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blakout posted:Does anyone have a suggestion for a good book about The Great Depression? Popular or Academic long as its interesting I don't really care. In a similar vein, can anyone recommend a good book about the Great Depression that deals with thinkgs like the economic history of the '20s boom and crash, the creation and efficacy of New Deal programs, etc.? Basically, there a good, all-encompassing Great Depression book?
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Dec 8, 2013 02:03
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I just finished John Gaddis' The Cold War: A New History . It was pretty good, but it seemed a bit too introductory. I'd like to read other Cold War histories that have more to do with espionage, the arms race, and CIA involvement in covert coups. Any suggestions?
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Jul 19, 2014 17:39
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Quixotic1 posted:I just finished Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. It surprised me that CIA's ops seem to be a coin flip or worse odds, and that the agency is like a snowball going down a mountain and can't course correct to fix its problems ever since its inception. I just started the audiobook of this today, and it should be what I'm looking for. Thanks.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:23
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Thanks to all who recommended Legacy of Ashes. It was excellent. I'm about to start Ghost Wars, but I'm also curious about the history of the Guantanamo Bay prison camps. Any suggestions?
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Aug 16, 2014 00:17
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Is there a history of the WPA that's considered definitive or especially good?
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Jan 18, 2015 06:44
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Damo posted:Any recommendations about good books about explorers/early cartographers? I'm not necessarily married to any single topic at the moment but I'd like to read stuff about arctic/antarctic exploring, classic age of discovery explorations and science sea voyage stuff, and maybe some american frontier stuff (maybe Lewis and Clarke? I dunno). Over the Edge of the World by Lawrence Bergreen is a really good history of Magellan's expedition to the Spice Islands. Bergreen's also written about Marco Polo and some other explorers, but I can't vouch for those.
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Jan 18, 2015 18:23
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King Leopold's Ghost was an incredible read but it crushed the infinitesimal amount of faith in humanity I had left. One thing I found interesting was that Leopold basically wanted to cultivate Force Publique soldiers from the Congo's children. On that note, can anyone recommend a good history of child soldiers in Africa? Also, I snagged Persian Fire by Tom Holland in a thrift store for 50 cents today. I loved Rubicon so I'm excited to read it.
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Feb 14, 2015 03:28
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MonsieurChoc posted:So on a whim I got Leopold's Ghost and started reading it. I read this recently. You almost have to admire Leopold's evil genius in deceiving the world with bullshit about his humanitarian aims in the Congo, all while holding sole ownership and total power over it. I'm just glad I learned who E.D. Morel was from the book. Such a tenacious reformer.
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Mar 5, 2015 18:52
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MonsieurChoc posted:The incredible act of trickery he pulled off to get the country in the first place sounds like a hollywood con movie. One with horrible consequences. Lamumba is such a depressing capstone at the end of the book. I already knew about him from Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, but basically you have this colony finally getting a democratically elected, Congolese leader after all this Belgian rule, only for him to be assassinated by the ousted Belgian military and, of course, the neocolonial cancer that is the CIA. Then, as often happened, we replaced him with kleptocratic and brutal dictator and funded him annually with US tax dollars for decades.
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Mar 6, 2015 06:32
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As an unsolicited recommendation, I'd highly recommend The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. Just finished it today. I went into it having no idea that the Soviet Union had developed the most advanced biological weapons program in the world (illegally), and I also had no idea of how far our own program had gotten until the Nixon administration dismantled it. It really paints a scary picture of the piss-poor state of nuclear and biological weapons security during and after the Soviet Union, in addition to going in depth on the American and Soviet command and control systems for nuclear first strikes and retaliation. It focuses almost exclusively on the 1980s and forward, and I came away with some newfound respect for Reagan - something I didn't consider probable. Even though he clung way too tightly to the Strategic Defense Initiative (or Star Wars) considering all his military advisers on the matter told him what a fantasy it was, you really got the impression he hated the mere existence of nuclear weapons and wanted to do everything he could to eliminate them. I'd recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the Cold War or nuclear proliferation. Now, for a request, can anyone recommend me a book that goes into detail on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus? I've read Tom Holland's Rubicon and listened to the Hardcore History series on the Roman Republic, but that's about it. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 05:58
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Boomer The Cannon posted:What recommendations do you have for books on The Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Ghost Wars by Steve Coll is a great history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from the US/CIA perspective. It doesn't focus exclusively on it, but at least half the book is devoted to it.
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Jun 2, 2015 03:22
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Avocados posted:Any decent cold war books but from the soviet union perspective? I read a thread on this somewhere, and it seemed like both sides were actually deathly scared of eachother but of course would never admit to it, and the USSR was more worried about the US being the instigator since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Since reading that, my interest in the subject has returned. Maybe there's a book out there can go more in depth to it (or totally disprove what I thought was true)? I can't totally vouch for it since I'm still reading it but The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin is a very in-depth history of the Cheka/KGB.
