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I really enjoyed Age of Fracture and That Noble Dream. Anyone have any recommendations for other classics similar in scope on non United States intellectual history?
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Dec 15, 2016 01:31
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Mantis42 posted:I finished Reaganland earlier this week (I highly recommend it) and was wondering if there were any good books about the 80s and 90s American political history. Walter Karp's Liberty Under Siege: 1976-1988 is a pretty fun idiosyncratic take. Steve Kornacki's The Red and the Blue is a more conventional take on 90's politics.
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Oct 2, 2020 20:29
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Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe by Lorenz M. Lüthi is a survey of the whole period that came out this year, but you might enjoy the chapters on the 80s.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:30
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What's the best account of the 1936 campaign?
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Dec 22, 2020 18:05
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This is a great history of the 19th century. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century by Jürgen Osterhammel https://www.amazon.com/Transformation-World-History-Nineteenth-Century
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May 27, 2021 22:18
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Bandiet posted:Where can I learn as much detail about life in the Antebellum South as possible? I don't mind academic or dry. I'd check out some of Eugene Genovese's work like Roll, Jordon, Roll or The World Slaveholders Made, and the associated debates regarding his work.
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Aug 3, 2021 17:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What's a good book or books on Reconstruction? More on the gilded age in general than reconstruction, but you might like Age of Acrimony https://www.amazon.com/Age-Acrimony...27s%20politics. , a dual biography of congressman "Pig Iron" Kelley and his daughter Florence Kelley. For an example of the intersection between "Pig Iron" Kelley's life and reconstruction, here is an account of the aftermath of one of his speeches in Mobile: http://www.bluegrayreview.com/2017/05/18/mobile-targets/
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Sep 8, 2021 15:06
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FPyat posted:I'm looking for books that heavily cover geopolitics and diplomacy. Books that illustratively apply theoretical lenses to events would be great. I know very little about the Middle East, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. Currently have 'From Colony to Superpower' by George Herring, three different books on the leadup to WW1, 'Monsoon' by Robert Kaplan (the guy sounds extremely controversial, but I want to give him a chance), and 'Paris 1919' by Margaret MacMillan. Would 'Diplomacy' by Kissinger be good for me? Robert Kaplan is a great writer, so even though I disagree with him, worth reading him. I'd check out Adam Tooze's the Deluge, which is an account of the end of WW1 and the geopolitics in the ensuing period. Charles Emmerson has a couple of books on this period (one is on the pre war period, one on the end of the war) which you also might enjoy.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Any recommendations for a history of post-war/Cold War/post-cold war Britain? Someone more ideologically neutral, especially about the Thatcher-era, would be great. Mostly trying to better understand the domestic social/economical/political stuff like nationalising/privatising whole industries, the power and decline of trades unions, and the various iterations of the British welfare state during the period, and how the various political parties fit into that over time. I don't think these qualify as "ideologically neutral" and don't quite fit your time range but they aren't blatantly partisan and are well written: David Edgerton The Rise and Fall of the British Nation A Twentieth-Century History is most preoccupied with the immediate postwar period, but touches on the rise of new labour at the end. Heres a review: https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2307 and a podcast interview with him on the book from some leftists: https://play.acast.com/s/aufhebungabunga/aufhebungabunga.podbean.com%2F1200c393-ff5e-388b-a11c-224e3705b3d1 No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s by Andy McSmith is a more journalistic account of the 80s: https://www.amazon.com/No-Such-Thing-Society-History/dp/1849019797/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
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Jul 25, 2022 18:38
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Count Thrashula posted:The 17th century (and early 18th) are a huge blind spot for me. Any recs about the great northern war? Or the anglo dutch war? More an extended essay than a book but The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe by Theodore Rabb is a fun read.
