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For anyone interested in Viking history, I'm about a third of the way through Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price and it's great so far--wide-ranging and informative without being dense or dry. It's being released officially next week but I got a free electronic copy through NetGalley, so it might be worth looking into if you have an account.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:10
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If I want to read 1-5 books about the history of labor unions / the labor movement, what should I read?
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Aug 26, 2020 22:50
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From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States by Priscilla Murolo Confession: have not read, its on my list
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Aug 27, 2020 00:35
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America specific, but There is Power in a Union by Dray was good.
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Aug 27, 2020 00:36
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A History of American In Ten Strikes by labor historian Erik Loomis: https://thenewpress.com/books/history-of-america-ten-strikes
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Aug 27, 2020 00:51
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ketchup vs catsup posted:If I want to read 1-5 books about the history of labor unions / the labor movement, what should I read? The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson Recced in this very thread to me as a "feel good book if you have a long view", and it's a chonker but worth the effort.
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Aug 27, 2020 02:20
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Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States goes into the subject as well
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Aug 27, 2020 05:10
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StrixNebulosa posted:The Making of the English Working Class Absolutely. Plus there's a podcast, Casualties of History, which is covering it chapter by chapter so you can have a companion to slogging through it.
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Aug 27, 2020 15:10
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StrixNebulosa posted:The Making of the English Working Class Thirding this. It's basically required reading in most graduate programs because of how influential it was. It's an absolute classic and is massively important in the major social history turn that happened in the 70s and 80s. There are bits you can disagree with and criticisms you can make of it. It's still really good from the standpoint of wanting to learn about that particular part of history. If you're into history as a craft it's also important in a historiographical sense.
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Aug 27, 2020 16:10
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Thanks, everyone! I'll gather those and get started.
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Aug 27, 2020 16:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:Thirding this. It's basically required reading in most graduate programs because of how influential it was. It's an absolute classic and is massively important in the major social history turn that happened in the 70s and 80s. Excerpts of it were assigned years ago when I was taking History 101 as an undergrad.
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Aug 27, 2020 22:41
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Rimusutera posted:
I finished and can recommend The Northwest Is Our Mother by Jean Teillet
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Aug 30, 2020 03:27
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Cyrano4747 posted:edit: I've got something tickling the back of my head about a book on German bicycle clubs in the late 19th century? And becoming a nexus for working class politics but I think it might also have what I'm looking for or at least a few good bibliographical hits. Ugh, maybe it was an article. The Nazi Seizure of Power goes extensively into this, albeit for being a nexus of nazism
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Aug 30, 2020 09:44
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I finished Reaganland earlier this week (I highly recommend it) and was wondering if there were any good books about the 80s and 90s American political history.
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Aug 31, 2020 03:44
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Mantis42 posted:I finished Reaganland earlier this week (I highly recommend it) and was wondering if there were any good books about the 80s and 90s American political history. It's just a collection of events, organized by calendar date, tracking the batshittery of the Reagan administration (with a number of asides about culture and celebrity and world events).
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Aug 31, 2020 03:48
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FMguru posted:The Clothes Have No Emperor by Paul Slansky is the best history of 1980s America. Seconding this. In 2026 they are going to make the sequel by just pulling up Donald Trump's twitter page and hitting "print."
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Aug 31, 2020 05:22
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Mantis42 posted:I finished Reaganland earlier this week (I highly recommend it) and was wondering if there were any good books about the 80s and 90s American political history. I really want to read this but it seems that Amazon isn't selling the ebook in Australia yet. Just finishing Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford I've enjoyed it, as someone who knew next to nothing about the era it's accessible and kind of dovetails in an interesting way with the black death reading I've been doing. It covers more or less through to the death of Khubilai.
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Aug 31, 2020 05:46
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EoinCannon posted:I really want to read this but it seems that Amazon isn't selling the ebook in Australia yet. I thought the beginning of this was good, plus the stuff about the creation of Mongolian identity/Soviet-Khan relations. Kinda lost interest after Genghis died though. Good book to read with the recent "cancelation" of him on twitter lol.
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Aug 31, 2020 06:25
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Vasukhani posted:Good book to read with the recent "cancelation" of him on twitter lol. what
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Aug 31, 2020 10:02
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Genghis is canceled
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Aug 31, 2020 10:07
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MeatwadIsGod posted:what Some hindu nationalist started ranting crazy poo poo on twitter a while back iirc Just mad that Genghis solved middle ages war and kicked everyone's asses
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Aug 31, 2020 10:11
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EoinCannon posted:Some hindu nationalist started ranting crazy poo poo on twitter a while back iirc It wasn't really ranting. They basically just said that even though people can think what they want, it's weird that people think of him as a hero when he killed about 11% of the world's population.
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Aug 31, 2020 12:00
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Epicurius posted:It wasn't really ranting. They basically just said that even though people can think what they want, it's weird that people think of him as a hero when he killed about 11% of the world's population. Sources for the 11% figure? I see it tossed around occasionally, but never with a real citation. But I agree with the broader point. He's often defended on the grounds that he did basically the same things as Alexander the Great on a larger scale and more successfully, but even if that's true, it's more an argument against Alexander (and Napoleon, Oda Nobunaga, etc.) than in favor of Genghis.
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Aug 31, 2020 14:11
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Silver2195 posted:Sources for the 11% figure? I see it tossed around occasionally, but never with a real citation. That was the tweet's claim, but Frank McLynn, in Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, puts the total number of deaths from his wars at 37.5 million, about 30 million in China, and other people have made estimates up to 40 million or more (a lot of it depends on how many people you think lived in medieval Iran, and how reliable you think Persian casualty estimates are. McLynn downplays them). Estimates of world population from around 1200 range from 360-400 million. So, taking McLynn's numbers, which are again, conservative, that has him killing between 9.3-10.4% of the population of the world. If you go with the more accepted 40 million estimate, it's 10-11%
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Aug 31, 2020 14:50
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Epicurius posted:That was the tweet's claim, but Frank McLynn, in Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, puts the total number of deaths from his wars at 37.5 million, about 30 million in China, and other people have made estimates up to 40 million or more (a lot of it depends on how many people you think lived in medieval Iran, and how reliable you think Persian casualty estimates are. McLynn downplays them). Estimates of world population from around 1200 range from 360-400 million. Thanks.
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Aug 31, 2020 14:53
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People just need to understand that being badass and being good are separate qualities. Genghis Khan is like Walter White: cool but a baddie. People like to compare him to Hitler but Hitler relied on vast industrial machinery to kill millions whereas Genghis killed people personally. It's the difference between a drone operator and John Wick. That's why Hitler is both bad and uncool. Hope that clears it up.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:03
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Epicurius posted:That was the tweet's claim, but Frank McLynn, in Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, puts the total number of deaths from his wars at 37.5 million, about 30 million in China, and other people have made estimates up to 40 million or more (a lot of it depends on how many people you think lived in medieval Iran, and how reliable you think Persian casualty estimates are. McLynn downplays them). Estimates of world population from around 1200 range from 360-400 million. Fwiw McLynn is a popular biographer and not an expert on the specific issue. I've only read his book on Richard Burton and thought it was inane psychoanalytic garbage
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Aug 31, 2020 15:10
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Ras Het posted:Fwiw McLynn is a popular biographer and not an expert on the specific issue. I've only read his book on Richard Burton and thought it was inane psychoanalytic garbage I'm pretty sure the 40 million estimate is pretty common, though. Almost everyone agrees on 30 million in China. The question is how many people died in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:14
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EoinCannon posted:Some hindu nationalist started ranting crazy poo poo on twitter a while back iirc It wasn't crazy, it was just a hilarious "Did you know that Genghis Khan actually KILLED people???" post like she'd just opened a history book for the first time. And posted a few stories of his cruelty that are dubious. Then people went wild with the jokes and it was lots of fun.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:18
