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DarkCrawler posted:As always, I recommend Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. And for what it's worth, a counter to that recommendation. I found Stalingrad turgid and dry, almost completely lacking in the human side of the conflict, and almost weirdly sympathetic to the Nazi side. Any time Beevor did mention German atrocities, like starving prisoners to death, he quickly followed them up with things like 'but the HIWIs got on really well with the Germans and established a rapport'. He goes notably softer on the Germans than on the Russians in terms of atrocities committed. However, this is incidental to the fact that the history just becomes a jumble of Shock Armies and Panzergrenadier Divisions doing... something. The included maps don't help at all, either, as they're far too few in number. There was one bit I found engaging and interesting - the account of a group of Soviet officers going inside the Kessel to attempt to negotiate a surrender - since it got into the psyche of the soldiers on both sides, in detail. It was a rare bright spot in the book, for me. I don't have a recommendation of my own for reading about the battle of Stalingrad, though. I was relying on Beevor's book for a good history of the battle, and it didn't really live up to my expectations.
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Jan 29, 2012 21:00
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Doh004 posted:First post in this subforum, sorry if I'm outta place. George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series is the benchmark for all good historical fiction. Pick up the first of them, which is simply called Flashman, and wallow in the glory of it. They're the 'memoirs' of a 19th-century Victorian hero, Brigadier Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC. The conceit is that this much-decorated hero is writing his memoirs in his old age, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, and being truthful about his exploits for the first time in his life. His exploits being entirely built on lies, cowardice, betrayal, and general poltroonery. They're impeccably researched and accurate (with lots of footnotes by 'the editor' to clarify bits where Flashman's memory is playing him false) and excellently written. Damned funny, too. John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Feb 1, 2012 |
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Feb 1, 2012 00:35
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Thanks for that post - all those books look really interesting. I've never read any Llosa before, and even though I've got an awful lot of books on my reading list already, they're definitely going on.
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Feb 1, 2012 20:05
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Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 is a history of what he calls the 'twin revolutions' - France's political one, and Britain's industrial one. Very readable and easy to follow, although if you're looking for a history of specific events it's not much use. It kind of presumes a basic familiarity of the period and talks more about causes and effects. It's on Kindle, too, and the Kindle version is pretty much fine except for the very few maps that the book contains (they're basically unreadable).
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Jul 27, 2012 09:28
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PatMarshall posted:Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm, Citizens by Simon Schama, The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle. Age of Revolution is great but it kind of presupposes a basic knowledge of events already. Hobsbawm writes very accessibly but he's more concerned with explaining causes and effects rather than the actual things that happened, for the most part.
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Feb 9, 2013 11:44
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