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Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Some people like Mary Roach but I absolutely can't stand her work. I think Mike Dash is my sweet spot for history book writing style. I've never seen an author who seemed more committed to having faith that the story will tell itself.

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HamsterPolice
Apr 17, 2016

I'm reading Crucible of War now and it's very interesting seeing how the dynamics of this world war playing into the US Revolution. I had no idea.

PawParole
Nov 16, 2019

anyone got a book about the Arab conquests or German migrations? Basically any good books about the VolkerWanderung.

BigglesSWE
Dec 2, 2014

How 'bout them hawks news huh!
Stumbled over a war diary of a Lancaster pilot which might be interesting for those who hasn't seen it:

http://www.lancasterdiary.net/index.php

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

PawParole posted:

anyone got a book about the Arab conquests or German migrations? Basically any good books about the VolkerWanderung.

Before France and Germany: the creation and transformation of the Merovingian world by Geary is pretty solid.


https://www.amazon.com/Before-France-Germany-Transformation-Merovingian/dp/0195044584/ref=nodl_

It’s not quite exactly about what your talking about but it deals with it heavily. The first third iirc is basically about that and then it gets into how it impacted the creation of early medieval Western European states.

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





Can anyone recommend books about the papal interregnum between 1500-1700? The only book I can find is The Vacant See by John Hunt and it's like $200 and not available at any of my local libraries. I really want to read about crazy between-pope crimes!

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

Strange Cares posted:

Can anyone recommend books about the papal interregnum between 1500-1700? The only book I can find is The Vacant See by John Hunt and it's like $200 and not available at any of my local libraries. I really want to read about crazy between-pope crimes!

gonna need some clarification here bc the longest papal interregnum was only like three years and it was in the 13th century. there definitely was not a 200 year papal interregnum

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





chernobyl kinsman posted:

gonna need some clarification here bc the longest papal interregnum was only like three years and it was in the 13th century. there definitely was not a 200 year papal interregnum

I mean the various papal interregnums that occurred in roughly that period. Sort of a book on the various interregnums and the things that happened therein, and the sorts of things that they meant for Italy more broadly, the politics around them etc.

EoinCannon
Aug 29, 2008

Grimey Drawer
Thank you to whoever recommended The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
It's approachable for someone like me who knows very little about the subject and I thought it was an enjoyable read

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

EoinCannon posted:

Thank you to whoever recommended The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
It's approachable for someone like me who knows very little about the subject and I thought it was an enjoyable read

I asked about that and I think it was actually given an anti-recommendation.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

What are some good books about American electoral history? Something like Rick Perlstein (Nixonland), I mean. Something that captures the insanity of the whole thing.

EoinCannon
Aug 29, 2008

Grimey Drawer

team overhead smash posted:

I asked about that and I think it was actually given an anti-recommendation.

I'd be interested to know what the criticisms are (I can't be bothered searching the thread), I don't know the history well enough to comment.
It didn't seem to be pushing a particular viewpoint very strongly, it does have a general view that large corporations shouldn't be able to do whatever they want I guess

FPyat
Jan 17, 2020
I've recently seen Laura Engelstein's Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921 start popping up on shelves, wonder where it stands in relation to the many other books on the Revolution.

Xotl
May 28, 2001

Be seeing you.

FPyat posted:

I've recently seen Laura Engelstein's Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921 start popping up on shelves, wonder where it stands in relation to the many other books on the Revolution.

It's been reasonably well reviewed. It's a top-down study (whether you think that's good or bad is another issue), and a bit slight on modern scholarship. But no serious complaints.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Mantis42 posted:

What are some good books about American electoral history? Something like Rick Perlstein (Nixonland), I mean. Something that captures the insanity of the whole thing.

For straight campaign books:

What It Takes, about the 88 election.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (72) and Looking Forward To It (2004) for somewhat less serious (though not any less accurate) books.

And of course Caro’s LBJ books.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
All's Fair is a super fun campaign book. However, it's not written in a remotely academic style, for obvious reasons.

Pakled
Aug 6, 2011

WE ARE SMART

Mantis42 posted:

What are some good books about American electoral history? Something like Rick Perlstein (Nixonland), I mean. Something that captures the insanity of the whole thing.

Perlstein's Before the Storm is a similarly excellent book about Goldwater and the '64 election. There's no shortage of insane stories, backroom deals, and it talks a lot about the emergence of the modern conservative movement in terms that seem eerily prescient in the age of Trump.

Pakled fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Feb 11, 2020

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

I've read all his books, I was looking for something equally good for other time periods.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

FPyat posted:

I've recently seen Laura Engelstein's Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921 start popping up on shelves, wonder where it stands in relation to the many other books on the Revolution.

It's fine and you won't go wrong or be led astray reading it. Probably one of the better centenary surveys.

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

EoinCannon posted:

I'd be interested to know what the criticisms are (I can't be bothered searching the thread), I don't know the history well enough to comment.
It didn't seem to be pushing a particular viewpoint very strongly, it does have a general view that large corporations shouldn't be able to do whatever they want I guess

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3458502&pagenumber=81&perpage=40#post501604268

I ended up buying it anyway when it ended up being on the Kindle Daily deals a few days later. I didn't find it great, but I was reading it when i was incredibly sick so I'm not sure how valid or even lucid my take on the book was.

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





Strange Cares posted:

I mean the various papal interregnums that occurred in roughly that period. Sort of a book on the various interregnums and the things that happened therein, and the sorts of things that they meant for Italy more broadly, the politics around them etc.

Seems like I’m just getting crickets on this, so I’ll broaden- can anyone recommend a history of the papacy from 1500-1700?

Global Disorder
Jan 9, 2020

Strange Cares posted:

I mean the various papal interregnums that occurred in roughly that period. Sort of a book on the various interregnums and the things that happened therein, and the sorts of things that they meant for Italy more broadly, the politics around them etc.

I didn't read it, but I've heard good things about John Hunt's The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum. May or may not be your thing, as it focuses on how the people of Rome reacted to the pope's death. Here's a review: https://networks.h-net.org/node/7651/reviews/168244/michelson-hunt-vacant-see-early-modern-rome-social-history-papal

Review posted:

At the death of a pope, most people think immediately of the secrecy of conclave and the drama of the white smoke. The early modernists add interregnal violence. John Hunt, in this rigorously researched book, has opened up the last of these to detailed analysis. His vibrant account of the vacant see between 1559 and 1655 gives us the papal interregnum from the perspective of the Roman populace. The vacant see, a topsy-turvy intermezzo characterized by ritualized rumor, violence, vengeance, protest, and speculation, had its own importance. Hunt’s first argument is that the vacant see worked. The voice of the people was audible; it reached the pope and his associates, and influenced their immediate actions. More broadly, the vacant see provided a “regular check on the absolutist pretensions of early modern popes” (p. 265). His second argument, demonstrated in the body of his research, is that the vacant see should not be considered a period of simple chaos and disorder. Even at its most heated, Romans followed particular patterns of behavior, with varied but defined motives.

The introduction and first chapter offer a useful guide to the bodies and laws that governed early modern Rome. The rival powers of the College of Cardinals at the Holy See and the Popolo Romano, or civic government, had both suffered a gradual loss of influence as the papacy and papal families flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Liberated during the vacant see, they battled each other for primacy and for the chance to impose their jurisdiction on an unruly populace. Hunt details the responsibilities and edicts that preoccupied each body--controlling gates, patrolling streets, issuing the decrees plastered in streets and markets--and the disputes that led each side to cancel out the other’s attempts to impose order.

The second chapter analyzes popular responses to news of the pope’s death. Hunt focuses on the way rumors of the pope’s health and demise, and rituals surrounding his death and burial, revealed the populace’s assessment of him. Aware of this, popes sought to conceal their ill health and their final actions. This including transferring the most dangerous criminals away from city prisons, which would be opened during the interregnum. Hunt, building on Paolo Prodi’s work in Il Sovrano Pontefice (1982), argues that the behavior of the populace at the papal death demonstrated their paradoxical stance: venerating the spiritual soul of the pope while hating his princely self.

