webmeister posted:

I read that earlier this year and it's equal parts infuriating and entertaining.

Stexils posted:

Fighting Trousers posted:

Re: Columbus again.

The first few chapters of Fernando Cervantes's Conquistadores is also a good read. While Cervantes doesn't spend much time on Columbus's atrocities, he does draw a very good portrait of the man. And it's not super flattering, because it quickly becomes apparent he was a myopic dumbass who manipulated his data to serve his conclusions (he'd fit right in in the modern era), neither got along with nor cared to understand his Castilian patrons and followers, and had an ego so massive it produced its own gravity.

sbaldrick posted:

Basically ignoring the fact that most of India was ruled by invading dynasties and the East India Company was just another in a long line.
Also the fact that a lot of modern historians tend to long back on pre European colonial society with kids gloves, not seeing any of their faults.

Biffmotron posted:

I haven’t read it yet myself, but Dean’s Mapping the Great Game has soldi reviews, with a particular focus on Anglo-Indian cartographer-spies along the Himalayan frontier.

Chairman Capone posted:

Dane Kennedy's The Last Blank Spaces is a good book on British efforts to map the interiors of Africa and Australia in the 19th century and how the initial attempts based on the premise that they could be mapped essentially following the naval model of charting the Pacific failed, and it involved local people and their knowledge a lot more than the British let on, but also that indigenous people could also subvert British expeditions for their own ends. It's a book I read years ago but still think back on.

sbaldrick posted:

Basically anything about Nader Shah invasion deals with it plus anything about Aurangzeb attempt to force convert the Hindus of India.

grassy gnoll posted:

Did Figes ever recover from exploding his divorce out in public and the review sockpuppet thing? I liked People's Tragedy and it'd be nice to be able to recommend it to folks again.

Gripweed posted:

History books that start each chapter with the author talking about how they went to a place and talked to a person who is vaguely related to the topic of the chapter should have a big warning label on the front so everyone can clearly see that they belong in the garbage.

Hyrax Attack! posted:

Thank you for recommending that era is a big gap in my knowledge, just checked out the first book to get started. Glad there is a well regarded series.

Also just finished Ian Toll’s Pacific War trilogy, definitely a recommend. Interesting how from day 1 Japan was doomed as the US scale of industry was so absurd, he illustrates it well by mentioned how at a colossal US fleet anchorage one destroyer’s primary job was keeping a giant film library onboard and rotating between other ships so they had more entertainment variety, while meanwhile a critical Japanese airplane factory that had been built too far from transportation had issues getting planes where they needed to go after half their oxen died.

Gaius Marius posted:

People making these alt histories always lack imagination. It's always one or two things changed. Go all the way if your going to do it. The US and Britain get in a shooting war in the thirties that drags both them out of the European war, Japan joins Britain in attacking the US but far earlier. Italy and Germany go to war. Stalin has a heart attack right as Barbarossa is launched leading to either a succession crisis or a much more competent defense depending on what you want to write. Get weird with it.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I have yet to read it but even though Zubok is no big fan of the USSR he can approach the subject from the angle of “well, if the leader of the Soviet Union is aiming to try to keep everything together this is how Gorby hosed it all up”

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I have yet to read it but even though Zubok is no big fan of the USSR he can approach the subject from the angle of “well, if the leader of the Soviet Union is aiming to try to keep everything together this is how Gorby hosed it all up”

Starks posted:

Any good books on the Dutch East India company? Specifically interested in the inner workings of the company and decision making.

FPyat posted:

It was the first history book written for adults I ever read in my life. For my part I found it incredibly breezy and approachable despite knowing little about the course of the first six months of the Pacific War.

PittTheElder posted:

Is that in Shattered Sword? This page suggests that the only source for the existence of that war game was Fuchida Mitsuo, and I'm pretty sure I've heard Jonathan Parshall say that he thinks Fuchida is generally full of poo poo, so I'd be surprised to see it repeated uncritically...

FPyat posted:

Finally reached the part of Peter the Great where he sets off on his grand embassy. 900 page books really are something - making you read a whole novel's worth and only scratch the surface.

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.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

i liked the first book in the trilogy but alot of those books are very slow. happily it wasnt that dry. i am sure someone more knowledgeble will correct me.