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Oct 3, 2022 17:21
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grassy gnoll posted:Any recommendations for a history of currency that isn't by goldbugs or crypto bros? I'm probably a bit too into the weeds for this one, but a couple of recent ones you might find interesting are: The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes by Stefan Eich Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System by Perry Mehring How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future by Barry Eichengreen, Arnaud Mehl, and Livia Chitu This is not directly about currency, but the best narrative account of US central banking in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s is Confidence Game by Steven Soloman. Similarly not directly what you asked for, but this podcast with Tim Baker goes into the history of the politics of currency in the US from a lefty perspective https://thedigradio.com/podcast/inflation-politics-with-tim-barker/ . There is not a lot of consensus about how this stuff works so be prepared to look at this history from a variety of theoretical / ideological angles. In general, this stuff can be pretty dry, so from a readability perspective I would recommend the Perry Mehring and Steven Soloman books. plogo fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 15:40
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Chairman Capone posted:It's not a universal history of currency, in fact it's very specific, but I would highly recommend The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany by Jonathan R. Zatlin. I read it in grad school and it's one of the books that's stuck to mind since. I would also recommend Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution by Rebecca Spang along these lines as a more specific history.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:42
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Christopher Clark has a book on 1848 coming out next year.
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Nov 21, 2022 16:06
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone have a good history of the Korean War? I've read Max Hastings and it was very broad strokes, so I'm wondering if there is something else I can read, especially if it incorporates views from both the UN and chinese/korean side. I liked Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-War-Unending-Conflict-Korea/dp/0393348857 Not really an expert in the subject though.
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Nov 22, 2022 04:54
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bowser posted:I'm looking for a book on the historical development of anti-communism and the Red Scare. I'm not intimately familiar with the literature but here are a couple suggestions: American Midnight from Adam Hochschild is new and is fun to read because Hochschild is a great writer. The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution by Christopher Lasch is a bit more subversive and a great read, but a bit more of a potted take. This is not directly on the red scare, but I love Christopher Lasch so obviously I think you should read this, if you are gonna read anything. Spider Web The Birth of American Anticommunism by Nick Fischer is a more comprehensive overview but maybe spends a bit too much time on right anticommunism and not enough on liberal anticommunism. Beverley Gage has some stuff that might be up your alley. Andrew Hartman has a book on American marxism that is coming out soonish, so that would also be something to check out. I would also note that there was also a mini red scare in the united states following the Paris Commune, so you might want to start your journey earlier than the ww1 red scare.
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Feb 1, 2023 21:55
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Which one is that?
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Feb 3, 2023 01:31
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LionYeti posted:Any good books on the whole Militia Movement in the 90s, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City Bombing that kinda stuff? Try to Bring the War Home, as recommended by neongrey above, is a really good suggestion. In the past few months 3 books on koresh/waco have been released, I haven't read any of them but soon enough someone will write a review article. My suggestion is not an entire book, but the section in "The Realigners" by Timothy Shenk on Helen Chenoweth. Her congressional district included Ruby Ridge and she was something of the conduit of the militia movement to congress. Her pollster was also the one and only Kellyanne Conway. https://www.amazon.com/Realigners-Partisan-Political-Visionaries-Democracy/dp/0374138001
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Apr 13, 2023 18:27
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FPyat posted:Daniel Walker Howe's portrayal of Andrew Jackson is so unremittingly horrible that I'm darkly curious to learn how earlier writers were able to put a positive spin on him. What hath God Wrought (WHGW) is an admirable work but it is not the last word, rather another in a long line of whig rehabilitation historiography. There are plenty of Jackson "defenders" floating around- or at least people that have more positive opinions about Jacksonian democracy, from the conservative liberal constitutionalism of someone like Akhil Amar https://www.c-span.org/video/?304731-4/andrew-jackson-constitution or the controversial talk from David Heller https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/arts/historians-andrew-jackson-trump.html https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=570735920260513 to more leftist leaning works like Charles Sellers (rip) Market Revolution. Personally, I think what really matters about WHGW is the way that it tackles the questions of capitalism, class and mass democracy in antebellum america. In that sense, it is very much a reaction to the works of Charles Beard (classic progressive historian), Arthur Schlesinger (new deal liberal on the right side of the coalition, court historian for kennedy), and David Walker Howe's old teacher Charles Sellers (left historian, freedom rider and political activist). Note that WHGW came out before the financial crisis and I think a new synthesis would probably reopen