The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

PittTheElder posted:

Just placed my pre-order for Kaldellis' The New Roman Empire, very excited for the arrival of October now.

this post made me buy it.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 22:38

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 07:14

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

Hello, any recommendations for Barbarossa (Frederick, not operation)?

Looking for something narrative for preference

# ¿ Nov 9, 2023 12:10

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

FPyat posted:

I read more than a hundred pages of a book about the Crimean War before it occurred to me that that conflict is eerily relevant to the present day.

what was the book?

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 01:18

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

Nerdburger_Jansen posted:

Reading Neil Price's "Children of Ash and Elm," survey of Viking history, about halfway through. The first part of the book is more a loose collection of sociological essays, one chapter per subject, and I'm just getting into the "history proper" with the start of the 8th c. raids.

Interesting stuff so far:

-He suggests that the environmental disasters of the 6th c., which killed a large portion of northern Europe's population, motivate the idea of Fimbulwinter and color the apocalyptic tenor of Norse myth, but says there's no real way to prove this.
-The English almost certainly had contact with the Vikings prior to the raids, but were shocked at their apparently inexplicable turn to looting and violence in Western Europe.

-Despite being literate, the Vikings have no long-form texts of their own from within the Viking period itself (as opposed to from the later high medieval recollections of that period).
-The switch to the "Viking age" is characterized as simultaneously a mercantile revolution in NW-ern Europe and an explosion of a violent military culture now "pointed outward" that was first honed internally in Scandinavia.

i recently read this Aelfred's Britain: War and Peace in the Viking Age by Max Adams. It tells a very british history of the Anglo-Saxons and the viking invasions. Obviously the famous british chroniclers were literate and being monks had a very subjective view of the various Danish, Norwegian and Irish viking but there are contemporary sources, as you say, than just didn't exist in scandenavia

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 01:23

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

Mr_Roke posted:

I finally finished The Burgundians A Vanished Empire and it's such a wonderful book.

I though the prose was beautiful. I don't expect that when I seek out a book, subject is more important to me, but it sure makes the reading experience enjoyable. I had a smile on my face most of the time reading it.

And now I'm tempted to load up Europa Universalist again

i enjoyed Bart's enthusiasm on the Rest is History podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6TnD0YsQB7DbY1dxkmOqYh

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 02:08

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

Ithle01 posted:

I just started the New Roman Empire and while it is good it is also very heavily focused on the Eastern Roman Empire (i.e. the Byzantine) and it is also super focused on Christianity and the origin of the Catholic church. Granted I'm not far in, only about 150 pages, but it's basically "hey here's how the Catholic church was shaped by the Romans".

The author also hyped up Julian the Apostate a bit, which I feel is going weird places because Julian should probably be, at most, about one or two pages.

i read it recently, it's well written but it's far more a history of christianity in the eastern empire than a history of the empire itself. entire wars are given paragraphs at most but every minor conclave is give multiple pages or more.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 04:27

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

CrypticFox posted:

Kaldellis is a church/religious historian by background, so its not surprising that the focus of the book is a little bit slanted. Most of the time that is the case for huge, synthetic history books like that one, no one is a specialist in everything, but every historian is a specialist in something, and when they write about broad topics they generally bring their own area of specialty in more than someone else might.

sure, it's very well written, just the title and blurb are very misleading and if i'm honest i wouldn't have spent $40 on a primarily religious history text.

"the publisher' posted:

A major new history of the eastern Roman Empire, from Constantine to 1453. In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how its society and state operated. No longer looked upon as a pale facsimile of classical Rome, Byzantium is now considered a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome's features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world. The New Roman Empire is the first full, single-author history of the eastern Roman empire to appear in over a generation. Covering political and military history as well as all the major changes in religion, society, demography, and economy, Anthony Kaldellis's volume is divided into ten chronological sections which begin with the foundation of Constantinople in 324 AD and end with the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century. The book incorporates new findings, explains recent interpretive models, and presents well-known historical characters and events in a new light."

# ¿ Apr 12, 2024 00:49

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 07:14

branedotorg: Jun 19, 2009

Ithle01 posted:

Cool, going to add these to my Summer reading list. The graphic novel one might good for getting kids to read history stuff.

going for under $3 on amazon in kindle format, unbeatable

# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 00:58

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf