The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf

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Michael Transactions: Nov 11, 2013

I finished reading a history of My rear end

# ? Sep 12, 2020 23:32

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 02:11

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

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.

Yeah read Dark Sun immediately, it's real good.

# ? Sep 13, 2020 03:30

Rimusutera: Oct 17, 2014

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?

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression

# ? Sep 19, 2020 00:57

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

SubG posted:

Wilson's The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy is the current consensus pick for a single volume on the subject.

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.

I don't care what people say or think these days, I still think Wedgwood's Thirty Years War is pretty darn good, given that she was writing it during the 30s with the specter of authoritarian governments on the rise in Europe. It's both a solid read and an interesting work to look at to see how historians are influenced by the context they're writing their history.

# ? Sep 19, 2020 20:49

Count Thrashula: Jun 1, 2003; Death is nothing compared to vindication.; Buglord

What about the seven years war? I want to read more about Frederick II's military career, most things I read about him are more about his statesman/philosopher side.

# ? Sep 19, 2020 21:14

HamsterPolice: Apr 17, 2016

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:

What about the seven years war? I want to read more about Frederick II's military career, most things I read about him are more about his statesman/philosopher side.

I liked Crucible of War though I didn't finish it.

# ? Sep 19, 2020 23:38

Chairman Capone: Dec 17, 2008

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:

What about the seven years war? I want to read more about Frederick II's military career, most things I read about him are more about his statesman/philosopher side.

It's not entirely about him, and the book is something like 50 years old now so I'm sure there's more recent work which might revise some of it, but The Politics of the Prussian Army by Gordon A. Craig is a very in-depth look at how the Prussian military was central to Prussian politics and statecraft. I read it about a decade ago and remember it being very good.

# ? Sep 20, 2020 18:27

algebra testes: Mar 5, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

I just finished The Path to Power and it is fantastic. Strongest recommendation.

I am eagerly looking forward to the even crookeder 48 election.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 14:33

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

I'm trying to pace out the LBJ books because I have the deranged notion that the series might actually be finished in the next couple of years so if I only do one every half year it will all work out.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 16:35

Look Sir Droids: Jan 27, 2015; The tracks go off in this direction.

Mantis42 posted:

I'm trying to pace out the LBJ books because I have the deranged notion that the series might actually be finished in the next couple of years so if I only do one every half year it will all work out.

Yeah, about that.

quote:

In November 2011, Caro estimated that the fifth and final volume would require another two to three years to write.[11] In March 2013, he affirmed a commitment to completing the series with a fifth volume.[12] As of April 2014, he was continuing to research the book.[13] In a televised interview with C-SPAN in May 2017, Caro confirmed over 400 typed pages as being complete, covering the period 1964�65; and that once he completes the section on Johnson's 1965 legislative achievements, he intends to move to Vietnam to continue the writing process.[14]

In an interview with The New York Review of Books in January 2018, Caro said that he was writing about 1965 and 1966 and a non-chronological section about the relationship between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy. Asked if he still planned to visit Vietnam soon, Caro replied: "Not yet, no. This is a very long book. And there's a lot to do before that's necessary. I'm getting close to it now."[15] In December 2018, it was reported that Caro is still "several years from finishing" the volume.[16] In January 2020, Caro said he had "typed 604 manuscript pages so far" and is "currently on a section relating to the creation of Medicare in 1965".[17] Due to the/b]impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Caro postponed his research trip to Vietnam and a visit to the Johnson Presidential Library, but continued work on the book from his home in Manhattan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Lyndon_Johnson#Book_Five

Not sure if Vietnam is even letting Americans in right now, but at best he won't do that until Summer 2021.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 16:50

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

If he only got ~200 pages of first draft manuscript done in three years he�s got a problem with his writing process. I dunno if he�s struggling with putting it together from the sources or if he�s just not writing that much but that�s beyond slow, even for a dense academic work. Even if you only assume 100 writing days a year (realistic if he�s teaching and had a family to go on vacations etc with) that�s still a super slow pace.