a lot of the questions that Howe foreclosed writing in the end of history era and with the temporary triumph of revitalized global capitalism. Jill Lepore has an essay in the New Yorker that begins to explore some of these debates: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/10/29/vast-designs Most importantly, I think you need to consider WHGW in dialogue with the Market Revolution, which for its flaws, I prefer to WHGW. Seller's work was originally going to be the Jacksonian entry to the Oxford History of the United States but C. Vann Woodward thought it was too Marx-ish. If you are interested in the historiography of Jackson I recommend Seller's "Andrew Jackson versus the Historians" https://nature.berkeley.edu/~c-merchant/Sellers/articles/11.pdf . It's from 1958, but does a good job up through then, from someone critical but sympathetic to Jackson. Returning to the 1930s, 1940s, jefferson-jackson democrat ideology would be extremely flawed, but the debate over Jacksonian America is absolutely not over (never will be over), and Howe's own approach leads to some counterintuitive arguments that indicate where his sympathies lie. For example, do you think, as Howe argues, that the civil war would have been avoided if Henry Clay became president? Seems just as utopia as anything Schlesinger ever wrote. Finally, I would just note that Age of Jackson and the Market Revolution are pretty fun reads, with the obvious caveat that we are already in rarified company if we are talking about reading these sort of books for fun, so for that reason alone you might want to give them a shot. If not, the Age of Jackson podcast, has a series on major historical works during the Jacksonian era covering WHGW, Age of Jackson, Market Revolution and others. I was less impressed intellectually by the Sean Wilentz book (also a target of Walker Howe), but it is well written, and I guess incorporates newer historiography. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/020-charles-sellers-the-market-revolution-1991/id1337546138?i=1000498109599 Lawman 0 posted:Even during his own time you had a brutal partisan portrayal of him. You can probably blame the positive spin on the redeemers or whatever. I wouldn't give the redeemers too much credit here, George Bancroft's history of the US is super pro jackson, written pre civil war, so given how the Bancroft prize is the premier history prize in the US... At any rate, this is maybe a bit confused, but I'm glad the topic came up and I hope that this opens up some avenues of inquiry.
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Apr 19, 2023 17:53
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sube posted:I haven't read Arthur Schlesinger's Age of Jackson, but I'm reading his Age of Roosevelt currently and it's a really good book series even if really slanted. Sucks that it was never finished. :salute: I agree! We are past due to for a new synthesis of that time period, written in such an engaging manner.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:18
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You might be right- but I think these things can have a pretty wide appeal. Something like The Battle Cry of Freedom or the Robert Caro books seem to be typical among non-military history, history books that I run into that non history readers pick up. I just think that David Kennedy's "Freedom from Fear" (the oxford history entry for the new deal era) is a bit dry and maybe covers too long a period and Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself is thematically organized rather than a comprehensive take on the new deal, as far as new attempts. A while ago I asked this threads for recommendations for the 1936 election and while there was no response here, David Pietrusza came out with a book on that election last year. It was really informative for me because it goes into all these social movements / events that tend to be glossed over in larger accounts. I would like stuff like that to get worked into major narratives for the period.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:58
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Rand Brittain posted:And that's the story of how I found myself navigating a VPN to buy a four-volume set of history books from another country. Thanks for the recommendations! If you are interesting in the late roman empire / early middle ages I would check out Chris Wickham's works such as The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000.
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May 8, 2023 19:20
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nemesis_hub posted:I just finished Perry Anderson’s Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and found it extremely interesting. What’s the state of the scholarship on the transition from antiquity to feudalism since that came out in 1974? Are there more contemporary books that do a similar broad synoptic overview of the topic? Bonus points if they’re also Marxists, but not required. You can check out Chris Wickham- he has an essay from the 80s, "The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to Feudalism" which outlines his thesis, which is later presented in full in "framing the middle ages" and the slightly condensed (but still a brick of a book) "the inheritance of rome". You might also find ellen maskin woods "The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View" useful for a view of some of this historiography as of 1999. that book covers a wider range of historical debates beyond the transition from antiquity to feudalism, but its very well written and a smooth rad. plogo fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 13:40
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I am less familiar with his work, but you also might want to check out Jairus Banaji for an alternative marxist take from perry anderson.
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Jun 6, 2023 13:57
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I liked the first and third books in the series the most fwiw. This article in lingua franca is nice for some context to the series- it outlines Perlstein's thoughts on the sixties historiography dominated by ex sds and other new left activists like todd gitlin and michael kazin, etc. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9605/sixties.html back in the 90s.
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Jun 22, 2023 19:33
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Chairman Capone posted:Are there any particularly good works on the Black experience of the New Deal, particularly in the South? I haven't read any of the monographs on the specific subject, but Ira Katznelson deals with the racial exclusion aspects of the New Deal well in When Affirmative Action Was White (i assume so, i haven't read it) and Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (he does well in this one for sure.) You also might find the first chapter of Toward Freedom (2020) by Toure Reed helpful. It has a discussion of the historiography of the black experience of the New Deal that might give you some places to look. He and his father, Adolph Reed (ex Reed, A. (1991). Race and the Disruption of the New Deal Coalition, https://newrepublic.com/article/155704/new-deal-wasnt-intrinsically-racist) are marxist defenders of a class first approach for politics which makes their entries to the debate a bit more interesting, in the context that a lot of the criticisms of the new deal's relationship to race comes from the left. Also maybe check out Hammer and Hoe (about black alabamians' communist organizing in the 30s) and The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s .
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Jul 11, 2023 22:38
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escape artist posted:I'm finishing up Lies My Teacher Told Me and I love it. Also enjoyed Ibram Kendi's Stamped From The Beginning. What else should I read along these lines? Already read / enjoyed Zinn So I'm gonna use Zinn as a starting point- the first place I would look is towards some of the other radical historians in his cohort like jesse lemisch and staughton lynd. A few compilations of new left historiography from the 60s and 70s that might be of interest are the classic https://www.amazon.com/Towards-New-Past-Barton-Bernstein/dp/0394449193?ref_=ast_author_mpb and this compilation of essays from studies on the left, the journal founded by martin sklar. https://www.amazon.com/For-New-America-Politics-1959-1967/dp/B000I3YI8Y (also note the number of new left historians that contributed to these essays that took a right turn.) In addition to his historical essays, Jesse Lemisch has an interesting meditation on the role of radical history in society "On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession" in the 70's. Here's a more recent video with radical historians discussing that essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3wgfZv3pN8 You might also find this (critical) essay useful to help contextualize some of the historiographical trends these historians were involved in: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/35/what-new-left-history-gave-us/ If you want to go back further, like historians from the 1930s, you might like the robber barons or the politicos (although note how he treats reconstruction) by matthew josephson or Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence In America by louis adamic. Also if w.e.b. dubois is too long check out Reconstruction : The Battle for democracy by the communist James S. Allen. My favorite historians in the dissenting tradition are christopher lasch (skip the psychoanalytical crap like the culture of narcissm and the the real dope like the agony of the american left) and walter karp (the politics of war is probably the most well rounded, but all of his books are pretty congress and elite politics centric if thats not your thing), but they are a bit of a different flavor i think. a bit more literary in style and more ambiguous in their conclusions. i guess william appleby williams might also fall in that camp. if you want something that is pretty dense, but powerful in its scholarship and arguments, check out mike davis prisoners of the american dream. plogo fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 00:32
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Rand Brittain posted:I have to admit, reading all the bits about the stillborn pre-Revolutions during the Hundred Years' War in Sumption's quintet makes me want to ask for some books about the French Revolution written from someone who just can't wait to see all these aristos get what's coming to them. Chairman Capone pointed out there's a new abrdiged english translation of Jean Jaurès' 6 volume A Socialist History of the French Revolution. Probably fun, although I'm sure there are plenty of contentious claims.
