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

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

chernobyl kinsman posted:

a book on gypsies is not going to make people who have actually lived near or interacted with gypsies stop disliking gypsies.

Great stuff mate.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2017 21:49

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 07:23

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Yeah Europeans don't mind the Good Gypsies, it's only the Bad Gypsies who they hate. This is not racism somehow

# ¿ Jul 10, 2017 14:52

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Everyone itt: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3i3lrv?start=378

# ¿ Jul 21, 2018 20:32

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

What should I read on the French revolution if

1) I already know the broad outline well enough that a popular introduction wouldn't be the right book
2) I am happy to read two thousand pages if needs be
3) most importantly, I expect the author to be sympathetic to the revolution, warts and all?

I'm sure it would help if I could read French but alas

# ¿ Oct 30, 2018 22:55

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Wow sorry I didn't mean to post that in the Democratic Party Convention subforum. Can you recommend books about how credit cards are good instead

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 11:19

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

If you believe that the events that gave birth to the entire liberal/left/republican/socialist paradigm that most of the planet is bound to can be reduced to "mass murder", fine. And you might well be right, but nevertheless, I don't want to read your book on them

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 13:20

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

lost in postation posted:

The usual French rec for an extensive history of the Revolution is Fran�ois Furet, and a fair few of his books have been translated, but his position is an explicit rejection of the so-called "Jacobin-Marxist" historiography & his big thesis in later years was that the Montagnards were the root of every totalitarianism, so everything he says about the post-93 era is pretty biased to say the least. On the more Jacobin-friendly end of the spectrum, I like Albert Soboul, whose work I'm fairly sure has been at least partly translated in English.

Thank you my friend, I kinda knew it'd be you who'd come with the goods

fishmech posted:

You're talking about several different revolutions though, which of them do you want it to be sympathetic to?

I'll let you know in two to four years when I actually get around to reading what I ordered

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 17:30

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

My girlfriend won't even play Wir Sind Das Volk as West Germany, that game would tear the household apart

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 18:06

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

In one Pentti Linkola book he's like "what they're doing in Cambodia seems good, but I haven't really looked into it"

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 13:49

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

WerthersWay posted:

Checking in again. Pretend I said "warts and all" at the end of my question so you get mad online.

The Peter McPhee book that guy talked about is only like 500 pages

# ¿ Nov 5, 2018 18:32

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

The further we destroy the living planet the further back in history do we have to go to find examples of an ethical society. I'm currently at the Albigensians because I have the delusion that sustainable farming is possible

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 12:39

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Squalid posted:

Thinking along these lines it strikes me that if the leaders of the EU are serious about "creating an ever closer union" perhaps the most powerful tool they have to bring it about is the Erasmus program. By breaking students out from their confines of their native states they can create a new transnational class with a sense of common destiny, determined defend the European project. Without that feeling petty national jealousies will always threaten to tear the whole system apart, and cold arguments about rational economic interests will never be enough to keep those feelings at bay.

I know you didn't present this as your own ideal, but "the EU should create a supranational cosmopolitan elite to rule over the monoglot plebs and impose their values on them" is a truly fascinating take in the current climate

# ¿ Jan 3, 2019 11:12

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Is there a standard biography of Gandhi? I'm somewhat familiar with Indian culture & religion and the period, so it doesn't need to start with basic-basics. Also interested in histories of the Raj and cultural & religious histories of India. I'm reading Barney White-Spunner's Partition and it's good as a narrative but he doesn't really even attempt to draw a social background for the massacres

# ¿ Mar 20, 2019 23:22

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Boatswain posted:

Ramachandra Guha's Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 is approved by the powers that be

Oh duh, I've read his history of modern India but didn't think to check what else he's written, cheers

# ¿ Mar 21, 2019 00:16

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Epicurius posted:

She didn't give up. She died. And then her son, Paul I, made some reforms. He banned corporal punishment of non-serfs, introduced some laws protecting serfs, and made it easier for peasants to buy land. As a reaction against the French revolution, though, he also increased censorship and became more autocratic. Then, after he was assassinated by some nobles, his son Alexander I took the throne.

