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Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Lakedaimon posted:

Seconding the recommendation on the LBJ books by Caro. They cover his original run to get into the House, his failed and then successful Senate runs, and running with JFK. And basically everything in between. Paying for votes, rigged precincts, legal swashbuckling.

See, I want to read this but I'm worried Caro will die before the final volume. I want to know how Johnson deals with Daenerys, damnit!

(Gonna burn an Audible credit on this, thanks)

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Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

Mantis42 posted:

See, I want to read this but I'm worried Caro will die before the final volume. I want to know how Johnson deals with Daenerys, damnit!

(Gonna burn an Audible credit on this, thanks)

its worth it. i bought the latest one and its great. very slow but great. i will warn you master of the senate is split up into three audible books.

algebra testes
Mar 5, 2011


Lipstick Apathy
Nearly finished the first volume (including congress and failed senate run) and it is amazing.

Karenina
Jul 10, 2013

any books on poverty, working class life, etc. in cities of the russian empire post-1861? especially post-1881. the important thing is that it's post-emancipation, with increased industrialization and urbanization underway. something on pre-revolutionary organized crime, especially in odessa, would also be welcome. marc galeotti's book the vory pointed me to some sources, including slums of petersburg by vsevolod krestovsky, but many of them aren't available in english or french translation.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Karenina posted:

any books on poverty, working class life, etc. in cities of the russian empire post-1861? especially post-1881. the important thing is that it's post-emancipation, with increased industrialization and urbanization underway. something on pre-revolutionary organized crime, especially in odessa, would also be welcome. marc galeotti's book the vory pointed me to some sources, including slums of petersburg by vsevolod krestovsky, but many of them aren't available in english or french translation.

This is a huge topic but I can make some recommendations of things I like. On poverty there isn't a lot written and what does exist is pretty scattershot because poor Russians didn't leave a lot of written sources behind. That being said, there are some really good books that look at everyday urban life even if it isn't all about poverty, and there are some really good books that look at poverty-adjacent subjects or try to explore aspects of it through other sources like newspapers.

On working-class life there is a metric fuckton of research but a lot of it is very dense labour history.

Here are some recommendations:

On Odessa specifically:

Roshanna Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: A really good and interesting book about life in Odessa ca. 1906-16, and especially about how Odessa life was mediated by newspaper reporting, especially on crime and disorder. Easy to read while still giving a lot of good and interesting information.

Evrydiki Sifneos, Imperial Odessa: A very interesting book about Odessa throughout the imperial period, so it ranges both before and after 1861, but I'd say with particular focus after 1861. Kind of surveys a lot of subjects in Odessa history and really gives a sense of how the city worked and what life was like, especially because Sifneos loved Odessa and visited there a lot and is able to mix her historical discussion with talking about how that related to the present-day city. She unfortunately died before finishing the book so it ends kind of abruptly based on other people finishing her work based on how she planned to complete and edit it, but it's still good.

Ilya Gerasimov, Plebeian Modernity: A very recent (2018) book about lower-class urban life in Russia ca. 1906-16, with Odessa one of the cities he focuses on in particular. I don't really like the analytical framework he applies to this book and I disagree with a lot of his conclusions, but it's still chock-full of interesting research and anecdotes about everyday life, poverty, and crime in late imperial Russian cities if you're willing to ignore his reaching for theoretical conclusions that in my opinion aren't accurate.

Also a fiction recommendation, Isaac Babel's Odessa Tales: a series of short stories written about the Moldavanka neighbourhood of Odessa around the time of the revolution, and especially about crime and Jewish organized crime there. Really interesting and gets used as a source for Odessa life in this period all the time.

On other cities and urban history and crime more broadly:

Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: A really good, important, and influential book on everyday life and the problem of "hooliganism" as transgression of class boundaries in St. Petersburg ca. 1905-14. This is a really brilliant book that's been influential on a lot of Russian history since it was written, and explores a really interesting topic in urban history and life. Ends up being more about media discourse and middle-class reactions to hooliganism than about the lives of hooligans themselves (again, because of the available source base--hooligans didn't leave many sources behind, so we can mostly study them through others' reactions), but still a really interesting window into Petersburg urban life, poverty, crime, etc.

Mark Steinberg, Petersburg Fin de Siecle: Another really cool book about everyday life in Petersburg, focusing on the emotional experience of living in the city, and again based a lot on press discourse. Steinberg really knows his stuff and this was kind of a groundbreaking book in bringing emotions into Russian history and into studying everyday life in Russian cities.

Louise McReynolds, Murder Most Russian: A book about true crime, criminality, discourse on crime, and so on, in the late imperial era. Less focused on organized crime and gangsters and more on sensational crimes, trials, and how Russian society reacted to them (especially through sensationalizing them, surrounding them with cultural discourse, etc.). Really good and McReynolds is a fun writer so it's easier to get through than some academic books.

And if you're interested in things like Krestovskii, a couple other written-at-the-time urban sources you might be interested in, that are available in English translation:

Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Moscow and Muscovites: A pre-revolutionary journalist who was renowned for investigating the lives of the urban poor writes about life in pre-revolutionary Moscow.

Tolstoy's What is to be Done?: Written in the 1880s, it's basically Tolstoy diagnosing what he saw as the ills of Russian society, and some of that includes him talking about conditions in Moscow, including among the poor. A lot of it is also not about that, but you may be interested anyway. Also, there are English translations old enough to now be in the public domain, so you don't have to spend any money on a book you might only be interested in part of. (Also translated under the alternate title "What Then Must We Do?", fyi)

On working-class life and labour:

There are a lot of thick social histories from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that studied working-class life, but I'm not going to recommend most of them because they tend to be pretty focused on conditions in industrial workplaces, economic history, and the formation of class consciousness, and less on the subjective experience of everyday life as a poor worker. They were an important wave in historiography but they tend to be less what people are interested in these days. A lot of them were also laser-focused on building up to 1917, which has been decentred in the field these days. That being said, I can recommend the following:

Semion Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The autobiography of a worker who moved to Moscow in the 1890s, what his life was like there, and how he eventually became a Bolshevik. Edited and translated by one of the great working-class Russian historians, Reggie Zelnik, and well worth the time. Gives a pretty unparalleled window into daily life for Moscow workers around the turn of the century because very few workers kept diaries and wrote autobiographies that have been passed down through the decades.

Mark Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: An earlier Steinberg book where he examined a small group of working-class writers and poets through the late imperial, revolutionary, and early Soviet periods to see how they were reacting to living through such a time of tumultuous change in their writing. Really interesting, even if it is more focused on the intellectual development of a small group of worker writers than on broader trends in working-class life.



If you have any more specific topics you're interested in, I may be able to provide more recommendations.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Sep 4, 2021

Karenina
Jul 10, 2013

vyelkin posted:

Oooh yeah buddy. This is a huge topic but it just so happens to be a topic that I study as an academic.

oh hell yeah man

quote:

Roshanna Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: A really good and interesting book about life in Odessa ca. 1906-16, and especially about how Odessa life was mediated by newspaper reporting, especially on crime and disorder. Easy to read while still giving a lot of good and interesting information.

quote:

Mark Steinberg, Petersburg Fin de Siecle: Another really cool book about everyday life in Petersburg, focusing on the emotional experience of living in the city, and again based a lot on press discourse. Steinberg really knows his stuff and this was kind of a groundbreaking book in bringing emotions into Russian history and into studying everyday life in Russian cities.

quote:

Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Moscow and Muscovites: A pre-revolutionary journalist who was renowned for investigating the lives of the urban poor writes about life in pre-revolutionary Moscow.

already got these in my ever-growing backlog, courtesy of mark galeotti's book

quote:

Evrydiki Sifneos, Imperial Odessa: A very interesting book about Odessa throughout the imperial period, so it ranges both before and after 1861, but I'd say with particular focus after 1861. Kind of surveys a lot of subjects in Odessa history and really gives a sense of how the city worked and what life was like, especially because Sifneos loved Odessa and visited there a lot and is able to mix her historical discussion with talking about how that related to the present-day city. She unfortunately died before finishing the book so it ends kind of abruptly based on other people finishing her work based on how she planned to complete and edit it, but it's still good.