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Aug 17, 2023 15:51
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Postwar was a really important book for me growing up. I came across it in late high school as I was first beginning to develop a deeper interest in history and it was one of those event books that everybody talks about in the midbrow periodicals so I picked it up. Tony Judt is a great writer and I think that alone makes it worth the read. His "cancellation" by marty peretz and co. after writing essays for the new republic broaching the possibility of a one state solution to the israel-palestine issue also played a weirdly important role in my political development. I think one flaw is that it is written pre 2008, pre trump / populist outburst / whatever you want to call our current political environment, so some of the undercurrents of postwar history that people pay more attention to now are underserved. And of course certain topics are now easier to research- for example east german archives opening and so forth. I'd be very interested for other recommendations that people have for post war Europe. Another book that is more global and focuses more on the 70s era to the present that I found similar in spirit is "Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War." plogo fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Aug 17, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2023 21:21
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Discendo Vox posted:Thank you for all the recommendations, looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf. I have two minor comments that you might find helpful.  Schoenbaum elides the divisions within the SPD that led to its split during the first world war and revolution afterwards. It makes sense that he doesn't spend 700 pages going into that clusterfuck, but it means that it is harder to tell the story of this phenomenon, if you limit the history to the period with the Nazis in control.   Schoenbaum counterpoises his theory of twin revolution to Neumann's account in Behemoth, but he only hints at what his critiques of Neumann are. What makes Schoenbaum's theory better than Frankfurt school theories of class in nazi germany? Or I guess other structural theories. Schoenbaum seems kinda in line with like Barrington Moore Jr. or some other similar post war left-ish modernization theorist. Am I on the mark there? Vivian Darkbloom posted:Can someone recommend a single volume about Japan? Doesn't have to cover everything, just an interesting survey. I enjoyed Japan and the Shackles of the Past by R Taggart Murphy. Maybe it's fatally flawed, I'm not an expert on japanese history, but its a good read. Ex investment banker that you can now find in the pages of the New Left Review. plogo fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 17:20
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm not sufficiently literate in history to speak to your questions- plus I'm only halfway through the book! I'll have to read additional sources like Behemoth to tell. I'm not particularly literate in this history either- my comments were based on reading the intro then searching the text for neumann and more a provocation than something i expected an answer to. I know behemoth mainly because adam tooze talked about being inspired by it in the wages of destruction. Schoenbaum says [referring to behemoth] "Neither of them was short of information. What was lacking was concepts adequate to interpret it." That is arguably true of behemoth, but as the frankfurt school was very much concerned with class analysis, social revolution, and Nazism they have plenty of concepts to interpret it. You might not agree that "the cultural industry" is an adequate concept to analyze fascism, but I don't think you can deny its influence! Discendo Vox posted:That provides a bit clearer contrast in terms of what Schoenbaum thinks he's doing; something pretty narrow and specific to the subject and more directly linked to available evidence. This appears reflected in his view of Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, where Schoenbaum likes the analysis and hates the conclusions. From what I've read so far, I think he's taking a different tack from Barrington Moore in that he views the circumstances of Nazi Germany's changes as uniquely internally contradictory and hosed up ( he refers to it as "a mad dog among nations"), but also an anomaly that could occur in the future. So far Schoenbaum's politics aren't very clear either, other than hating the Nazis. Yes, you are correct to point out that distinction between Barrington Moore and Schoenbaum. I brought up Moore because the Schoenbaum book seems more american style modernization theory inspired as compared to the marxist flavored social revolution theories and Moore was the first name that came to mind. Ian Kershaw in chapter 7 of The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives describes what I was trying to get at more precisely:  That is schoenbaum's politics.
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Sep 22, 2023 06:14
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Yeah, there are a lot of good books on the 60s and 70s. Perlstein's books are potted in their own way, necessarily- heck you can read a whole book on the democratic convention of 1968 like the David Faber one, much less an entire book on 1968. Personally, a lot of my favorite history books in recent years have focused on the 70s, which saw much more attention over the past 20 years, like Jefferson Cowie's Stayin' Alive. Rick perlstein has a nice review essay going through a bunch of them https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seventies-show/. The 80s is definitely tougher, some good academic books, but nothing that really fits the balance between readable narrative and rigor that come to mind. However, as far as the 90s go, I'd keep an eye on Nelson Lichentenstein's (who took over the project from Judith Stein after she passed away) new book A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism.