Fake edit: I looked it up and he�s 84. He�s not finishing this book. I dunno if it�s writers block or if he�s slowing down and having trouble focusing on the writing or what but that�s not a sustainable pace at that age.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 18:33

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Cyrano4747 posted:

If he only got ~200 pages of first draft manuscript done in three years he�s got a problem with his writing process. I dunno if he�s struggling with putting it together from the sources or if he�s just not writing that much but that�s beyond slow, even for a dense academic work. Even if you only assume 100 writing days a year (realistic if he�s teaching and had a family to go on vacations etc with) that�s still a super slow pace.

Fake edit: I looked it up and he�s 84. He�s not finishing this book. I dunno if it�s writers block or if he�s slowing down and having trouble focusing on the writing or what but that�s not a sustainable pace at that age.

The other four books came out in 1982, 1990, 2002, and 2012, so that tells you something about how long it takes him to write each one.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 18:36

Look Sir Droids: Jan 27, 2015; The tracks go off in this direction.

vyelkin posted:

The other four books came out in 1982, 1990, 2002, and 2012, so that tells you something about how long it takes him to write each one.

Yeah, 8-12 years between books. We�re at 8 since the last one now. If it�s not out 4 years from now or he dies, I�ll agree it�s not coming out.

Hopefully he has a backup plan if he dies. His wife is his researcher, but I think she�s the same age as him.

# ? Sep 24, 2020 18:49

The Glumslinger: Sep 24, 2008; Coach Nagy, you want me to throw to WHAT side of the field?; Hair Elf

They can get Brandon Sanderson to finish it

# ? Sep 25, 2020 17:18

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Look Sir Droids posted:

Yeah, 8-12 years between books. We�re at 8 since the last one now. If it�s not out 4 years from now or he dies, I�ll agree it�s not coming out.

Hopefully he has a backup plan if he dies. His wife is his researcher, but I think she�s the same age as him.

I'd love to see his research and writing process, because 8-12 years between books is nuts.

Now, if his process is that it's like 2 years of preliminary puttering (aka not doing much but you've told your department and publisher you're writing), 2 years of solid research, 2 years of solid writing, and 2 years of fiddling around the edges and working with your editor to get the manuscript publishable, then that's understandable. But that's a pretty leisurely timeline and not exactly working full time on the manuscript.

# ? Sep 25, 2020 17:38

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

According to a New York Times article from earlier in this year, his current manuscript is ~600 pages long. I have more faith in the old guy finishing his final volume than I do in George RR Martin.

e: One issue is that he's too old to understand computers so he just has thousands of paper notes everywhere like a crazy person.

# ? Sep 25, 2020 17:48

Look Sir Droids: Jan 27, 2015; The tracks go off in this direction.

Cyrano4747 posted:

I'd love to see his research and writing process, because 8-12 years between books is nuts.

Now, if his process is that it's like 2 years of preliminary puttering (aka not doing much but you've told your department and publisher you're writing), 2 years of solid research, 2 years of solid writing, and 2 years of fiddling around the edges and working with your editor to get the manuscript publishable, then that's understandable. But that's a pretty leisurely timeline and not exactly working full time on the manuscript.

At least in the last 8 years, he was working on another book. ABOUT his process.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2F9S6H/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

It's 200 pages lol.

I think the gist of it is he's just an absurdly thorough researcher and Lyndon Johnson's career and especially his Presidency was both extensively documented (LBJ wanted it that way and that was the purpose of his presidential library) and, at least when he started these books, had most of the primary players still alive and he interviewed them.

# ? Sep 25, 2020 17:50

plogo: Jan 20, 2009

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.

Walter Karp's Liberty Under Siege: 1976-1988 is a pretty fun idiosyncratic take.

Steve Kornacki's The Red and the Blue is a more conventional take on 90's politics.

# ? Oct 2, 2020 20:29

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

whats a good books about the cold war in the 1980s?

# ? Oct 4, 2020 01:48

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Dapper_Swindler posted:

whats a good books about the cold war in the 1980s?