sifneos' book sounds right up my alley, thank you

quote:

Ilya Gerasimov, Plebeian Modernity: A very recent (2018) book about lower-class urban life in Russia ca. 1906-16, with Odessa one of the cities he focuses on in particular. I don't really like the analytical framework he applies to this book and I disagree with a lot of his conclusions, but it's still chock-full of interesting research and anecdotes about everyday life, poverty, and crime in late imperial Russian cities if you're willing to ignore his reaching for theoretical conclusions that in my opinion aren't accurate.

out of curiosity, what do you dislike about his framework and conclusions? i'll look into it either way.

quote:

Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: A really good, important, and influential book on everyday life and the problem of "hooliganism" as transgression of class boundaries in St. Petersburg ca. 1905-14. This is a really brilliant book that's been influential on a lot of Russian history since it was written, and explores a really interesting topic in urban history and life. Ends up being more about media discourse and middle-class reactions to hooliganism than about the lives of hooligans themselves (again, because of the available source base--hooligans didn't leave many sources behind, so we can mostly study them through others' reactions), but still a really interesting window into Petersburg urban life, poverty, crime, etc.

Louise McReynolds, Murder Most Russian: A book about true crime, criminality, discourse on crime, and so on, in the late imperial era. Less focused on organized crime and gangsters and more on sensational crimes, trials, and how Russian society reacted to them (especially through sensationalizing them, surrounding them with cultural discourse, etc.). Really good and McReynolds is a fun writer so it's easier to get through than some academic books.

both of these sound great, neuberger's especially. does neuberger touch on organized crime at all? i'm curious about its structure, whatever rules they might have followed, and where it overlapped with revolutionary organizations. i've heard about that overlap in specific cases (mishka yaponchik, stalin, kamo), but on the biographical level. most of the books i've found (in admittedly surface-level research) focus overwhelmingly on the soviet and post-soviet era.

quote:

Tolstoy's What is to be Done?: Written in the 1880s, it's basically Tolstoy diagnosing what he saw as the ills of Russian society, and some of that includes him talking about conditions in Moscow, including among the poor. A lot of it is also not about that, but you may be interested anyway. Also, there are English translations old enough to now be in the public domain, so you don't have to spend any money on a book you might only be interested in part of. (Also translated under the alternate title "What Then Must We Do?", fyi)

also adding this. i haven't read any of tolstoy's nonfiction, which is a shame, given how significant it is. i've actually read another book on the ills of russian society by this same name, but that was by chernyshevsky, and it was also terrible.

quote:

Semion Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The autobiography of a worker who moved to Moscow in the 1890s, what his life was like there, and how he eventually became a Bolshevik. Edited and translated by one of the great working-class Russian historians, Reggie Zelnik, and well worth the time. Gives a pretty unparalleled window into daily life for Moscow workers around the turn of the century because very few workers kept diaries and wrote autobiographies that have been passed down through the decades.

Mark Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: An earlier Steinberg book where he examined a small group of working-class writers and poets through the late imperial, revolutionary, and early Soviet periods to see how they were reacting to living through such a time of tumultuous change in their writing. Really interesting, even if it is more focused on the intellectual development of a small group of worker writers than on broader trends in working-class life.

both of these sound excellent, thank you!

the only other topic i'm wondering about, which may or may not be within your scope, is journalism and underground/illicit literature in the empire, specifically 1905-1918.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Karenina posted:

out of curiosity, what do you dislike about his framework and conclusions? i'll look into it either way.

