of this, but the impression I get from skimming some reviews is that Chang's description of the atrocities themselves are pretty accurate but that the book is seriously flawed when she tries to blame the violence on some underlying Japanese culture and claim that no Japanese person has ever felt sorry about them afterwards, in part because she apparently didn't do much (maybe not any?) research with Japanese-language sources and so doesn't accurately represent the state of Japanese scholarship on Nanking or its historical memory in Japan, and is overly credulous of Chinese-language sources that had obvious motivations to portray the Japanese as worse than they were.

Here's a passage from one review, for instance:

Unfortunately, it seems like the book's flaws ended up harming her cause more than its merits helped them, since the Japanese right was able to point at these issues and say "look, see, the people who claim there was a genocide have to make stuff up to justify their claims" even though her description of the atrocities themselves wasn't in serious question.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

whats a good book on the pilgrims/puritains in america? and also salem witch trial. i have always found them interesting folks despite being weird reactionaries.

yeah that's about what i remember hearing.

grassy gnoll posted:

Any general recommendations about the Russo-Japanese War? I realized most of what I know about it comes from histories of the 1905 Revolution and felt real dumb for a bit there.