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Conduit for Sale! posted:Anyone know a good book or two on the history of US atomic bomb testing? Not so much the Manhatten Project, but all the testing that came after Trinity. It's a memoir rather than history, but I found The Atomic Times pretty interesting. It's a soldiers account of his year spent at one of the bomb testing grounds in the Pacific. It won't give you much of the big picture, but it's pretty shocking to read how casual they were with safety at the time. On an entirely different note, I've been reading The Years of Lyndon Johnson. I just finished the first two volumes and have started on the third. So far, Caro's portrayal of Johnson is almost entirely negative. I'm excited to see how he handles Johnson's pushing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (and his later civil rights stuff), since that's what he's usually championed for. I guess it will take a few years for the next two to come out. . .
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Mar 26, 2012 21:42
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coyo7e posted:Can anyone give recommendations for books similar to Ken Burns' PBS documentary on the prohibition? I've recently been interested in how the Depression/Prohibition era in the United States, negatively affected food quality in the nation, which I've been hearing some people such as Tyler Cowen and Michael Pollan mention (although it's probably not a new concept, it's novel to me). I believe Last Call by Daniel Okrent was a pretty big source for the film. I enjoyed the book, but I don't recall it going into food production. I'd also be interested in reading more if anyone else has a suggestion.
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Jun 6, 2012 17:10
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On the subject of Alastair Horne, I really liked A Savage War of Peace. It's about the French war in Algeria and the downfall of the Fourth Republic. It was probably written a bit too close to the events (1977) and definitely spends a lot of time drawing parallels to the Troubles in Ireland, but it's still very informative.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:30
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Recently finished Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire by Eric Berkowitz. It describes different societies' attempts to legally regulate sex from ancient Mesopotamia to the Victorian era. It was mostly very informative and interesting. I was especially interested in the early Medieval discussions, including the male-male civil unions sanctioned by the Church. On the other hand, it was exclusively focused on western Europe. I would be interested to learn more about how western sex taboos and crimes compare with those in the rest of the world. It also ends fairly abruptly with the death of Oscar Wilde. Some discussion of the 20th century would have be nice.
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Jun 21, 2012 16:47
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Vegetable posted:Playing a historical video game that spans from 1453 to 1821 and I'd like to read on European political history in that time frame. Something that sweeps across the decades while touching on all the important parts: the reformation, the enlightenment, the French revolution and such. I've only ever read about post-1900 European history so I'm hoping it won't be too dense for me. Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation is very good. I didn't find it terribly dense.
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Dec 31, 2012 19:20
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 09:35 |
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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.
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Mar 20, 2024 19:51
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