I won't go into too much detail, but he basically argues and bases a ton of his conclusions on the idea that lower-class urban residents were like a different species that communicated non-verbally and weren't socialized into any kind of textual public sphere, and therefore were completely unaffected by textual or intellectual discourse, i.e. because they didn't read books or newspapers they therefore were incapable of understanding complex ideological or intellectual concepts or interpreting the world through those frameworks. So any instance of revolutionary discourse, class consciousness, intellectual debate, whatever you want to argue was found in poor or working people at the time, either appeared in a very select few individuals but not in the masses, or was actually just a thin layer of mimicry overtop of nonverbal behavioural patterns that were conflicting or contradictory. So for example, a person he found who in his speech was an avid antisemite but who nonetheless interacted with Jews normally in his daily life, he sees as an example of someone who didn't really understand the intellectual or ideological concept of antisemitism and just imitated what he saw in verbal or textual discourse, while actually behaving in a way that didn't accord with the discourse he imitated. So he tries to study behavioural patterns, especially criminality, as a window into "real" people's lives, unmediated by an overlay of text that they didn't actually understand and didn't have anything to do with their real lives. It's an interesting concept but in my opinion it doesn't hold up and is, frankly, kind of insulting to lower-class people who in others' research (including my own) have many documented cases of engaging meaningfully with texts, written discourse, intellectual and ideological concepts, etc. Basically he tries to draw really sweeping conclusions about how lower-class Russians were practically incapable of abstract thought based on a smaller number of examples of conflict between words and actions.

It's still an interesting read and based on a lot of research, but I'd say read it for the examples and the granular evidence but not for the theoretical framework or larger argument.


quote:

both of these sound great, neuberger's especially. does neuberger touch on organized crime at all? i'm curious about its structure, whatever rules they might have followed, and where it overlapped with revolutionary organizations. i've heard about that overlap in specific cases (mishka yaponchik, stalin, kamo), but on the biographical level. most of the books i've found (in admittedly surface-level research) focus overwhelmingly on the soviet and post-soviet era.

I don't recall Neuberger dealing with organized crime, it's more about incidents of spontaneous public violence as transgression of expected norms. If you'd like I can flip through my copy and check, though.


quote:

also adding this. i haven't read any of tolstoy's nonfiction, which is a shame, given how significant it is. i've actually read another book on the ills of russian society by this same name, but that was by chernyshevsky, and it was also terrible.

Yeah Chernyshevsky's What is to be done is one of the most famous books of Russian literature but it's famous more for the effect it had on readers at the time and not for its own literary merits, which are few and far between.


quote:

the only other topic i'm wondering about, which may or may not be within your scope, is journalism and underground/illicit literature in the empire, specifically 1905-1918.

Funny you say that because journalism is actually pretty central to my own research, without going into any more detail because I don't want to doxx myself. Underground literature I know less about, though. On journalism:

Louise McReynolds, The News Under Russia's Old Regime, is basically the definitive text on Russia's mass-circulation press, it covers basically the whole existence of the popular press from the 1860s to 1917. She tends to focus on the newspapers themselves, their differences and similarities, the people involved, and so on, so it's more of a journalism history than a history about the impact of journalism on society and culture.

And to be honest when it comes to books there hasn't been a lot in English since then (1991). There are books on specific subjects (individual publishers or journalists, specific newspapers, etc.) and there are journal articles and book chapters, but there isn't yet a good book I'd be happy recommending on late imperial journalism specifically.

Maybe the closest you'd get in recent work is Mark Steinberg's The Russian Revolution 1905-1921 which is a centenary book on the revolution aimed at student readers, and in which Steinberg makes a lot of use of the press and talks about journalism as an important part of the revolution. But this book is much more a history of the revolution that happens to lean towards Steinberg's own interests in journalism rather than a history of journalism per se.

Sylvester also makes pretty good use of the Odessa press and it's definitely a focus of her book, so that should give some impression of what it was like in one city at least.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Sep 4, 2021

Karenina
Jul 10, 2013

vyelkin posted:

So for example, a person he found who in his speech was an avid antisemite but who nonetheless interacted with Jews normally in his daily life, he sees as an example of someone who didn't really understand the intellectual or ideological concept of antisemitism and just imitated what he saw in verbal or textual discourse, while actually behaving in a way that didn't accord with the discourse he imitated.

:lol:

quote:

So he tries to study behavioural patterns, especially criminality, as a window into "real" people's lives, unmediated by an overlay of text that they didn't actually understand and didn't have anything to do with their real lives. It's an interesting concept but in my opinion it doesn't hold up and is, frankly, kind of insulting to lower-class people who in others' research (including my own) have many documented cases of engaging meaningfully with texts, written discourse, intellectual and ideological concepts, etc. Basically he tries to draw really sweeping conclusions about how lower-class Russians were practically incapable of abstract thought based on a smaller number of examples of conflict between words and actions.