Hunt analyzes types of violence and vengeance across the city in the subsequent two chapters. The population of the city swelled, and the gender balance tilted even further, as young men rushed to Rome to fill the sudden need for soldiers, bodyguards, and vigilantes. Hunt gives us the voices of men on the margins of society, seeking profit or fortune from Rome’s turmoil. Violent rites that already characterized the city increased, such as the house-scorning identified by Elizabeth Cohen, and the surprising practice of recapturing wives fleeing broken marriages, along with the more usual rape, looting, and blackmail. But Hunt also shows that even as Romans used the vacant see to seek personal revenge and right perceived imbalances, they continued to follow scripted rules for seeking revenge.

The order in this disorder extended to the ritual pillaging of the vacant see. The final two chapters return to the populace’s relationship to the pope himself. Hunt sees the vacant see as a time of collective protest, both in rhetoric and in actions. This is the moment when Rome’s famous Pasquino statue, the locus of antipapal invective, stole the limelight as the populace vilified the dead pope’s unpopular policies. It seems to have been impossible for any early modern pope to remain beloved in death. Hunt also distinguishes between general ritual pillage that took place habitually during the vacant see, and targeted, destructive ritual assaults, particularly on papal statues, as a form of direct criticism. Notably, these assaults united otherwise separate social classes. They also showed evolving perceptions of the papacy, increasingly emphasizing the pope’s princely over his spiritual nature.

During the conclave that marked the closing of the vacant see--described here in detail--the watching Roman public fueled the news and gambling industries through their rumors and speculations. They expressed their opinions on what kind of pope they wanted next, and defied attempts to legislate their behavior. It would be helpful if in this chapter Hunt had discussed more explicitly the range and credibility of his sources, given their purpose. Hunt also argues that ritual pillaging (of the pope-elect’s conclave cell and his family’s palace) should be interpreted as an assertion of the vox populi and of varied popular opinions rather than an expression of the new pope’s transformation (p. 241). In this way, even the lowest-born Romans could comment on and contribute to affairs of state.

This book will quickly and deservedly become required reading for students of early modern crime, protest, elections, and ritual, as well as, of course, the papacy, Rome, and Italy. Hunt has immersed himself in the trials and other archival records of Rome and given us a detailed and thoughtful picture of Roman behavior. That said, I must mention a few outstanding concerns. Hunt does not always clarify how much sede vacante violence differs from everyday sede piena violence. Some acts were specific to the interregnum, and others differenced in scope, but we need a better sense of scale. Equally, many acts of vengeance had a gendered aspect that is not fully explored. Neither does Hunt explain his use of terminology among “papacy,” “Vatican,” and “Holy See.” The book also needed more copyediting than it received. Finally, Hunt presents a static picture of vacant see practices, with the exception of the profoundly hated Paul IV, whose welcome death in 1559 shows that unpopular leaders did not always get away with everything. More explicit discussion of change over time would help to anchor his larger argument about absolutism.

With this book, Hunt contributes to the long historiography of violence, ritual, and the public sphere, and joins the ranks of Laurie Nussdorfer and Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen as invaluable interpreters of early modern Rome’s social history. He also offers a necessary complement to Miles Pattenden’s current work on elite negotiations during the conclave, reminding us that even cardinals were subject in many ways to the needs and desires of the less privileged. Hunt’s conclusions demonstrate the vacant see’s contribution to the stability of the papacy, even as it revealed the papacy’s weaknesses. The threat of the next vacant see--when the people’s judgment of him would be revealed--also held each pope to certain standards of behavior and forced him to consider his local legacy. Above all, Hunt establishes that the early modern papal state, at least, did not always have a monopoly on legitimate violence, and that popular protest had a real and lasting effect.