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Sep 27, 2023 17:13
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For those interested in the history of american conservatism, this symposium on Leo Ribuffo is pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5pYZKTp1Os Ribuffo was a historian of conservatism, before it was cool, and has a great rejoinder to Alan Brinkley titled “Why Is There so Much Conservatism in the United States and Why Do So Few Historians Know Anything about It” responding to "The Problem of American Conservatism" in the AHR symposium in 1994. Features thread favorite Rick Perlstein (check out his shout out to ribuffo https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html here) alongside Kim-Phillips Fein, Michael Kazin, Andrew Hartman, David Austin Walsh and others. As Perlstein describes him: quote:A few historians have provocatively followed a different intellectual path, avoiding both the bloodlessness of the new social historians and the psychologizing condescension of the old Hofstadter school. Foremost among them is Leo Ribuffo, a professor at George Washington University. Ribuffo’s surname announces his identity in the Dickensian style: Irascible, brilliant and deeply learned, he is one of the profession’s great rebuffers. He made his reputation with an award-winning 1983 study, “The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right From the Great Depression to the Cold War,” and hasn’t published a proper book since — just a series of coruscating essays that frequently focus on what everyone else is getting wrong. In the 1994 issue of The American Historical Review that featured Alan Brinkley’s “The Problem of American Conservatism,” Ribuffo wrote a response contesting Brinkley’s contention, now commonplace, that Trilling was right about American conservatism’s shallow roots. Ribuffo argued that America’s anti-liberal traditions were far more deeply rooted in the past, and far angrier, than most historians would acknowledge, citing a long list of examples from “regional suspicions of various metropolitan centers and the snobs who lived there” to “white racism institutionalized in slavery and segregation.” plogo fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 19:40
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chibi luda posted:Any reccs for books about Benjamin Franklin? Don't know why I want one, just have the urge to read in depth about this weird dude. I liked The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon Wood, but I read it because I like Gordon Wood. You might find one of the more comprehensive biographies more interesting, as there are quite a few by good historians, but I haven't read any of them.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:25
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He approaches those questions from a left keynesian perspective, I guess you could say. He does address them to some extent, but I don't think there is any meaningful consensus on the economic issues of the 70s, so I don't begrudge him for sacrificing meandering into those debates to move the narrative along. One book that offers a variety of perspectives is the essay collection, The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, but I think that the questions of 70s political economy are a live wire and that collection only begins the debate.
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Jan 9, 2024 17:04
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Mr_Roke posted:I finally finished The Burgundians A Vanished Empire and it's such a wonderful book. I appreciate these thoughts. It's always good to hear about history books that are both well written and scholarly. I was on the fence about giving The Burgundians a shot, but I probably will given this endorsement.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:58
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I've always wondered about that conversion. To me it smells of political expediency, but maybe it's just the intellectual lobotomization that we all perform from time to time to not seem like lunatics. I know that there was a long lineage of progressive historiography both in academia (charles beard) or in pop history (matthew josephson's the politico's) in the early 20th century that underplayed the positive role of reconstruction and in order to hold the democratic coalition there needed to be some historical amnesia, but the civil rights strain was already a strong part of the Northern democrats well before his conversion. Even the publication of profiles in courage, in 1955, which profiles Andrew Johnson, seems late, particularly since he had Harvard prof Arthur Schlesinger Jr. contributing heavily to the book, IIRC. From an intellectual point of view, black reconstruction came out in 1935 and there were other works with more positive views of reconstruction from that time period as well, even if the revisionism in mainstream academia didn't really take hold until the 60s. I tend to be more sympathetic to Bobby Kennedy's intellectual conversions. plogo fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 16:48
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Dapper_Swindler posted:is there is good interesting biography on bismarck, i have always found him interesting The AJP Taylor biography is very readable. It came out in 1955, so I'm sure more modern biographies have some important correctives, but I doubt that any are as engaging. plogo fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 18:42
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chrmnbill posted:Can anyone suggest a history of the First International? Preferably something that isn’t exclusively from the Marxist perspective, but I’m pretty in the dark about the topic so I’ll take what I can get. I've heard good things about The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men's Association by Wolfgang Eckhardt. It is sympathetic to Bakunin. I haven't read it myself. The section on the first international in Richard Evan's The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 was informative for me. This short essay by Karl Korsch is interesting, history wars within marxism over the first international, and he also highlights the importance of the american civil war as a catalyst for the formation of the international. https://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1924/first-international.htm plogo fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 20:47
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zedar posted:Can anyone recommend a good book on the Empire of Japan, with a focus on Japanese expansionism in the lead up to and during the pacific war? Preferably not too focused on the military aspect so much as the politics and international consequences. This thread on twitter might be of interest: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1779690553250128061 Most of the books were covered in this thread like 1941 and herbert bix's biography of hirohito, but there are some other picks as well.
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Apr 15, 2024 16:32
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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.
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Apr 24, 2024 20:57
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