It's still an interesting read and based on a lot of research, but I'd say read it for the examples and the granular evidence but not for the theoretical framework or larger argument.

good to know; i'll keep that in mind whenever i get around to it.

quote:

I don't recall Neuberger dealing with organized crime, it's more about incidents of spontaneous public violence as transgression of expected norms. If you'd like I can flip through my copy and check, though.

no need. i'll keep it in mind and look through it whenever i get the chance. appreciate the offer, though.

quote:

Yeah Chernyshevsky's What is to be done is one of the most famous books of Russian literature but it's famous more for the effect it had on readers at the time and not for its own literary merits, which are few and far between.

literary merit #1: rakhmetov

quote:

Louise McReynolds, The News Under Russia's Old Regime, is basically the definitive text on Russia's mass-circulation press, it covers basically the whole existence of the popular press from the 1860s to 1917. She tends to focus on the newspapers themselves, their differences and similarities, the people involved, and so on, so it's more of a journalism history than a history about the impact of journalism on society and culture.

that's actually more along the lines of what i was looking for. less "impact of journalism" and more "how did these places actually function, how did the people in them make them work, who were those people," etc.

quote:

And to be honest when it comes to books there hasn't been a lot in English since then (1991). There are books on specific subjects (individual publishers or journalists, specific newspapers, etc.) and there are journal articles and book chapters, but there isn't yet a good book I'd be happy recommending on late imperial journalism specifically. Maybe in a few years when I get a book deal I can recommend you one then lol

no worries, and good luck with getting a book deal

quote:

Maybe the closest you'd get in recent work is Mark Steinberg's The Russian Revolution 1905-1921 which is a centenary book on the revolution aimed at student readers, and in which Steinberg makes a lot of use of the press and talks about journalism as an important part of the revolution. But this book is much more a history of the revolution that happens to lean towards Steinberg's own interests in journalism rather than a history of journalism per se.

Sylvester also makes pretty good use of the Odessa press and it's definitely a focus of her book, so that should give some impression of what it was like in one city at least.

awesome. thanks again for taking time out of your day to do all this. i have no idea when i'll get to all these, but it's great having this wealth of sources recommended by someone who knows their poo poo.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Karenina posted:

awesome. thanks again for taking time out of your day to do all this. i have no idea when i'll get to all these, but it's great having this wealth of sources recommended by someone who knows their poo poo.

Hey, no problem. It was a pleasure to talk about.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Sep 4, 2021

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



vyelkin posted:

Hey, no problem. It's rare we get a question so close to my own research interests in this thread, so it was a pleasure to talk about.

Is there anything in English that's like Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen for late imperial Russia?

Though, the more I think about it, late imperial Russia would probably be about the creation of Russian civil society, the zemstvos, and the creation of Russian identity among the upper classes. For the modernization of rural Russia, I should be looking towards the Stalin era.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Minenfeld! posted:

Is there anything in English that's like Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen for late imperial Russia?

Though, the more I think about it, late imperial Russia would probably be about the creation of Russian civil society, the zemstvos, and the creation of Russian identity among the upper classes. For the modernization of rural Russia, I should be looking towards the Stalin era.

There's a book that wanted to be Peasants into Frenchmen so bad the author imitated the title for an AHR article summarizing his main argument a few years before the book came out. The article was Joseph Bradley, "Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia," AHR 107.4 (2002), and the book was Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society (2009). As you guessed, though, it was about the formation of civil society (specifically, voluntary associations) rather than the modernization of rural Russia.

