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Action Jacktion
Jun 3, 2003

bowser posted:

What are some good books on the peopling of [various regions of] the world? I realize early Homo sapien migration would fall into pre-history but I'm hoping you folks can help!

Sea People by Christina Thompson. It’s about the settlement of Polynesia.

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Aerdan
Apr 14, 2012

Not Dennis NEDry

bowser posted:

What are some good books on the peopling of [various regions of] the world? I realize early Homo sapien migration would fall into pre-history but I'm hoping you folks can help!

1491 covers prehistoric Americas fairly well, though it still buys in to the Bering Strait land bridge theory (which couldn't possibly be true considering we have human remains in the Americas dating 130,000+ years ago).

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



bowser posted:

What are some good books on the peopling of [various regions of] the world? I realize early Homo sapien migration would fall into pre-history but I'm hoping you folks can help!

After the Ice by Steven Mithen deals with some of these migrations, as well as other aspects of pre-history, and is a delightful read with tons of good pictures. IIRC it has a ton of fans on these forums, counting myself as one.

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

The First Farmers of Europe An Evolutionary Perspective has some chapters on subsistence patterns which you may find interesting and overall it's about farmers colonizing a sparsely inhabited region.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
I liked Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans 9000 BC-1000 AD as a look at how Europe was populated by increasingly complex migration and settlement in the millennia leading up to what we think of as European history.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Aerdan posted:

1491 covers prehistoric Americas fairly well, though it still buys in to the Bering Strait land bridge theory (which couldn't possibly be true considering we have human remains in the Americas dating 130,000+ years ago).

This is still quite controversial and is is far from scientific consensus

e. and from my memory it is an interpreted mammoth butcher/storage site with some (again interpreted) tools. IOW, not human remains per se, but inferred evidence for human activity, and other alternatives are also in play. If there are human body remains I would love a link.

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Apr 15, 2021

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


vyelkin posted:

I liked Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans 9000 BC-1000 AD as a look at how Europe was populated by increasingly complex migration and settlement in the millennia leading up to what we think of as European history.

I'm going to get this. I loved Britain Begins, which covered some of this as well.

Chairman Capone
Dec 17, 2008

Bilirubin posted:

This is still quite controversial and is is far from scientific consensus

e. and from my memory it is an interpreted mammoth butcher/storage site with some (again interpreted) tools. IOW, not human remains per se, but inferred evidence for human activity, and other alternatives are also in play. If there are human body remains I would love a link.

From my memory also, the people who proposed that the cuts were caused by humans later retracted their claim. Didn't it end up being the fact that there was highway construction going on literally overhead that caused the mammoth bone damage?

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?


Yeah, there's no evidence of humans that long ago. The oldest reliably dated stuff is about 16,000 years, and there was the discovery in Mexico recently of what may be stone tools about 30,000 years old, but that one's still controversial. We're not even sure homo sapiens had left Africa by 130k, let alone gotten to the Americas.

Humans getting to the Americas well before the Clovis culture is not controversial though. I don't think 1491 does Clovis first, that was discredited decades ago, but I can't say I remember that level of fine detail. In any case, both Americas and prehistoric archaeology are rapidly developing right now so if you're reading a book published more than even like five years ago on those subjects, you have to keep that in mind. Doesn't mean you shouldn't read them, just be aware that it's a fast changing field.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.
Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. It's like 20 years old now but the author happened to bark up the right tree on most of what he talks about, so while things have been elaborated on in the meantime none of what he says is fundamentally wrong in the same way it is for some other books on Japan from that era.

The first 30% or so of Gina Barnes' (2015 edition of) The Rise of Civilization in China, Korea, and Japan also covers what you want, and is also very good and much more up to date.

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

Other books on ancient migrations which I haven't read but seem to be good overviews by Peter Bellwood: First Farmers, which might be slightly dated by now, First Migrants and First Islanders. The Latter seems to focus on the peopling of south east asia and the pacific ocean which sounds interesting.

Chairman Capone
Dec 17, 2008

This book on human migration to the Americas is coming out next year, but knowing the author, I'm sure it will be good and worth keeping an eye out for: https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/jennifer-raff/origin/9781538749715/

Hiro Protagonist
Oct 25, 2010

Last of the freelance hackers and
Greatest swordfighter in the world
Weird question, but are there any good books on ancient history, African history or imperial China on Audible?

Edit: for clarity, I've been listening to SPQR on Audible, and I've been enjoying it. A lot of the history books on Audible seem like poo poo, though, which is why I'm throwing out such a large net. I can get more specific if there are more good books than I thought.

Hiro Protagonist fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Apr 21, 2021

MathMathCalculation
Jan 1, 2006

Hiro Protagonist posted:

Weird question, but are there any good books on ancient history, African history or imperial China on Audible?

Edit: for clarity, I've been listening to SPQR on Audible, and I've been enjoying it. A lot of the history books on Audible seem like poo poo, though, which is why I'm throwing out such a large net. I can get more specific if there are more good books than I thought.

I don't have a book rec, but for African history I really like the YouTube channel HomeTeam History: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC12lU5ymIvSpgl8KntDQUQA

They cover a huge variety of history from all of Africa, from specific kings/queens to offbeat things like the history of Nubian wrestling. There's even a few speculative videos thrown in, like why Africa has historically been perceived as a threat by Western countries and what that means today.

So if you like being thrown a random topic within the length and breadth of African history, it's rad.

Hiro Protagonist
Oct 25, 2010

Last of the freelance hackers and
Greatest swordfighter in the world

MathMathCalculation posted:

I don't have a book rec, but for African history I really like the YouTube channel HomeTeam History: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC12lU5ymIvSpgl8KntDQUQA

They cover a huge variety of history from all of Africa, from specific kings/queens to offbeat things like the history of Nubian wrestling. There's even a few speculative videos thrown in, like why Africa has historically been perceived as a threat by Western countries and what that means today.

So if you like being thrown a random topic within the length and breadth of African history, it's rad.
That's funny, that channel was why I was looking for more African history information. It's a great channel!

CrypticFox
Dec 19, 2019

"You are one of the most incompetent of tablet writers"

Hiro Protagonist posted:

Weird question, but are there any good books on ancient history, African history or imperial China on Audible?

Edit: for clarity, I've been listening to SPQR on Audible, and I've been enjoying it. A lot of the history books on Audible seem like poo poo, though, which is why I'm throwing out such a large net. I can get more specific if there are more good books than I thought.

I can't help you with Africa or China, but since you liked SPQR, I have some Greece and Rome suggestions that are on Audible.

Ghost on the Throne by James Romm is available on Audible. It's about the chaotic years following the death of Alexander the Great, when his empire collapsed into civil war as dozens of different people tried to seize power. This is the one I mostly highly recommend, the story is gripping and the book is very easy to read.

Another one a similar subject also on Audible is Phillip and Alexander by Adrian Goldsworthy, which covers the life of Alexander the Great and his father Phillip. This one is a lot longer then Ghost on the Throne, and is written in a somewhat more dry style. However, the life of these two men was so insane that the book is still gripping. Goldsworthy's mostly a Rome guy though, and he also has a number of other books on Audible on that subject. I've not read most of those, so I can't give specific recommendations on them, but he has written biographies of Julius Caesar and Augustus which might interest you after reading SPQR.

There are also two books on Audible by Paul Cartledge called The Spartans and Thebes. They're both short and very digestible, although his tone in The Spartans is sometimes quite sympathetic to Sparta. He is a Sparta specialist though, so that is sort of to be expected.

I'm currently reading/listening to Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD which I was surprised to find on Audible. Its a long (31 hour recording), weighty, fairly academic book of the type you usually don't find on Audible.

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan is another big, weighty one. Kagan is probably the world's leading scholar on that topic, and the book on Audible is a 2003 distillation of his landmark 4 volume work on the topic he published in the 70s and 80s. You may want to avoid this one if you are not able to consult a map of Greece occasionally while listening to it.

Not sure if this topic is of interest to you, but another one is Paul by N. T. Wright, about the apostle Paul. N. T. Wright is a very legitimate scholar, and an expert on Paul, but he is also an Anglican bishop, and the book discusses theology as well as history.

CrypticFox fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Apr 22, 2021

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Maybe try The Fate of Africa and it's sequel.

Hiro Protagonist
Oct 25, 2010

Last of the freelance hackers and
Greatest swordfighter in the world
Thanks, I'll definitely look into those.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
I can personally recommend literally anything that Goldsworthy has written.

On the other hand I thought SPQR was decidedly mediocre.

Stay away from Anthony Everett imo.

Mr_Roke
Jan 1, 2014

Loved Goldsworthy's Philip & Alexander when I read it late last year. Tying father and son together made a lot of sense to me and I found it easier to follow than Robin Lane Fox's Alexander biography, but thst might just be because I was more familiar with things now.

Didn't like SPQR. Beard has a lot of interesting observations and tidbits but the book felt really scattershot to me. Maybe the narrator of the audiobook makes it a better experience?