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Mantis42 posted:People just need to understand that being badass and being good are separate qualities. Genghis Khan is like Walter White: cool but a baddie. People like to compare him to Hitler but Hitler relied on vast industrial machinery to kill millions whereas Genghis killed people personally. It's the difference between a drone operator and John Wick. That's why Hitler is both bad and uncool. I would argue that there is a substantive difference between Genghis and Hitler in that with Hitler it was explicitly a project to purge his society of people he didn't like for ethnic, religious, eugenic, etc. reasons. My understanding of Genghis is that he used killing as a terror tactic and to crush resistance, rather than because he wanted all <insert ethnic group here> to be purged from the face of the earth. Does it matter to the person being killed? Probably not, but it's part of what gives the genocidal crimes of the 20th century their particular flavor of horror.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:I would argue that there is a substantive difference between Genghis and Hitler in that with Hitler it was explicitly a project to purge his society of people he didn't like for ethnic, religious, eugenic, etc. reasons. My understanding of Genghis is that he used killing as a terror tactic and to crush resistance, rather than because he wanted all <insert ethnic group here> to be purged from the face of the earth. I have personally always liked kublai more because he was an actual pretty good ruler for a Chinese dynasty and reformer and stuff. he is an interesting figure of a foreign king doing an actual good job. Genghis was super conqueror with "protomodern" sense of governing and such. he was still a brutal brutal mother fucker. he just didn't, he just had a good off switch as long as you bent the knee.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:52
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Ghengis Khan/The Mongols basically always offered fair terms to whomever he was killing. The insane acts of cruelty were usually precipitated by acts of cruelty from the other side. When they invaded Kyiv they offered fair terms, only to have their diplomatic envoys killed and their bodies displayed. His actions and the actions of his successors were simply the result of successful warfare in a world without the Geneva convention. Nationalists get upset because it ruins the perception of their eternal bastion of civilization when "their nation" is defeated by tribal people.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:57
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Thanks for the information, turns out I didn't remember it correctly
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Aug 31, 2020 21:16
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A readable overview of the Thirty Years War? It can be long, as long as it is not dry.
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Sep 1, 2020 10:35
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:A readable overview of the Thirty Years War? It can be long, as long as it is not dry. The Peter Wilson book on the Thirty-Years War is extremely readable and nicely written, though it is certainly not a short book.
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Sep 1, 2020 14:17
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:A readable overview of the Thirty Years War? It can be long, as long as it is not dry. edit: efb, so I'll throw out Wedgwood's book as well, which I believe is out of fashion now, but was long considered the classic book on the subject. Originally published in the '30s, the writing is a bit more turgid than more recent narrative histories, but I still like it purely from a literary standpoint. SubG fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 14:18
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Thanks, I’m getting Wilson as the starting point e: no I'm not, the Kindle edition is not available and Amazon wants $81 for shipping, gently caress that e2: It's actually available under the title Europe's Tragedy, yay Take the plunge! Okay! fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 14:36
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Are there any decent histories out there on the US invasions of Grenada in 1983 (Operation Urgent Fury) or Panama in 1989 (Operation Just Cause)? I realize they were both really short military actions. With Grenada everything that went wrong is probably more interesting than the military actions themselves. Panama probably has a more interesting build up period with the US involvement in both the country and the government and then the immediate lead up to military action. Plus the whole deal with Noriega in the Vatican Embasssy.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:07
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I just finished The Making of The Atomic Bomb. It was excellent. Are Richard Rhodes other works as good? Also, apparently I got the 25th anniversary and am missing an entire ending chapter that describes what happened after the dropping of the bombs.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:05
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np19 posted:I just finished The Making of The Atomic Bomb. It was excellent. Are Richard Rhodes other works as good? Also, apparently I got the 25th anniversary and am missing an entire ending chapter that describes what happened after the dropping of the bombs. I thought Dark Sun was a lot more fun. It's more of a spy story.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:12
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