|
Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is The Guns of August still worth reading? I'm interested in the origins of World War I and obviously it's considered the bible on that subject, but it was written over sixty years ago. Has anyone here read it? It's passable, but it was overshadowed by contemporary scholarship* and is very much surpassed by more recent stuff. It's readable, though. One thing I would say is to be a bit wary with some of the specific claims she makes. Every time I've had to tug on a thread that went back to Tuchman and then did some digging I've come up on problems caused by what I suspect was sloppy research on her part. I'll dig around to see if I can find an old write up I did of one, I've got a hazy memory that she basically didn't understand the German source she was working with and spun it out in a weird way. *Fisher's Germany's War Aims in the First World War most notably. God, I think that might have even come out before Guns of August. It's also a great example of a German title being so much better than what they translated it as. In German it's known as Griff nach der Weltmacht which translates as "Grab for world power" and quite succinctly sums up the main thrust of the Fischer thesis - that Germany's foreign policy in the two decades leading up to WW1 was unconscionably reckless because they were trying to catapult themselves into being a top-tier global power on the order of France, the UK, or the US and that recklessness directly lead to them both creating an explosive diplomatic situation and steering what could have been solvable conflicts towards a world war that they figured would help them come out on top.
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 18:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 18:20 |
|
|
I'd add Robert Massie's Dreadnaught as a surprisingly readable book for a seemingly niche subject that also provides really great background on the 20-30 years of Great Power competition that lead up to WWI. I don't know enough to speak to its scholarship (it's definitely more of a popular history than an academic one) but again just for background it was great, especially as an American-educated person where history class gives the Gilded Age/Belle Époque about 4 pages.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 18:51
|
|
|
Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I'd add Robert Massie's Dreadnaught as a surprisingly readable book for a seemingly niche subject that also provides really great background on the 20-30 years of Great Power competition that lead up to WWI. I don't know enough to speak to its scholarship (it's definitely more of a popular history than an academic one) but again just for background it was great, especially as an American-educated person where history class gives the Gilded Age/Belle Époque about 4 pages.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 19:03
|
|
|
Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is The Guns of August still worth reading? I'm interested in the origins of World War I and obviously it's considered the bible on that subject, but it was written over sixty years ago. Has anyone here read it? There are all sorts of problems with the scholarship of the guns of august but it is beautifully written, so I would recommend it on those grounds alone. I think that Kaiser Schnitzel is right to highlight the sleepwalkers, which is significantly longer and is on stronger scholarly ground than the guns of august, but also reads very well. personally, i would recommend hew strachen's The First World War: Volume I: To Arms for its overview of the origins the first world war. as a more indirect approach to the topic, with less impressive prose than christopher clark or barbara tuchman, you might find arno mayer's the persistence of the old regime interesting. That being said, neither the sleepwalkers or guns of august will give you the full scope of the debates involved in the outbreak of ww1, i think reading a few historiographical essays on the topic will give you some better grounding.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 20:57
|
|
|
Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Guns of August is a good book and an easy read, but if you want a better book with more modern scholarship on how WW1 started, The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark is really excellent. The Sleepwalkers will have you screaming at the page in places. It's perfectly titled, because Clark really captures the way all of the eventual combatant nations just shuffled into catastrophe. It's a doorstopper, but it's excellently written.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 02:03
|
|
|
Alternatively, Hardcore History’s massive multi-part WW1 podcast series is also really good
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 03:45
|
|
|
Thanks for the suggestions. I should emphasize I’m not a historian so im more interested in a well written popular history than an academic tome. The Sleepwalkers looks like more or less what I’m looking for.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 04:07
|
|
|
blue squares posted:Alternatively, Hardcore History’s massive multi-part WW1 podcast series is also really good I might just do this haha
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 04:08
|
|
|
I particularly liked The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan. Cheers to the person who told me that MacMillan clearly didn’t do her research, since Europe was not actually at peace before 1914.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 10:25
|
|
|
blue squares posted:Alternatively, Hardcore History’s massive multi-part WW1 podcast series is also really good lol no it isn’t. That’s the series that made me dump the podcast entirely. God it’s so bad. Edit: ~like two PUNCH DRUNK BOXERS~