The End of the Cold War by Robert Service seems to be the leading general text on the subject

# ? Oct 4, 2020 03:12

plogo: Jan 20, 2009

Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe by Lorenz M. L�thi is a survey of the whole period that came out this year, but you might enjoy the chapters on the 80s.

# ? Oct 5, 2020 16:30

Chairman Capone: Dec 17, 2008

Any recommendations for a good book on Europe spanning the first half of the 20th century? Could end at 1939, 45, even 56 or 68. But something that looks at that early chunk of the European century as a bloc of time on its own?

# ? Oct 5, 2020 18:03

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Chairman Capone posted:

Any recommendations for a good book on Europe spanning the first half of the 20th century? Could end at 1939, 45, even 56 or 68. But something that looks at that early chunk of the European century as a bloc of time on its own?

Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914�1949

# ? Oct 5, 2020 18:25

Chairman Capone: Dec 17, 2008

FMguru posted:

Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914�1949

Awesome. Many thanks.

# ? Oct 5, 2020 19:22

Fate Accomplice: Nov 30, 2006

this thread is very dangerous for my "please read this some da-haha you know this is wishful thinking but sure, write it down" list

# ? Oct 5, 2020 19:25

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Has anyone in here read Britain's Gulag by Caroline Elkins? It seems like another book in the vein of King Leopold's Ghost, but focused on Kenya. I'm...afraid to read it.

e: wait a minute it's also called Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Still, question stands!

# ? Oct 6, 2020 22:57

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

StrixNebulosa posted:

Has anyone in here read Britain's Gulag by Caroline Elkins? It seems like another book in the vein of King Leopold's Ghost, but focused on Kenya. I'm...afraid to read it.

e: wait a minute it's also called Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Still, question stands!

I read it in grad school, by which I mean I read the most important 10% of it. Your impression is pretty accurate, though the story itself isn't quite as horrifying as what happened in the Congo (1.5 million people tortured in concentration camps to try and maintain colonial rule isn't quite as bad as 10 million people brutally murdered to extract rubber, but it's still really bad!) so I didn't find it quite as overwhelming as King Leopold's Ghost.

# ? Oct 6, 2020 23:17

Mr_Roke: Jan 1, 2014

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year. Saw it in the new ebooks through my library and only picked it up because I remembered his name from the Revolutions podcast.

If I have one complaint, and it's minor, it's that it didn't go into Toussaint's personal life much at all. I generally don't enjoy reading that sort of stuff, but I came away not knowing as much as I wanted about his relationship with his wife or the mistresses he had throughout Haiti (something the author mentions him having more than once, but nothing more than a mention).

I expect there will be many people trying to write a Hamilton-style musical after reading the book.

# ? Oct 7, 2020 07:53

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

vyelkin posted:

I read it in grad school, by which I mean I read the most important 10% of it. Your impression is pretty accurate, though the story itself isn't quite as horrifying as what happened in the Congo (1.5 million people tortured in concentration camps to try and maintain colonial rule isn't quite as bad as 10 million people brutally murdered to extract rubber, but it's still really bad!) so I didn't find it quite as overwhelming as King Leopold's Ghost.

I can't find it in myself to be sad that it's not as horrifying as King Leopold's Ghost. Thank you, it's on my list and I'll give it a gander when I'm ready to be mad at Europe again.

# ? Oct 7, 2020 14:58

sbaldrick: Jul 19, 2006; Driven by Hate

Mr_Roke posted:

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year. Saw it in the new ebooks through my library and only picked it up because I remembered his name from the Revolutions podcast.

If I have one complaint, and it's minor, it's that it didn't go into Toussaint's personal life much at all. I generally don't enjoy reading that sort of stuff, but I came away not knowing as much as I wanted about his relationship with his wife or the mistresses he had throughout Haiti (something the author mentions him having more than once, but nothing more than a mention).

I expect there will be many people trying to write a Hamilton-style musical after reading the book.