I cycle through Everitt's Rome books in audiobook form (with a side of Mike Duncan's book) as part of my nightly get-to-sleep routine. The narrator on Everitt's "Rise of Rome" book is hilariously monotone. I'm obviously not looking for anything more than getting lulled to sleep so I don't have much to say about them.

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


Crossposting because this feels like a better home for it

LeeMajors posted:

I just finished A World Undone, which I enjoyed thoroughly, and I'm hungry for some more WWI history.

I've seen Guns of August recommended several times--what are some other highly recommended books in the same vein?

dokmo
Aug 27, 2006

:stat:man
I really enjoyed The White War by Mark Thompson, about Luigi Cadorna's disastrous handling of Italy's campaign against the Hapsburg Empire.

Tuchman's book is very well written, but scholarship has movies significantly in the decades since she wrote it. I still think it's worth reading, but a more recently version of that type of book is Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers.

Also John Rohl wrote a multi volume biography of Wilhelm II, I think volume 2 covers the prewar period and beyond. I got a lot out of his interpretation.

dokmo fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Apr 27, 2021

HannibalBarca
Sep 11, 2016

History shows, again and again, how nature points out the folly of man.

dokmo posted:

I really enjoyed The White War by Mark Thompson, about Luigi Cadorna's disastrous handling of Italy's campaign against the Hapsburg Empire.

...

Also John Rohl wrote a multi volume biography of Wilhelm II, I think volume 2 covers the prewar period and beyond. I got a lot out of his interpretation.

Second the recommendation of The White War.

I remember enjoying what I read of Rohl 6 or 7 years ago, but I got it from the University library and wasn't able to finish it because of competing priorities from law school and such. I did some cursory searching to try and find a copy a few weeks back and it is not easy or cheap to find one, unfortunately...

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

LeeMajors posted:

Crossposting because this feels like a better home for it

If you want a more in-depth overall history of WWI read Pandora’s Box by Jörn Leonhard and Cataclysm by David Stevenson.

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


drat y'all thanks for all the recommendations. Shopping cart is full.

ToxicAcne
May 25, 2014
How trustworthy is Trotsky's account of the Revolution? And does anyone have any good overview books on Russian History? I asked the CSPAM commie thread but I wanted a different perspective as well.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

ToxicAcne posted:

How trustworthy is Trotsky's account of the Revolution? And does anyone have any good overview books on Russian History? I asked the CSPAM commie thread but I wanted a different perspective as well.

Holds up surprisingly well, probably because it was written by someone who was actually there through much of it, but it of course (at least according to Trotsky scholars) reflects Trotsky's own political biases to some extent, like for instance by focusing so intently on 1917 he gives a good account of how the Bolsheviks won power on a wave of legitimate popular support in the cities and the army, but by then ending his narrative at that moment he completely elides how they then managed to immediately lose a lot of that popular support with their authoritarianism, the Red Terror, and War Communism over the next couple of years.

I have a lot of recommendations on Russian history, it would really help if you could be a bit more specific as to what you're looking for in particular. Or I guess you can also look through my post history in this thread, which is full of my recommendations to other people asking for Russia books.

ToxicAcne
May 25, 2014
Thanks! I'm most interested in learning of Russian History post mongol invasion until Peter the great. I hope that's not too broad. I'd also be interested on learning about the Medieval Russian Principalities as well.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

ToxicAcne posted:

How trustworthy is Trotsky's account of the Revolution? And does anyone have any good overview books on Russian History? I asked the CSPAM commie thread but I wanted a different perspective as well.

Ughh

Anyway People’s Tragedy by Figes is great. Stay the gently caress away from Richard Pipes.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

ToxicAcne posted:

Thanks! I'm most interested in learning of Russian History post mongol invasion until Peter the great. I hope that's not too broad. I'd also be interested on learning about the Medieval Russian Principalities as well.

Cool, that does narrow it down a lot. That's before the era that I study, so my recommendations might be a bit out of date, but here are some books I've liked on that period:

I started writing a post here but then realized that I had already written a post in this thread on this subject and I was about to just rewrite my descriptions of the exact same book recommendations, so here is the post I wrote the last time someone asked about pre-Petrine Russia:

vyelkin posted:

Yes. I can't help with the emergence of Lithuania, but there are some really good books about the rise of Muscovy.

Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester Dunning is about the Time of Troubles, a roughly 15-year period around 1600 when Russia fought a series of civil wars and fought off a series of foreign invasions, especially by Poland. Ended with the ascension of Mikhail Romanov as tsar in 1613 and the founding of the Romanov dynasty. Also features the fun of multiple "false Dmitriis", pretenders to the Russian throne who each claimed to be the recently-murdered Dmitrii Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible. I haven't read Dunning in a while but I remember him striking a good balance between narrative of this time period and academic analysis of what was important and distinct about it.

Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia by Catherine de Madariaga is all about Ivan the Terrible, one of Russia's most famous rulers. Also a great way to learn about 16th-century Russian history since Ivan ruled from 1533 (when he was three years old) until his death in 1584. De Madariaga has a very negative view of Ivan as a person (probably justified) but clearly explains the enormous influence he exerted on Muscovite development.

The Elusive Empire: Kazan and the Creation of Russia, 1552-1671 by Matthew P. Romaniello is about the conquest of Kazan in 1552 (by Ivan the Terrible) and then about how the Muscovite and early Russian state ruled and integrated a large population of Muslim Tatars. He focuses on Kazan but you can kind of extrapolate from Kazan to Russian rule in other conquered khanates like Astrakhan, Sibir, and Nogai. I think it's an important book to understand how Russia transitioned from being a pretty unitary state of ethnic Russians to being a multiethnic empire in the span of about a decade as Ivan conquered Kazan and then Astrakhan, and then the long, long legacy of how to manage being a diverse state.

And my top recommendation, though it's slightly outside your time period:

Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia by Valerie Kivelson. This is just a phenomenal, beautiful book about how Muscovy and Muscovites understood, interpreted, and used space, built around an amazing sourcebase Kivelson found of hundreds of old maps, many of which are reproduced in colour within the book. It's gorgeous, her analysis is great, and it's been extremely influential in Russian history over the last decade.

On medieval and pre-early modern Russia, the standard work is Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980-1584.

ToxicAcne
May 25, 2014

vyelkin posted:

Cool, that does narrow it down a lot. That's before the era that I study, so my recommendations might be a bit out of date, but here are some books I've liked on that period:

I started writing a post here but then realized that I had already written a post in this thread on this subject and I was about to just rewrite my descriptions of the exact same book recommendations, so here is the post I wrote the last time someone asked about pre-Petrine Russia:


On medieval and pre-early modern Russia, the standard work is Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980-1584.

Excellent! Ill definitely check them out.

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Ughh

Anyway People’s Tragedy by Figes is great. Stay the gently caress away from Richard Pipes.

Figes is a straight up piece of poo poo who falsified sources to make Stalin look bad :psyduck:, used sock puppets to disparage his academic rivals on Twitter and in Amazon reviews, then lied about it when caught red handed, trying to blame his wife. Not to mention his cringeworthy cultural history of Russia, which is a whole other can of worms.

Dick Pipes is probably worse, but has a cool name though.

ToxicAcne
May 25, 2014
It's crazy how contentious the Russian and even French Revolutions are to this day.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

Figes is a straight up piece of poo poo who falsified sources to make Stalin look bad :psyduck:, used sock puppets to disparage his academic rivals on Twitter and in Amazon reviews, then lied about it when caught red handed, trying to blame his wife. Not to mention his cringeworthy cultural history of Russia, which is a whole other can of worms.

Dick Pipes is probably worse, but has a cool name though.

Richard Pipes isn’t simply probably worse as has been detailed at length in this thread, he’s a former Reagan administration official and wore that on his sleeve for a lot of stuff. And somehow his son might be even worse than he was.

grassy gnoll
Aug 27, 2006

The pawsting business is tough work.
I enjoyed People's Tragedy when I read it, but Figes really is such a catastrophic fuckup that it overshadows everything positive about his work.

I thought Mark Steinberg's Oxford Histories entry was a good general replacement.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

ToxicAcne posted:

It's crazy how contentious the Russian and even French Revolutions are to this day.

yea its almost if the bad guys won and rule the world to this day

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

grassy gnoll posted:

I enjoyed People's Tragedy when I read it, but Figes really is such a catastrophic fuckup that it overshadows everything positive about his work.

I thought Mark Steinberg's Oxford Histories entry was a good general replacement.

Yeah, Steinberg's and Steve Smith's centenary histories of the revolution are the best ones imo, though I haven't read Laura Engelstein's and I've heard it's also good.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



I have Smith's and I enjoyed it--particularly the coverage of ethnicity and the Russian east.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

Mantis42 posted:

yea its almost if the bad guys won and rule the world to this day

Considering the Russian Revolution was more contested within its own principle cast of characters than from anywhere else in the world I don’t think that’s a fair assessment.

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el3m
Jun 18, 2005
Grimey Drawer
I liked People's tragedy on audible as a casual listener, but I don't know anything about the author. Aparrently he had some Amazon review controversy that was mentioned in Wikipedia, but is he discredited somehow? The book has won many awards, which is why I picked it up.

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