|
Amaterasu posted:Currently reading The Guns of August. I've been on a non-fiction bender lately. The Collapse of the Third Republic by William L Shirer is not as well known as Horne's book but I though it was superior in many respects. It has been a few years since I read it but it makes a convincing argument that French collapse occurred not only a result of military failure but as a political collapse caused by societal trends running all the way to the way the French Third Republic came into being after the Franco-Prussian War. It's over a thousand pages long but Shirer is a journalist so it is pretty readable. Like the Horne book it is a bit dated but still quite good. No ebook or audio version as far as I am aware though. For the person who asked earlier, Shattered Sword is the best book on Midway I've ever read, although as noted it does tend to downplay the risks the americans were running this is largely due to the focus on the Japanese perspective. I'd also recommend The Battle of Midway by Craig Symonds if you are looking for something recent with more emphasis on the American side. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for either 16-17th European history (basically anything pre-Napoleonic, since I think I hit most of the high points for that era) or for the Cold War?
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2012 16:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 23:40 |
|
|
Mr Crucial posted:It's horribly sentimental, as are most of Ambrose's books. D-Day is okay, but Citizen Soldiers is pretty bad because it struggles to reconcile his obvious heroification of the American soldier with the fact that the US Army performed pretty terribly in Europe (outside of elite troops like the Rangers and Airborne).
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2012 16:44
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:Anyone read Kill Anything that Moves yet? No, but I just bought it and it looks very interesting, I'm sort of still working on the Liberation Trilogy and 1453 so it'll probably be a while before I get to it but I'm all jazzed up for some more Vietnam after completing the (excellent) audio book of A Bright Shining Lie (which I'd recommend in any format, although personally I think the ending is kind of abrupt). Speaking of which, any recommendations for Vietnam books? I really liked Stanley Karnow's overall history and on the fictional side of things Matterhorn was one of the best novels I've ever read.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2013 08:28
|
|
|
Arbite posted:That's a shame, but thank you for checking. A pity he didn't narrate the audiobooks for the volumes himself, but at least he did the Vicksburg and Gettysburg recordings. If I had one wish, it would be to wish for a million additional wishes. But my first subsequent wish would be to raise Shelbe Foote from the dead so he could read the civil war aloud for me.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2013 02:28
|
|
|
Drone posted:Anyone have any recommendations for stuff on the Dutch Republic and/or the Eighty Years' War? I'd be interested in this as well, it seems like a neglected area that I've been very interested in as well. The best I've found so far are Geoffrey Parker's books; The Spanish Road and The Grand Strategy of Phillip II both address the revolt, primarily from the Spanish viewpoint. He also wrote Global Crisis, a look at how climate change contributed to the wars and revolutions of the 17th century that I can't recommend enough to anyone at all interested in the early modern period or really history/politics in general.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
In the hopes of restarting the thread, here are some things I've read lately and a request for recommendations: Islamic Gunpowder Empires- Very interesting, compares and contrasts the history of the Ottoman Safavid, and Mughal empires during the 15th-17th century Gunpowder and Galleys- I believe this was recommended earlier in the thread, also very good and presents a very cognizant analysis of 16th century galley warfare, led to my girlfriend believing that all I read about is old wooden ships, which is hardly true-I also like old metal ships as well. The Thirty Years War (C.V. Wedgewood)- A product of its times (1930’s) in terms of its style and politics, but remains a great narrative history and reads more easily than Peter Wilson’s Europe’s Tragedy, which is still a good book. I’m looking forward to tracking down more of her books, especially the one on William the Silent. The Ottoman Age of Exploration-Advances the thesis that the spread of Ottoman influence in the Indian Ocean in many ways paralleled that of the Portuguese during the 16th century, since the Ottomans were just as new to the area as the Europeans, shared religion or no. The conclusion was a bit weak. Global Crisis- The best (only?) book on global climate change in the 17th century and how badly things went pretty much everywhere-IIRC, only the Mughals handled the crisis decently, engaging in charity and public works programs rather than wasting all of their resources on nonstop war. Most of Geoffery Parker’s books are pretty good, and this one is no exception. A Distant Mirror-I’m a big fan, although it drags a bit in a few places and I’m not sure how up to date it is in terms of its scholarship. Very readable. The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931: As I was a big fan of Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction, I was really looking