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I'm reading The Looming Tower right now, which is a history of Al-Qaeda. It does have a narrow focus, but it brings in a lot of the unrest in the Middle East and what led to the more radical groups coming to the fore. There's also some stuff about the US CIA/FBI agents trying to track Bin Ladin down, but most of the book gives a pretty decent picture of the Middle East from the 60s on.
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Oct 13, 2012 18:35
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I noticed that Amazon has an absolute ton of free history books for the Kindle. I grabbed a bunch, and I'm working my way through "The War of Independence" by John Fiske. It's pretty crap. I'm about 3/4 through it and it's not very specific about anything. All the tax and anti-Patriot acts that were passed are just briefly mentioned with little to no detail, all the battles are just mentioned in passing of who won, and who lost. I guess you get what you pay for. Avoid. On the opposite end, I'm nearly done with "The Real History of the American Revolution: A New Look at the Past " by Alan Axelrod and it goes into so much detail that you're almost inclined to take notes to keep it all straight. Lots of side bars, maps, engravings, all in full color. The format is really great. Huge thumbs up. Hardcover only as far as I know. Philthy fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 16:03
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ThePutty posted:Is there any good books on modern Arab history in the Middle East? Things like the Arab Revolt, Israel and Palestine, the rise of dictatorships and everything in between and outside of that. Eugene Rogan's The Arabs: A History doesn't cover the arab spring, but it's still really good.
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Oct 15, 2012 23:08
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Can anybody recommend a good introductory book to Ancient Egypt? I will be travelling to Egypt in a few months and would love to learn some more about the major places and people that I might encounter in the major museums, palaces and sight seeing.
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Oct 30, 2012 18:47
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sc0tty posted:Can anybody recommend a good introductory book to Ancient Egypt? I will be travelling to Egypt in a few months and would love to learn some more about the major places and people that I might encounter in the major museums, palaces and sight seeing. I'd second this request as well. I've heard good things about Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt but I've been hesitant to jump in.
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Oct 31, 2012 18:55
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First post on this subforum, but I just finished this recently and wanted to share it. Columbine - Dave Cullen wikipedia posted:It is a comprehensive examination of the Columbine High School massacre, perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on April 20, 1999. The book covers two major storylines: the killers' evolution leading up to the attack, and the survivors' struggles with aftermath over the next decade. Chapters alternate between the two stories.
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Nov 1, 2012 05:54
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sc0tty posted:Can anybody recommend a good introductory book to Ancient Egypt? I will be travelling to Egypt in a few months and would love to learn some more about the major places and people that I might encounter in the major museums, palaces and sight seeing. This book focuses on Greece and Rome also, but I still find it one of the absolute best primers to the ancient world I've read. Egypt, Greece and Rome Also, someone mentioned Wilkinson's "Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt", which I just finished and found thoroughly enjoyable, too, but not as much as the book above.
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Nov 5, 2012 17:48
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If you're interested in the spanish conquest of the americas, one interesting book is Tzetan Todorov's Conquest of America: The Question of The Other. It is a very interesting read if you're looking forward to knowing the spanish mindset when it came to conquerring the new world.
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Nov 5, 2012 19:02
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Can anyone recommend any books regarding the Dominican Republic or the Caribbean more generally? I'm going there in March with the Peace Corps and I want to be as well informed as possible. My current knowledge is basically limited to wikipedia.
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Nov 6, 2012 22:14
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rantAK posted:
Just bringing this up again in case anyone was so unfortunate as to miss it. It is a fantastic book! Consider it a gateway drug to books about Ancient Rome.
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Nov 10, 2012 04:25
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I spend a lot of time reading book on the third reich, until I found the definitive book on the subject in my dads library right in front of me all those years: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. A mammoth of a book (1200+ pages) going in great details the period of 1933 to 1945. Lots of details, but very readable.
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Nov 13, 2012 04:28
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Damon posted:I spend a lot of time reading book on the third reich, until I found the definitive book on the subject in my dads library right in front of me all those years: A lot of it has been superseded by later research, but yes, it was the first and it remains a worthy, canonical read.
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Nov 15, 2012 01:31
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smr posted:A lot of it has been superseded by later research, but yes, it was the first and it remains a worthy, canonical read. Yeah, it's still a great overview for lay historians. There's a reason why you always see a copy of it in the history section at bookstores, decades after its publication.
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Nov 15, 2012 12:06
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Chamberk posted:I'm reading The Looming Tower right now, which is a history of Al-Qaeda. It does have a narrow focus, but it brings in a lot of the unrest in the Middle East and what led to the more radical groups coming to the fore. There's also some stuff about the US CIA/FBI agents trying to track Bin Ladin down, but most of the book gives a pretty decent picture of the Middle East from the 60s on. I've read quite a few books that are basically "Afghanistan, post-December 1979", and it's still probably the best all-around book I've read on the topic. Incredibly readable yet detailed. (For instance, I find Imperial Hubris incredibly astute, but a slog of a read.) If you (or anyone else, like ThePutty) are interested to continue reading, there's also Ghost Wars, which is from a completely-CIA perspective and a little drier; The Bin Ladens, by the same author, Steve Coll, which is far more readable and quite interesting. Taliban by Ahmed Rashid is great for obviously learning about these guys. Descent into Chaos, also by Rashid, is an entirely depressing book about everything that's gone wrong in Pakistan and Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion. Most people probably know about most of these who are interested in the topic, but I still like to recommend them to whomever.