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





Global Disorder posted:

I didn't read it, but I've heard good things about John Hunt's The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum. May or may not be your thing, as it focuses on how the people of Rome reacted to the pope's death. Here's a review: https://networks.h-net.org/node/7651/reviews/168244/michelson-hunt-vacant-see-early-modern-rome-social-history-papal

Haha that’s actually the book that led me here. I’d love to read it, but the only copy I can find is $200, and my local library doesn’t have it, so I’m looking for alternatives

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

Strange Cares posted:

Haha that’s actually the book that led me here. I’d love to read it, but the only copy I can find is $200, and my local library doesn’t have it, so I’m looking for alternatives

it’s on libgen

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





chernobyl kinsman posted:

it’s on libgen

What is libgen? I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Strange Cares posted:

What is libgen? I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar

It's a pirate website. Maybe don't talk about it here.

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





Oh, yeah. I’d prefer to get my books from a legal source. I appreciate you trying to help though, Chernobyl :)

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

StrixNebulosa posted:

It's a pirate website. Maybe don't talk about it here.

people drop links to it and sci-hub all the time on SAL. its essential for academic work. calling it "a pirate website" is taking Elsevier's side lol

The_Other
Dec 28, 2012

Welcome Back, Galaxy Geek.

Strange Cares posted:

Haha that’s actually the book that led me here. I’d love to read it, but the only copy I can find is $200, and my local library doesn’t have it, so I’m looking for alternatives

Did you try asking the reference desk if they can get it on inter-library loan? They might be able to get a copy from an academic library.

Strange Cares
Nov 22, 2007

ROYAL RAINBOW!





The_Other posted:

Did you try asking the reference desk if they can get it on inter-library loan? They might be able to get a copy from an academic library.

I’ll try that! I kind of gave up after it wasn’t in the general library system. Thanks!

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

chernobyl kinsman posted:

people drop links to it and sci-hub all the time on SAL. its essential for academic work. calling it "a pirate website" is taking Elsevier's side lol

Wait, really? I had no idea, and I have no idea who elsevier is. I just want to be sure you don't get folks in trouble here with SA's no piracy rule.

A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Strange Cares posted:

Oh, yeah. I’d prefer to get my books from a legal source. I appreciate you trying to help though, Chernobyl :)

that sort of thing is pretty essential for out of print books that aren't easily obtainable, especially more academic stuff if you don't have access to a university library.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

StrixNebulosa posted:

Wait, really? I had no idea, and I have no idea who elsevier is. I just want to be sure you don't get folks in trouble here with SA's no piracy rule.

Elsevier is a predatory academic publisher (but I repeat myself) that makes tons of money off monopolizing research that should be freely available to the public.

They're the reason if you go to a random academic journal page it wants you to pay $35 to read a four-page PDF.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

vyelkin posted:

Elsevier is a predatory academic publisher (but I repeat myself) that makes tons of money off monopolizing research that should be freely available to the public.

They're the reason if you go to a random academic journal page it wants you to pay $35 to read a four-page PDF.

gently caress them then. Thanks for the info.

Starks
Sep 24, 2006

I am going to Berlin in March for the first time as an adult. What’s a good book to read about the wall/postwar Berlin?

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

Starks posted:

I am going to Berlin in March for the first time as an adult. What’s a good book to read about the wall/postwar Berlin?

stasiland: stories from behind the berlin wall by anna funder

A Dapper Walrus
Dec 28, 2011
Are there any solid texts about the lead up to the Cuban Revolution or post-Revolutionary Cuba?

Sankara
Jul 18, 2008


A Dapper Walrus posted:

Are there any solid texts about the lead up to the Cuban Revolution or post-Revolutionary Cuba?

I enjoyed Edward Boorstein's "The Economic Transformation of Cuba".

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord
Any good books on Audible about Frederick the Great and/or the Seven Years War in Europe?

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Digital Jedi
May 28, 2007

Fallen Rib
Looking for some recommendations on books that focus on architecture and art on Rome and another more specifically focusing on The Vatican.

Might be taking a trip next year to visit and like to read up to be familiar. Anything else recommended to read prior to a trip there is welcomed as well.

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