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Jun 9, 2015 13:34
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Behemuff posted:Has anybody read Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World ? Nope, but I do have The Poison King about Mithridates of Pontus by the same author which is supposed to be very good (haven't read it yet). 
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Aug 8, 2015 04:16
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Nope, but I do have The Poison King about Mithridates of Pontus by the same author which is supposed to be very good (haven't read it yet). Just chiming in to say this book owns. I knew a little about Mithridates but if even half of his life story is true then he's easily one of the most fascinating people in the ancient world. Mayor did a great job of spelling out the scientific basis for all the poisons and antidotes in Mithridates' apothecary. I really want to read Greek Fire now.
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Aug 21, 2015 04:49
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Just a PSA that Audible is having a sale through December 2nd where some of the books mentioned in this thread are under $5, including: Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty The War of the Roses and The Plantagenets by Dan Jones The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer I already have a couple of these, but I'll probably get the Dan Jones offerings since I know nothing about that period in history. I would highly recommend Lawrence in Arabia and especially Capital in the 21st Century to anyone who doesn't have them yet. I have the audiobook versions of both and the narration is great, especially for Lawrence in Arabia
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Nov 27, 2015 18:48
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smr posted:Bought it a few weeks ago so it better be. Hopeful. The negative reviews all seem to be "whyyyyyy does she spend so much time on women and slaves, who cares", which is usually the sign of a book I'll actually like. I loved her Meet the Romans series on the BBC for that reason, so I hope this is good too.
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Dec 7, 2015 19:24
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Trier posted:Anyone wanna recommend me a book or two on the cold war? Preferably something about all the "classified" stuff like spies or behind-the-scenes diplomacy / backroom politics, just basically all the stuff that isn't common knowledge at this point. Russia's as interesting as America in this regard so either side of the wall would be interesting to hear about. In addition to the other recommendations, A Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner is a very detailed and comprehensive history of the CIA, from its inception to the mid-2000s. It delves deeply into the development of the "containment" ideology and all the CIA's meddling in other countries to stem the tide of Communism whether real or perceived. As for more focused backroom geopolitical meddling, anything written by Stephen Kinzer is worth reading. He has written almost exclusively on coups engineered in whole or in part by the CIA during the Cold War. All the Shah's Men, Bitter Fruit, and Blood of Brothers are among his best.
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May 3, 2016 15:11
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Mantis42 posted:Does this thread have a general Audible recommendation list? Just finished a book on Frank McLynn's book on good ol' Genghis Khan and am looking to spend a new credit. I don't really care about subject, just want it to be interesting, have a good narrator, and a strong enough narrative thorough line that I can concentrate on it (I've found that books that are too broad in their focus are sometimes hard to follow in audiobook form). You may want to check the Audiobook thread. As for good subject matter and good narrators, you can't go wrong with Will Durant's The Story of Civilization series.
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May 31, 2016 16:35
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Are there translations of Caesar's commentaries that are considered definitive? Also, is there a definitive collection of Cicero's letters and speeches?
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Jul 8, 2016 14:30
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Grand Fromage posted:It's a good book, and will also make you wonder why the gently caress Belgium gets no poo poo about colonialism today. I've been looking for older Africa histories for a while and there just don't seem to be many. There's a lot of really exciting archaeology going on right now, so hopefully there will be books coming in the next few years. To be fair to the Belgians, the Congo Free State was unique in that it was the sole possession of a single man. They should get flak for having a lovely monarch, sure, but they can't really be blamed for what happened in the Congo during the ivory and rubber booms.
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Aug 1, 2016 16:45
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smr posted:I read King Leopold's Ghost, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence, and Dancing In The Glory of Monsters all in the same year. I haven't had a shred of hope for this species since. Eh. Grade the species on a curve. We're probably always going to suck but there's been improvements by degrees since ancient Sumerian times. Anyway, here's my non-solicited recommendation. Robin Waterfield's translation of The Anabasis by Xenophon owns. Even if you're not all that interested in ancient Greek history , it's one of the coolest eyewitness accounts we have from that era. It's great because you get lulled into a sense of how modern a lot of it seems and then Xenophon is like "so then we sacrificed a wolf and a boar and let their blood run into a shield. We dipped all our blades into the blood to solidify our oath."  It also really drives it home that the vast majority of your life as a soldier in the ancient world would have been spent marching.
MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 03:01
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left_unattended posted:I'm hoping someone will recognise this book and remember the title: it was a transcript of the conversations between Kennedy and his advisors during either the Bay of Pigs invasion or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now that I think about it the latter sounds more likely. I picked it up for an essay and I'd love to go back and read it properly. I know that Tim Weiner's A Legacy of Ashes has a transcript from the Oval Office during the missile crisis that showed how John McCone was the first person to push for a trade of the Cuban missiles with American ICBMs stationed in Turkey.
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Aug 9, 2016 14:44
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Lawrence Wright just released a book about ISIS called The Terror Years, but I haven't read it. I just finished The Looming Tower which covers the history of Al-Qaeda and that I can vouch for. It's excellent.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:57
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The history audiobook I've probably listened to more than any other is A Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (narrated by Stefan Rudnicki). It's a pretty in depth history of the CIA from its foundation after WWII to the mid 2000s. Lots of the materials in it were only declassified in the early 2000s, and the sections dealing with CIA-backed coups in the '50s are especially detailed. It also contains (as far as I know) one of the most accurate transcripts of recordings from the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Nov 1, 2016 14:51
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Anybody have good recommendations for nonfiction on gang activity in the mid-to-late 1800s? For my money, the best film of the 21st century is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I know that's based on a book, just curious if there's other stuff in the same vein.
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Nov 13, 2016 02:13
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drat, that was fast. Thanks.
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Nov 13, 2016 03:01
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Basically all of Will Durant's Story of Civilization stuff covers art and architecture history, along with lots of political and social history.
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Nov 16, 2016 22:16
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Porn on VHS posted:The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor, about Mithradates VI I'll second this, but the last few chapters are a bit sloppy from a historical perspective with the author basically doing a very lengthy "what if?" scenario without anything to support it.
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Jan 3, 2017 20:23
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Not quite the same, but there's a good Great Courses lecture series on the history of food - Food: A Cultural and Culinary History by Professor Ken Albala that even has recipes. I tried my hand at the recipe for Conditum Paradoxum once and it was rich as hell but good.
MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 17:34
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Subvisual Haze posted:I just finished Rubicon and have realized my knowledge of Rome between Caesar and Constantine is really lacking. Any quality recommendations for the Imperial era? Will Durant's Caesar and Christ covers the Republican and Imperial eras very thoroughly. I'm almost done with Tom Holland's Dynasty but I didn't find it nearly as good as Persian Fire or Rubicon. It's soured me on him a little. Adrian Goldsworthy's Julius Caesar and Augustus biographies are excellent.
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Mar 6, 2017 05:09
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All I can offer is The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard which, while it probably isn't quite what you're after, is still a fun read. It covers the Golden Age of Piracy in the region with some historical setup on the area thrown in. Lots of primary sources from the period are used.
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Mar 10, 2017 20:26
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Speaking of Alexander, has anyone read Ghost on the Throne about the Funeral Games?
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Mar 28, 2017 17:22
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The accounts of the purges in The Sword and The Shield are extensive but the scope of the book is much, much broader than just that era and probably wouldn't give you very much in terms of color. The book is a drat good read anyway.
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Apr 20, 2017 04:32
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BigglesSWE posted:On the subject of ancient Rome, I highly suggest any book on the subject penned by Adrian Goldsworthy. Easy to read, but comprehensive. I particularly liked his book about the decline of the Western Empire: I've been thinking about picking up In the Name of Rome since I loved his Caesar biographies so much. Have you read that one?
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Apr 24, 2017 02:06
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A Savage War of Peace Comedy option: The Day of the Jackal (it's a good read forreal though)
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May 8, 2017 01:11
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Subvisual Haze posted:Very belated thanks for the Adrian Goldsworthy recommendations. Julius Ceasar in particular was fantastic. He has tons of other histories and I think even a few historical novels that I've been meaning to read. As someone who isn't super enthralled by military history he can really make it fascinating reading. His lecture on Roman warfare is good stuff, too.
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Jun 30, 2017 03:42
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What would be a good introduction to Celtic history? All I really know is what I read in Julius Caesar's war commentaries.
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Sep 2, 2017 14:20
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my bony fealty posted:Recommend me your favorite books on Roman history, friends? Caesar and Christ by Will Durant Anything by Adrian Goldsworthy, but especially his Julius Caesar biography and In the Name of Rome
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Feb 14, 2018 04:22
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buglord posted:My audible credit came in. I need your guys' help! The Life of Greece (narrated by Stefan Rudnicki) or Caesar and Christ (narrated by Grover Gardener) by Will Durant Endurance by Alfred Lansing (narrated by Simon Prebble) Spain in our Hearts by Adam Hochschild (narrated by Henry Strozier) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (narrated by Scott Brick)
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Mar 9, 2018 22:48
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 09:26 |
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Is there something akin to Selwyn Raab's Five Families but that covers Yakuza?
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May 11, 2018 02:12
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