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 17:48
|
|
|
I was under the impression that Hardcore History is just not that great overall
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 21:51
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:I was under the impression that Hardcore History is just not that great overall Everyone I’ve ever talked to who was an expert on a subject he hits has more or less the same reaction I did to the Germany bits of the WW1 episodes. He uses a lot of very out of date scholarship in extremely uncritical ways. Its high school “research” paper methodology - take the first source he finds that describes what he’s looking for and repeat it uncritically.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 21:56
|
|
|
His War in the Pacific was what got me to completely stop. It's very bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 06:39
|
|
|
Fighting Trousers posted:The Sleepwalkers will have you screaming at the page in places. It's perfectly titled, because Clark really captures the way all of the eventual combatant nations just shuffled into catastrophe. It's a doorstopper, but it's excellently written. I will second this. I used Sleepwalkers as a source for my WWI Twitter account, and it’s wild the way the European diplomatic channels worked essentially independently of their respective governments a lot of the times. The July Crisis was the perfect storm of insanity. Its description of the events in Sarajevo reads like a Cohen brothers movie at times. Farcical crisis management by the local officials. BigglesSWE fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Apr 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 13:26
|
|
|
BigglesSWE posted:I will second this. I used Sleepwalkers as a source for my WWI Twitter account, and it’s wild the way the European diplomatic channels worked essentially independently of their respective governments a lot of the times. The July Crisis was the perfect storm of insanity. Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer has a pretty good description of this too. I find spring through autumn 1914 to be the most interesting part of the war.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 13:56
|
|
|
A trip to the library introduced me to David Kynaston’s lengthy history of postwar Britain, and it appears to be truly incompatable in its exhaustiveness. Contrast with Dominic Sandbrook’s series, which has made it closer to the present but with less microscopic detail.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 07:52
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:God it’s so bad. Now, I'm not a historian, but
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 15:46
|
|
|
Cessna posted:Now, I'm not a historian, but You're more of a historian than Carlin 
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 15:53
|
|
|
FPyat posted:A trip to the library introduced me to David Kynaston’s lengthy history of postwar Britain, and it appears to be truly incompatable in its exhaustiveness. Contrast with Dominic Sandbrook’s series, which has made it closer to the present but with less microscopic detail. I really liked Sandbrooks postwar UK history books, they're good as audiobooks as well.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 16:38
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:You're more of a historian than Carlin Dunno if Carlin is, but I’m at least technically a historian, and will soon hand in my master thesis in Holocaust studies! So if my historical tales are bullshit they’re at least scholarly bullshit.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 18:19
|
|
|
BigglesSWE posted:Dunno if Carlin is, but I’m at least technically a historian, and will soon hand in my master thesis in Holocaust studies! So if my historical tales are bullshit they’re at least scholarly bullshit. Congrats!
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 04:40
|
|
|
I listen to Carlin because he's entertaining. One must turn off their brain during and just enjoy the show.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 14:03
|
|
|
Minenfeld! posted:I listen to Carlin because he's entertaining. One must turn off their brain during and just enjoy the show. Likewise. He also explicitly and repeatedly says he's not a historian. Like, all the loving time. Just not liking his style is fine I guess, but getting mad about him being a bad historian is like getting mad at a bird for not being a tiger. I'm definitely not listening to him to learn about history.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 14:59
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:lol no it isn’t. That’s the series that made me dump the podcast entirely. yeah. i liked parts of it, his whole yarn about princip and poo poo. but yeah most of his stuff is just kinda "someones dad or uncle getting uber descriptive about history they like and they kinda know some stuff and spin a fun yarn, but they also sorta suck", I did like the munster episode though and always will. Minenfeld! posted:I listen to Carlin because he's entertaining. One must turn off their brain during and just enjoy the show. this. is the same with listning to the dollop. they arnt historians and its just them talking about weird or hosed up poo poo in history, sometimes they gently caress poo poo up. also its a little like extra history, they arnt perfect but they have gotten alot better and tend to be a good stepping stone into better stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:11
|
|
|
I mean, you do you, but I want to listen about history from someone who's trying to keep the facts straight, y'know?