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Nov 17, 2012 02:03
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Mr Crucial posted:Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie is another very good book along similar lines. Despite the title it doesn't concentrate too much on the naval armaments race, there's a lot in there about the relationships of the monarchies of Europe (e.g. the Kaiser being grandson of Queen Victoria and a cousin of Nicholas II and George V) as well as the political events. It ends at midnight on August 4th 1914... I just finished these back to back, and they managed to make 2 months of bus commutes to and from work breeze by. Massie's style just works for me and I'm looking forward to reading his Russia books.
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Nov 17, 2012 02:49
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Can anyone recommend something on the pre-colonial history of either the Sahelian/West African kingdoms, the Swahili Coast of East Africa, or really just anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa? I've read a bit about colonial and post-colonial Africa recently and I'd be really interested in learning a bit more about what it was like before the continent was taken over.
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Nov 20, 2012 08:15
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Can anyone recommend me something on the Ottomans? I pretty much know jack and poo poo about that period of time. I would like to know more about their conquests and fighting with the Byzantines as well, another area of history I have sorely overlooked.
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Nov 21, 2012 05:28
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TwoStepBoog posted:First post on this subforum, but I just finished this recently and wanted to share it. A very good book, although I disagree with the authors general assessment of Eric's psychological condition. I believe he was most likely a sociopath rather than a psychopath. From the knowledge gathered of Eric's home life his mental condition would seem to have been brought on by environmental origins, not biological like a psychopath. Although technically secondary psychopathy is thought to be environmental, it wasn't explicitly mentioned in this book. Nonetheless, it is no doubt true that by the time of Columbine Eric was beyond saving. And in the general scheme of things this is all irrelevant, but I want to note that typically serial killers and mass-murderers are known to be sociopaths and not psychopaths. And thus Eric wasn't completely to blame for his condition, and because of this we should note that factors we could control end up leading to a person potentially committing a terrible act.
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Nov 25, 2012 21:24
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Tiger Crazy posted:Can anyone recommend me something on the Ottomans? I pretty much know jack and poo poo about that period of time. I would like to know more about their conquests and fighting with the Byzantines as well, another area of history I have sorely overlooked. Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Sea-Battle-Lepanto-Contest/dp/0812977645 by Roger Crowley isn't strictly about the Ottomans, it's about their struggles in the 16th century Mediterranean, but it's a really great read about a part of history I didn't know a ton about before reading it.
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Nov 26, 2012 17:07
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Roger Crowley also got another book called 1453:the holy war for Constantinople and the clash of Islam and the West. As you might guessed from title, it's about the great siege of Constatinople. I really recommend this one, it reads almost like a novel. It explains why the Ottoman's wanted the city and the battle of wits between Mehmet II (the Ottoman Sultan) and Constantine XI (the last Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire) among others things. It's not quite a general overview of the Ottomans, though.
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Nov 26, 2012 17:40
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Amazon is having some cyber monday deals in Kindle books, and there's some interesting stuff is in the history section such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for $3 that I bought along with some other books by that author, but there's other interesting stuff such as We Were Soldiers Once...And Young for $2. Worth a look. I recently finished David McCullough's 1776, it was good, and surprising how much dumb luck Washington had and how he was a bit of a bungler at military matters in that year.
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Nov 26, 2012 18:14
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Any recommendations for books on the Opium War/Boxer Rebellion/Shanghai in the 1930s? Anything within that century of Chinese history would be great.
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Nov 27, 2012 06:21
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Just chiming in to recommend a history book that I enjoy immensely, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex
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Nov 27, 2012 08:59
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Are there any good, non-biased accounts of the foundation of modern Israel?
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Nov 30, 2012 01:37
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I've realized I have a very basic understanding of Irish (specifically the 20th Century and the War of Independence). Can anyone recommend some books focusing on the Easter Uprising and beyond?
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Nov 30, 2012 17:30
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I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies.
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Nov 30, 2012 17:46
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Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. It's also got political/cultural stuff in it, but even though it's mainly military/diplomatic, The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman is pretty much mandatory reading. There's also her The Proud Tower which focuses on life shortly before the war as well.
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Nov 30, 2012 18:11
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Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. Not so much cultural, but Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan sums up the political repercussions of the great war pretty well.