I think the brutality of that revolution puts the breaks on any musical or film...sorry Danny Glover.

Does anyone know of any good books on the Indian Rebellion of 1857

# ? Oct 7, 2020 15:06

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

sbaldrick posted:

I think the brutality of that revolution puts the breaks on any musical or film...sorry Danny Glover.

Does anyone know of any good books on the Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857.

It's not a blow by blow history of the whole rebellion, but it does a really good job as an overview of the issues, background, and consequences of it. It's very well written, very readable, and interesting as all hell. It uses the skull of a mutineer that was found in an old pub in England a few years back as the lens through which to examine the rebellion. Basically they start off trying to figure out who this person was, and in doing so dig in on all the context of who the mutineers were, why they rebelled, what the British reaction was, and how it got memorialized by both sides.

If I havent' made it clear, it does an excellent job of looking at the rebelling soldiers as more than just an antagonist for the colonial British.

# ? Oct 7, 2020 15:24

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

I'm stressed and looking for more history books to put on my to-read list and so I'm googling "best history books all time" and stuff like that and google wants to make fun of me

https://bookauthority.org/books/best-history-books

# ? Oct 7, 2020 21:28

Strange Cares: Nov 22, 2007; ROYAL RAINBOW!

StrixNebulosa posted:

I'm stressed and looking for more history books to put on my to-read list and so I'm googling "best history books all time" and stuff like that and google wants to make fun of me

https://bookauthority.org/books/best-history-books

Never trust a google search for history recommendations, it's a lesson I've learned the hard way so many times. Honestly, what I like doing if I'm just looking for like, any history book to read for fun is to look on the goodreads list of microhistories. There's a lot of really interesting books on some real niche topics, always cheers me up.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 01:00

Aerdan: Apr 14, 2012; Not Dennis NEDry

My personal go-to, outside of this thread, is /r/askahistorian's wiki.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 01:13

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Aerdan posted:

My personal go-to, outside of this thread, is /r/askahistorian's wiki.

I'd never heard of this list and now I have a giant to-read list, my god. Thank you.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 01:22

Minenfeld!: Aug 21, 2012

quote:

Russia

Three books by Richard Pipes: Russia Under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Pipes has a somewhat conservative take on events, but the writing clearly quarantines his opinion away from his facts, and, well, for someone who still remembers standing in line around the block for stale bread in winter of '92, like myself, his harsh criticism is not unjustified.

Not sold.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 01:28

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Most of their Russia list is really bad, but I remember having this exact discussion in this thread before.

e: I shouldn't say most. Some of their Russia list is really bad, and the list isn't that long.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 01:57

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

Wow, wonder why there were breadlines in 1992. Guess they should have stuck with whatever system they had back when there weren't breadlines.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 02:02

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Since it's come up again, I'll just quote what I wrote last time we discussed Pipes in this thread. The long and short of it is that whoever wrote that reddit list and summarized Pipes as "Pipes has a somewhat conservative take on events, but the writing clearly quarantines his opinion away from his facts" is 100% wrong.

vyelkin posted:

dublish posted:
Can you go into more detail on this? I had to read Pipes in college way back when, and I don't remember the professor who assigned it being particularly anti-revolutionary. I don't remember much of the class at all, really.

I can't do it justice but better scholars than me have written full-fledged reviews of it. One of the best academics I know wrote a review of it when it came out that includes the following passages:

quote:
Political perspectives aside, the effectiveness of Pipes's effort to portray the Russian Revolution as a historical crime perpetrated on a guileless Russian people is seriously compromised by numerous errors and methodological flaws. Indeed, this work might serve as a casebook of bad historical practice. Sloppy editing has produced many errors of simple fact and Russian terminology. Other errors are more serious, because they consistently reinforce Pipes's arguments about the irrationality of revolutionary actors and the conspiratorial genesis of the revolution. Space permits the citation of only a few examples. Pipes states that the Bolshevik party created the Moscow Soviet in 1905 (p. 49). It did not. He contends that moderate socialists "save for a fringe minority" favored war to victory (p. 400). They did not; they favored a defensive war only. Pipes mentions at least twice (with documentation that does not support this claim) that the "anarchist" sailors of the Kronstadt naval fortress lynched their officers because they had German surnames (pp. 304, 328); he assumes the sailors associated them with the enemy. Anarchism was indeed popular on Kronstadt, known as the "sailors' Sakhalin" because of the near-penal conditions under which they served, but one would hardly expect them therefore to be patriots. As careful studies by Israel Getzler, Evan Mawdsley, and Norman Saul (all uncited by Pipes) have shown, the lynchings on Kronstadt and elsewhere were retaliation for years of abuse, and most victims did not even have German surnames.

Despite an impressive bibliographic apparatus, Pipes uses sources extremely selectively. On such controversial issues as the Bolsheviks' ties to the Germans and the execution of Nicholas II, he relies on one or two highly subjective or sensational sources. He often generalizes from a single source. "The apologists for the system of dual power" are all embodied in I. G. Tseretelli (p. 323). That War Communism was a coherent and fully formed doctrine at its inception-a much discussed point in current historiography-is "proven" because "no less an authority than Trotsky"(!) (in an undated pamphlet) said it was (p. 672).

When sources fail, Pipes turns to speculation, arguing causes from perceived effects. Concerning the April antiwar demonstrations in 1917, he admits that no documents have been published to make clear the role of the Bolshevik "high command" (itself a dubious concept at this point in 1917, if one credits the work of Alexander Rabinowitch, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, or Eduard Burdzhalov). "But it is quite unthinkable that in a centralized party like [that of] the Bolsheviks," decision could be made by subordinate organizations (p. 401). Unable to find evidence for his assumptions about Lenin's motives, Pipes proceeds, as he puts it, "retroactively from known deeds to concealed intentions" (p. 394). Because Lenin had written favorably about a Soviet seizure of power, he must have instigated the July Days uprising that attempted to seize power, although written evidence contradicts this conclusion (p. 436). Lenin "seems to have been in possession of the most sensitive decisions of the German government" in 1918 presumably because of his actions (p. 587); no source is given for this allegation.

[...]

Some of these errors could have been avoided if Pipes had paid more attention to the work of his fellow historians over the last twenty-five years. These scholars have sifted and weighed evidence, they have mined archival and newspaper sources, and they have engaged in an ongoing dialogue with their predecessors, with Soviet historians, and with each other. Pipes considers this work excessively partisan; he has written elsewhere that Western scholars who conduct research in the Soviet Union (which includes most historians trained since the late 1950s) "tend to fall under the spell of 'Marxism-Leninism' and to adopt, quite unconsciously, the main tenets of Communist historiography."2

[...]

The question of whether, where, and how the revolution went wrong deserves serious scholarly investigation, and it deserves open scholarly debate. This debate is not well served by this methodologically flawed polemic masquerading as historical scholarship.

(note, this review is Diane Koenker in the Journal of Modern History

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124477)

It's bad history not just because Pipes has a particular political axe to grind and lets you know it, but because he's so committed to his personal ideological stance on the revolution as history's greatest crime that he ignores all evidence other historians have discovered, and all arguments they have made, that contradict his stance, partly because of his own personal and professional issues with the historians in question. And then because he has a pre-determined point he wants to make, and he ignores all the evidence historians have found that might contradict that point, he bases really key aspects of his argument on a paper-thin source base. The result is such a one-sided, biased, and just plain inaccurate and incomplete history that it's honestly not worth reading even to get the other side of the story compared to the more sympathetic younger generations of historians who contradicted Pipes' views. You'd get about as accurate an impression of the Russian Revolution by watching a Fox News segment about it.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 02:34

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 02:11

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?

I'm looking for something that describes on the day to day life and operations aboard a modern Navy ship. It's okay if it's not 100% about the crew but I'd like it to be as focused as possible on them.

# ? Oct 8, 2020 21:18

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The History Book Thread! looks like I need to set up space for a Nazi shelf

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