There are books about the modernization of rural Russia in the late imperial period (the first one that comes to mind is Ilya Gerasimov, Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-Organization, 1905-30, which is also about civil society but about agronomists working with the state to try and improve agriculture). Probably the one I can think of off the top of my head that's most like Weber's argument for the spread of metropolitan civilization into the countryside is Jeffrey Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905, he talks a lot about the penetration of markets, consumerism, and urban norms into the countryside (though it's mostly just in one influential chapter). As you say, it becomes a bigger question under Stalin when the state starts taking a more active role in trying to force change onto the peasantry. The tsars weren't as interested in it because they thought peasants were a bulwark of conservatism and they saw that as a good thing, so they weren't overly interested in changing peasant culture or society even though they were interested in boosting agricultural productivity.

You could also look into the Stolypin Reforms, which were the big moment when the late tsarist state had to confront the fact that they couldn't really improve the peasant economy without also changing peasant society and culture. It's a very interesting moment where competing interests within the state end up at odds with each other over that basic conflict, but the reforms only last a few years before World War I and Stolypin got assassinated anyway for unrelated reasons, so it's one of those big what-ifs of Russian history. Peasants aren't really my subject so I don't know a good book on Stolypin though.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Apr 15, 2020

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



vyelkin posted:

There's a book that wanted to be Peasants into Frenchmen so bad the author imitated the title for an AHA article summarizing his main argument a few years before the book came out. The article was Joseph Bradley, "Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia," AHA 107.4 (2002), and the book was Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society (2009). As you guessed, though, it was about the formation of civil society (specifically, voluntary associations) rather than the modernization of rural Russia.

There are books about the modernization of rural Russia in the late imperial period (the first one that comes to mind is Ilya Gerasimov, Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-Organization, 1905-30, which is also about civil society but about agronomists working with the state to try and improve agriculture). Probably the one I can think of off the top of my head that's most like Weber's argument for the spread of metropolitan civilization into the countryside is Jeffrey Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905, he talks a lot about the penetration of markets, consumerism, and urban norms into the countryside (though it's mostly just in one influential chapter). As you say, it becomes a bigger question under Stalin when the state starts taking a more active role in trying to force change onto the peasantry. The tsars weren't as interested in it because they thought peasants were a bulwark of conservatism and they saw that as a good thing, so they weren't overly interested in changing peasant culture or society even though they were interested in boosting agricultural productivity.

You could also look into the Stolypin Reforms, which were the big moment when the late tsarist state had to confront the fact that they couldn't really improve the peasant economy without also changing peasant society and culture. It's a very interesting moment where competing interests within the state end up at odds with each other over that basic conflict, but the reforms only last a few years before World War I and Stolypin got assassinated anyway for unrelated reasons, so it's one of those big what-ifs of Russian history. Peasants aren't really my subject so I don't know a good book on Stolypin though.

Sweet, thanks. I actually had the Gerasimov book on my shortlist already. I'd pulled it from a bibliography in another work. I'll check out the Bradley book.

I'm going to have to dig into the Stolypin Reforms in more depth in the future. At the moment, I have W. Bruce Lincoln's The Great Reforms on my to-read list and I'm trying to track down a good book on the Witte system for the full spectrum of imperial reforms.

Minenfeld! fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Apr 15, 2020

PawParole
Nov 16, 2019

Anyone have any books on Somalia?

Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice

PawParole posted:

Anyone have any books on Somalia?

Do you want a history of the place, or recent history and modern/post civil war Somalia?

PawParole
Nov 16, 2019

Epicurius posted:

Do you want a history of the place, or recent history and modern/post civil war Somalia?

anything that isn’t nonsense by I.M Lewis.

Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice

PawParole posted:

anything that isn’t nonsense by I.M Lewis.

I mean, I've heard good things about him generally, but I don't know the specifics or what you don't like about him? Mary Harper, a journalist with the BBC wrote a kind of interesting look at al-Shabaab called "Everything you Have Told me is True".

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

Are there any good biographies of Garibaldi? He seems like he'd be fun to read about.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Grevling posted:

Are there any good biographies of Garibaldi? He seems like he'd be fun to read about.

Lucy Riall's Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero is a really interesting look at Garibaldi's life and especially at the creation of a heroic cult around him as a symbolic figure.


Minenfeld! posted:

Sweet, thanks. I actually had the Gerasimov book on my shortlist already. I'd pulled it from a bibliography in another work. I'll check out the Bradley book.