forward to this book. In it, Tooze advances the thesis that Woodrow Wilson and, to a lesser extent, his successors were attempting to exert a form of global financial hegemony during the latter half of WW1 as the Entente became reliant on American loans. I can’t help but feel that the author bit off more than he could chew-even 500 pages isn’t enough space to cover global economic and political development over such a tumultuous 15 year time period, and he often makes assertions that he doesn’t have enough time or space to fully explore or explain-perhaps he should have focused more on the American-European relationship and left Asia for a follow-on work. Tooze is at his best when discussing socio-political events, but makes some a few military history errors-he refers to the Imperial German Navy as the Kriegsmarine, a name it wouldn’t adopt until the coming of the Third Reich, and classifies the Japanese battleship Mutsu as a cruiser-the later is important because of the Mutsu’s role as a symbol of national pride as ship partially paid for by the donations of school kids. I still highly recommend reading it. I was wondering if anyone had any additional history/military history books regarding the early modern and Napoleonic periods (Europe or otherwise)? My WW2 backlog is quite healthy, but I’ve developed a keen interest in older stuff over the past few years. I don’t mind reading academic works, but I only have a BA in history so anything too technical might be over my head. Since I’m back in school, I have access to a pretty deep pool of library books. I also recently re-read Shattered Sword, which I heartily recommend to everyone ever, and A Bright Shining Lie, which I think might just be my favorite book ever.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 14:13
|
|
|
Abu Dave posted:Anyone got any reccomendations for books about the Ottoman Empire? It's fairly obscure and academic, but I really liked Islamic Gunpowder Empires. Although it also covers the Safavid and Mughal empires, it describes the Ottomans in the context of a larger geopolitical transformation occurring in the early modern world, as well as how the empire fit into the Islamic world at the time. The bibliography is pretty extensive, which can point you towards other modern works on the subject.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2014 17:24
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:This was just mentioned earlier as well. Just how academic is it? It is a slog to read though? I didn't consider it to be a slog- it's certainly not a narrative history or anything though, although I'm not aware of anything along those lines anyway. There is a kindle version though, so you could always download a sample and see if you like it. So. French Revolution and the pre-Naploeonic Revolutionary wars. I recently realized that although I know a fair amount about Napoleon, I've never really read all that much about the actual revolution or the ancien regime itself. It looks like there is this whole convoluted and contentious historiography going back 200 years on the subject so there doesn't really seem to be a a good place to start. Anyone have any favorites to recommend?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 21:37
|
|
|
smr posted:"The Coldest Winter" by the guy who did "The Best and the Brightest" is decent, but obviously very Amero-centric. Max Hasting's Korean War book was pretty decent from what I remember, although it has been quite a while. The Coldest Winter is more of an extended indictment of Ned Almond and MacArthur, although they both certainly seem to deserve it, and is very readable as David Halberstam was a great writer.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2015 23:11
|
|
|
Anyone have any recommendations for books about the British Empire? I've read or will read in the future John Darwin and William Dalrymple's books, and already have a pretty extensive working knowledge of 20th century wars (although info specifically on how WW1 and 2 affected the Empire would be interesting) More specific topics of interest: British naval power pre and post Trafalgar (most books seem to focus on the Napoleonic Wars) The Raj/The East India Company/The Indian Mutiny The Anglo-Dutch Wars The Great Game Also, any recommendations on the 100 Years War
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2015 21:18
|
|
|
Fantastic, thanks guys-I hadn't considered the biography angle and it looks like I'll have plenty to keep me busy
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2015 04:16
|
|
|
I recently finished The Reckoning by David Halberstam. It covers everything from the rise and fall of the American auto industry, the primacy of finance over manufacturing, the Edsel, automation, and Henry Ford being a total weirdo. Very timely despite coming out in 86.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2017 18:47
|
|
|
Looking for recommendations on: 1.) Gilded Age -> Industrialization -> Labor/Capitalism ED: The Republic for Which It Stands was fantastic. I'm pretty well read on Reconstruction and World War I on, but not so much in between 2.) 19th Century Imperialism 3.) Organized labor DeceasedHorse fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 4, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2018 07:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 23:40 |
|
|
Looking for recommendations for Greek history from the Persian wars to the Roman conquest.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2022 06:52
|
|