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:33
|
|
|
Railing Kill posted:Likewise. He also explicitly and repeatedly says he's not a historian. Like, all the loving time. Just not liking his style is fine I guess, but getting mad about him being a bad historian is like getting mad at a bird for not being a tiger. I'm definitely not listening to him to learn about history. Yeah, but he's pretty explicitly making a podcast about history. I'm not going to get mad at a bird for not being a tiger, but I am going to be a little put out if I pull up the new Netflix show Tiger King 2: Even more Tigers and it's some dude with a yard full of black and orange painted chickens. More to the point, he says he's not a historian and then proceeds to tell you his interpretation of historical events. Its like me saying I'm not a doctor, but you should totally try bleach enemas to fix the imbalance in your humors. edit: and, again, you don't need to be an academically trained historian to do this stuff. But "I'm not a historian" is a bullshit fig leaf to hide behind when you get things wrong. And it's not even impossible to get this right, you just have an obligation to dig into the secondary materials a bit more and vet them a bit better. Even something as simple as just not using literature written more than 30 years ago would be a really simple filter to help avoid the pitfalls that he, specifically, suffers from. That's a sloppy and crude method, but at the very least you're not going to be regurgitating interpretations that were out of date during the Nixon administration. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:45 on May 3, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:42
|
|
|
one of the most insidious experiences you can have as a historian is to be blandly enjoying a piece of historical media and then they start talking about something you know very well and they're just getting everything wrong and it dawns on you that probably they were also wrong about all the stuff you aren't an expert on.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:45
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:one of the most insidious experiences you can have as a historian is to be blandly enjoying a piece of historical media and then they start talking about something you know very well and they're just getting everything wrong and it dawns on you that probably they were also wrong about all the stuff you aren't an expert on. Yup. I genuinely liked Carlin's series on Chinggis Khan, and I know the grand sum of gently caress and all about the Mongols. Then I started his WW1 series and within a couple hours I was really questioning what he'd been saying about Mongolia.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:46
|
|
|
me @ reading Bill Bryson's history of nearly everything
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 16:55
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Yup. I genuinely liked Carlin's series on Chinggis Khan, and I know the grand sum of gently caress and all about the Mongols. Then I started his WW1 series and within a couple hours I was really questioning what he'd been saying about Mongolia. I got a useless degree in this and I can say it’s cartoonish pop history, but your not going to come away with any glaringly wrong ideas either.(helps that Central Asian aristocracy kind of leans into the stereotypes) It’s fine for a layman. His rants about how much modern historians love Genghis and think he’s MLK jr all stem from one lovely pop history book by a nonhistorian tho.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 17:10
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:one of the most insidious experiences you can have as a historian is to be blandly enjoying a piece of historical media and then they start talking about something you know very well and they're just getting everything wrong and it dawns on you that probably they were also wrong about all the stuff you aren't an expert on. This applies to many topics. Ask me how I knew Elon was a moron.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 17:26
|
|
|
Zedhe Khoja posted:I got a useless degree in this and I can say it’s cartoonish pop history, but your not going to come away with any glaringly wrong ideas either.(helps that Central Asian aristocracy kind of leans into the stereotypes) It’s fine for a layman. His rants about how much modern historians love Genghis and think he’s MLK jr all stem from one lovely pop history book by a nonhistorian tho. What book was this?
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 17:28
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:What book was this? IIRC it's "Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" or something similarly titled.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 17:30
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:me @ reading Bill Bryson's history of nearly everything Being more knowledgeable than most people about houses and the stuff that goes in them, his book about houses is pretty good
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 18:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 18:20 |
|
|
I kind of agree with all of this. While I don't take Carlin seriously, I can also understand the argument of, essentially, "it's a history program regardless, so do better." Carlin is uneven on the quality and currency of his sources, too. Some series he uses Will Durant from 90 gatdamn years ago (even if he admits it's old as balls and he probably shouldn't even bother with it so what the gently caress are you even doing, Carlin?!). But in some series he's essentially just cribbing most of it from a very recent book he read and clearly just wants to give the storyteller treatment. For example, he did a series on the Vikings in the early middle ages and you can tell he read Children of Ash and Elm and wanted to give it a spin. He quotes from it way more than anything else in that series. The title of the podcast kind of epitomizes the two divergent purposes: "history" speaks for itself, and implies at least a certain amount of academic rigor, even for pop history. "Hardcore" implies some amount of cartoonish nonsense. Maybe I just take the title more than others as setting an expectation that I'm going to get pop history with some nonsense I'm going to have to filter. When I want to listen to a podcast to learn about history, I listen to something else. When I just want some long-form entertainment, I will sometimes go for Carlin. Again, if anyone is looking for more academically rigorous history podcasting, Patrick Wyman's Tides of History is good. It helps that every other episode is an interview with a current historian or archaeologist, and he himself is a historian. BTW, the book that Carlin gets a pissed off about in the Mongol series is Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Weatherford is an anthropologist specializing in tribal cultures. I don't even think he names it in the series, but it's clearly what's put a bee in his bonnet. TL;DR: Weatherford's book is mostly cribbed from the Secret History of the Mongols and it takes way too much of what is essentially hagiography as truth, so anyone would be right to be skeptical about Weatherford's conclusions about history. StrixNebulosa posted:me @ reading Bill Bryson's history of nearly everything Have an MA in English, still mad about The Mother Tongue.  A Walk in the Woods was cool and funny though.  In conclusion, Bill Bryson is a land of contrasts.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2024 18:43
|
|