I'm going to have to dig into the Stolypin Reforms in more depth in the future. At the moment, I have W. Bruce Lincoln's The Great Reforms on my to-read list and I'm trying to track down a good book on the Witte system for the full spectrum of imperial reforms.

By the way, imo the best book on Witte is Frank Wcislo's Tales of Imperial Russia. It's a biography that places Witte within the context of the imperial system and imperial world. I don't remember how much Wcislo focuses on Witte's actual reforms but for a look at the man itself and the world he moved through it's unparalleled.

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



I really enjoyed the mundanity of the “Life in a Medieval...” series written by the Gies’. I would like to know this thread’s opinion on whether they were based on good research. I would also like recommendations for similar looks into the mundane lives of people living in distant historical periods.

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

vyelkin posted:

Lucy Riall's Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero is a really interesting look at Garibaldi's life and especially at the creation of a heroic cult around him as a symbolic figure.

That sounds delightful, I'll check it out. Thank you!

Disinterested
Jun 29, 2011

You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

Trin Tragula posted:

Anyone who uncritically regurgitates the myth about Magna Carta (particularly its original 1215 form) being of any relevance to anyone than a few extremely wealthy and long-dead noblemen, for about 30 seconds, wants all their opinions taking with a huge pinch of salt; cf Lord Sumption's skeptical speech for the 800th anniversary.

Jonathan Sumption has the unusual perspective of having written expansive tomes on the 100 years war and having served on the UK supreme court.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Im really engrossed with Chris Harman's The Lost Revolution and would love to read other sorta-national histories of 20th century non-russian leftist movements along the same lines
Like, for example, an analysis of the successes and mistakes of Italian leftism.

big dyke energy
Jul 29, 2006

Football? Yaaaay

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

I really enjoyed the mundanity of the “Life in a Medieval...” series written by the Gies’. I would like to know this thread’s opinion on whether they were based on good research. I would also like recommendations for similar looks into the mundane lives of people living in distant historical periods.

Ruth Goodman's books are marvelous for this. How to be a Tudor, How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan/Renaissance England, How to be a Victorian. There's also Tudor Monastery Farm, which I haven't read but seems to be a companion book of the BBC series she worked on (...Tudor Monastery Farm).

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



big dyke energy posted:

Ruth Goodman's books are marvelous for this. How to be a Tudor, How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan/Renaissance England, How to be a Victorian. There's also Tudor Monastery Farm, which I haven't read but seems to be a companion book of the BBC series she worked on (...Tudor Monastery Farm).

Yes, thank you, that’s what I’m looking for.

radlum
May 13, 2013
Any recommendations of books about witches or witchcraft? Doesn't have to be just about witch hunting or witch hunts, nor focused on America.

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

PawParole posted:

Anyone have any books on Somalia?

One good book I'd recommend is Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group, by Stig Hansen. It basically picks up in the mid 00s with the start of the secret war and goes pretty much up until al-Shabaab morphed into its modern form.

Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden is a great piece of journalism. The movie of the same name is based on it. It's really good, Bowden visited Mogadishu in the late nineties and got tons of great interviews with local witnesses.

Since both of those books were printed a while ago, if you want your history to be current you could read this UN report which came out in December. It's kinda boring honestly but is full of juicy gossipy detail about the schemes of the warlord class.

OneTruePecos
Oct 24, 2010

radlum posted:

Any recommendations of books about witches or witchcraft? Doesn't have to be just about witch hunting or witch hunts, nor focused on America.

I have Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom and The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present on my wishlist, so if you do happen to pick up either of those, be sure to give the thread a review!

Look Sir Droids
Jan 27, 2015

The tracks go off in this direction.
What's a good book for the history of the Byzantine Empire? Prefer a single volume, but it's like 1000 years of history so I'm open to multi-volume.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Look Sir Droids posted:

What's a good book for the history of the Byzantine Empire? Prefer a single volume, but it's like 1000 years of history so I'm open to multi-volume.
The standard non-scholarly overview is John Julius Norwich's History of Byzantium. It's a three volume work; there's also a one-volume abridged edition.