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Nov 30, 2012 18:58
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MadRhetoric posted:Any recommendations for books on the Opium War/Boxer Rebellion/Shanghai in the 1930s? Anything within that century of Chinese history would be great. There isn't a lot available anymore about these topics in English. I would recommend however Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom which is about the Taiping Rebellion. It also lays out the reason the British didn't just conquer China (they figured it would cost too much to run)
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Dec 1, 2012 16:04
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Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. You want Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. It examines the British experience of the war and it's impact on culture and literature. Its really, really good. I also just picked up Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins which examines the war and its relationship with modernism.
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Dec 1, 2012 16:38
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Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. To end all wars, by Adam hochschild is quite good
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Dec 1, 2012 18:47
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MadRhetoric posted:Any recommendations for books on the Opium War/Boxer Rebellion/Shanghai in the 1930s? Anything within that century of Chinese history would be great. http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Peking-Murder-Englishwoman-Haunted/dp/0143121006 I really enjoyed this. I'm not sure if you're into true crime, or if the major focus being the UK ex-pat community would put you off, but I thought it did a good job of explaining the politics of the area at the time.
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Dec 1, 2012 21:47
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Can I get some recommendations for some good Civil War reads? I'm looking for more political/social history books surrounding the war, but if you know some really great books about the battles and stuff, that's cool too.
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Dec 2, 2012 02:17
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40-Degree Day posted:Can I get some recommendations for some good Civil War reads? Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is excellent. Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. Check out The Myriad Faces of War by Trevor Wilson for the British experience.
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Dec 3, 2012 06:19
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Lee Harvey Oswald posted:I'm looking for a World War I book that focuses on the political/cultural aspects of the war. It seems like most basic overviews spend a disproportionate amount of time on the battles and military startegies. Kind of late but another book similar to what you're looking for is The Last Days of Innocence. Goes into great detail about the cultural, political and social ramifications in the United States as a result of entering the war.
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Dec 4, 2012 19:47
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I'm looking for a very extensive book about Gilbert and Sullivan, the musical theater collaborators. Would anyone be able to point me to a good place to start with them and with the history of musical theater in general?
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Dec 4, 2012 22:17
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Can anyone recommend some good books about the ancient history of the Levant? Something really essential on Israel covering any period from pre-history up until the Mameluk/Ottoman period would be great, but I'd also love any really good books on the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole, anywhere in the same time frame. I'm a Near Eastern archaeology major looking to focus my interests for grad school, so I'll take any and all recommendations you can give me. Slightly related, I'd love to read anything about the history of Acre/Akko, either in the Crusader period, or Napoleon's failed siege of the city in 1799 (Al-Jezzar was more than a little crazy and I want to read more about him telling Napoleon to gently caress off).
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Dec 7, 2012 05:22
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^^^ It's a textbook, but Ancient Mesopotamia was really informative. Unfortunately it's pretty exclusively about the ancients. I've noticed a few people asking for books about the Troubles- The Damnable Question by George Dangerfield is dry, but gives an excellent picture of the political and economic conditions that led to the Easter Rebellion. For a few interesting books about the Cold War/USSR I recommend The Dead Hand by David Hoffman, which won a Pulitzer a few years back and mostly focuses on the Soviet side of the arms race, though it does give plenty of context; The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, which is one of the most depressing books I've ever read, but gives firsthand testimony about the conditions in gulags and the general climate of fear under Stalin; Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by Bradley Martin, which a few other folks have mentioned, about North Korea and the Kim dynasty, equally enlightening/depressing; and On Thermonuclear War by Herman Kahn, which the US (and soon the USSR) used to help dictate its nuclear armaments policy. That last one's thick, but it turned out to be prescient- mutually assured destruction wasn't mutual or assured, and the Russian gameplan for a good chunk of the Cold War turned out to be that a conflict involving both nukes and conventional warfare was possible, preferable, and winnable. For some LGBT history: And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilts, the first about the AIDS crisis and the government's response, the second about the history of LGBT personnel in the American armed forces, surprisingly going back to revolutionary days (Shilts also wrote a biography of Harvey Milk which I haven't read); The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson, dealing with purges of US government employees concurrent with McCarthyism but also outlasting it by decades; and A Queer Reader by Patrick Higgins, which collects essays, blurbs, and anecdotes going back to antiquity on all sorts of gay issues- funny, interesting, occasionally TV-MA. Maxine Hong Kingston has written a handful of great books about the Asian American experience, and if you like Roman history and haven't read Robert Graves' Claudius series you're missing out.
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Dec 8, 2012 21:21
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I've vastly expanded my Book Depository wishlist due to this thread. In return I'd like to offer Peter Englund's The Beauty and the Sorrow. I found it to be a fantastic collage of personal experiences from the First World War. It is a little dramatised, and you won't find much in the way of insights into the grander social/political narrative, but it does provide a unique look into the lives of real people. I enjoyed it very much.
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Dec 9, 2012 03:18
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Just a general alert, I only heard about this yesterday New Jared Diamond book!  Of course not strictly "history" but I doubt anyone that is reading this thread would have a problem with Jared Diamond. Will be released December 31st. http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional/dp/0670024813
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Dec 9, 2012 05:03
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