I also recommend subscribing to the History of Byzantium podcast, which picks up from where the celebrated History of Rome podcast leaves off.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


FMguru posted:

The standard non-scholarly overview is John Julius Norwich's History of Byzantium. It's a three volume work; there's also a one-volume abridged edition.

I also recommend subscribing to the History of Byzantium podcast, which picks up from where the celebrated History of Rome podcast leaves off.

For a slice of life look and a few deepish dives into a few subjects, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin is good, but more focused on the city itself than the empire as whole. May be more of a social history than what you are looking for, but it's very readable and not particularly long-her goal is very much to paint a layman a picture of what Byzantium was.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Norwich is the main narrative, but if you read it keep in mind it's an old book by the field's standards and the scholarship has changed quite a bit.

History of Byzantium is good and uses modern scholarship.

For a modern book on a more narrow time period, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood by Anthony Kaldellis is good.

Look Sir Droids
Jan 27, 2015

The tracks go off in this direction.

Grand Fromage posted:

Norwich is the main narrative, but if you read it keep in mind it's an old book by the field's standards and the scholarship has changed quite a bit.

History of Byzantium is good and uses modern scholarship.

For a modern book on a more narrow time period, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood by Anthony Kaldellis is good.

Yeah, if the scholarship is outdated I’d like something more recent. It also looks like Norwich is hard/expensive to get.

Who is the author for History of Byzantium?

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Look Sir Droids posted:

Yeah, if the scholarship is outdated I’d like something more recent. It also looks like Norwich is hard/expensive to get.

Who is the author for History of Byzantium?

Robin Pearson. https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

I know you asked for a book, not a podcast, but frankly this podcast is the best up to date, full scope narrative history of the ERE you're going to get in English. I don't think there are any comprehensive books that have been published in the past few decades.

dublish
Oct 31, 2011


Grand Fromage posted:

Robin Pearson. https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

I know you asked for a book, not a podcast, but frankly this podcast is the best up to date, full scope narrative history of the ERE* you're going to get in English. I don't think there are any comprehensive books that have been published in the past few decades.

* through ~1100

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.
I liked Vasilev's two-volume Byzantine history, but I don't know how it stands among Byzantine scholars.

Proust Malone
Apr 4, 2008

I dunno where else to put this but I’ve been reading reconstruction by Eric Foner and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve screamed “nothing has changed!”while reading this book. I’m not in academia and I do t know if I’m reading too much into it but a couple of things really stand out:

1) southern republicans tacking right because they know the “left” of the party in freedmen and upcountry whites have nowhere else to go

2) An experiment in integrated schools in Louisiana being immediately followed by a white exodus and a proliferation of religious schools.

3) Labor theory of value coming from
Otherwise uneducated freedmen.

This book has got me riled up.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


dublish posted:

* through ~1100

Fair, though I'm sure he'll finish it. Also it's just gotten to the Crusades, and there are more books for that period--though they often ignore the ERE too.

SubG posted:

I liked Vasilev's two-volume Byzantine history, but I don't know how it stands among Byzantine scholars.

I haven't read it, but it was published in 1958 so I'd class it with Norwich's work. However, its issues are probably different since Russian scholarship doesn't ignore the ERE the same way western history does.

Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.
so i saw the new asscreed and want to know more about that age of england. The heptarchy and the viking invasion. i have been reading the last kingdom and thats fantastic.

Deptfordx
Dec 23, 2013

Can anyone recommend some books, preferably kindle friendly if possible, on the Early Modern Era in Europe.

I'm particularly interested in books which cover how stuff works in the period

So yes, where do I buy food and drink, what do I do at my job, you know the day to day stuff. Which is obviously important but also I'm interested in (for want of a better word) higher level stuff.

So how do I post stuff to someone in another city, how do courts work if i want to sue someone, how do I travel safely across a country. That sort of thing.

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Deptfordx
Dec 23, 2013

Dapper_Swindler posted:

so i saw the new asscreed and want to know more about that age of england. The heptarchy and the viking invasion. i have been reading the last kingdom and thats fantastic.

If you're ok with podcasts "The British History Podcast" is very highly regarded and extremely comprehensive.

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