Alexander I started out governing with liberal ideas. He granted Russian Poland a constitution that was one of the more liberal ones in Europe, granting universal suffrage in Sejm elections to everyone 21 and older, let the Sejm impeach government ministers, and giving them the right to vote on most things. After a planned coup, though, and an assassination attempt, he decided, "Yep, the hell with liberalism. It just leads to revolution", and cracked down.

I'm not sure if connecting democratic ideals in modern day states to stuff that happened during the European Enlightenment is particularly helpful

# ¿ May 26, 2019 19:06

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

The Glumslinger posted:

So, any suggestions on the French Revolution? Asking for a friend

I took this project on a while ago and thought that Fran�ois Furet and Georges Lefebvre offered the most balanced views

# ¿ May 29, 2020 08:07

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

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.

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%

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

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 15:10

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

SubG posted:

I haven't read more than a couple volumes, but I've liked the parts of the Harvard History of Imperial China series I've read. They're not narrative histories if that's what you're after, but as someone who went in knowing only bits and bobs about the early Chinese Imperial history I found them readable enough.

I read the first one of these a while back and yeah I enjoyed it, but there was so little narrative that I basically had to read Wikipedia a lot to get a grip on the timeline

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 20:20

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Smoking Crow posted:

Hello, I'm looking for an overview of the French revolution. I don't care about readability, I just want the best

Furet's Revolutionary France

# ¿ Feb 22, 2022 22:53

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

FishBulbia posted:

I recently read 1491 finally and very much enjoyed it. It really brought home the scale of cultural and civilizational loss created by the European conquest of the Americas, something that I feel is not highlighted enough yet despite attempts to revise curriculum. What are some other good books on pre-columbian history that people have read recently?

Not strictly about that, but you'll almost certainly enjoy The Dawn of Everything

# ¿ Aug 7, 2022 13:01

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Well I don�t have any specific writings critiquing that book, it is just months old after all. But what in particular stands out in my mind is its very unorthodox descriptions of very early city states such as Ur and other Mesopotamian settlements. This work, like some others, runs head first into a critical flaw where some academic tries to transpose modern concepts of class or caste back to a time way before that would even be understood. The argument then follows that �well back in those days there was far less of a hierarchical societal structure and people lived freer lives.� Which can be true in a literal sense but extremely wrong in a functional sense regarding how these early civilizations saw themselves, their place in the world, and how they were governed. These early cites are often times treated as some blank canvas in that some people use pieces evidence to claim that they were the doom of the free and unrestricted natural being of human existence. And others will claim that they were actually the culmination of a needs based collective organization that was in those more innocent days the peak of societal equality only to later be corrupted.

Essentially the main thesis of this book and other works like it is that societal structures that we recognize as civilization are unnaturally imposed on humanity basically as a longview critique against the current capitalist system. Which again is true in a literal sense in that all civilization IS a social construct that we collectively agree to make work. It�s not something dictated by some unfeeling deterministic universe. BUT it brushes aside the very very long, and critically, VARIED development of humanity across the world and ironically imposes far more conscious and borderline conspiratorial explanations on why things happened then actually occurred. It�s a polemic that ironically removes human agency for the large majority while at the same time attributing �unnatural� choice and invented impositions to a smaller group of elites. Which again, is very much transposing one type of modern view of the world way way back.

Isn't this pretty much the argument of the book? That society has taken many surprising forms over many millenia, and identifying any clear patterns and projecting them into pre-history is blinkered and usually ideologically motivated? It really sounds like you're actually repeating the message of the book, not criticising it

# ¿ Oct 14, 2022 09:55

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Yeah even to a complete layman a lot of the evidence in the book looks like "this is what COULD HAVE happened", but it felt like a very conversational sort of book, a comparison of arguments and an expansion of horizons. The general thesis is "human society has been more diverse than we've thought"

# ¿ Oct 14, 2022 17:24

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

MeatwadIsGod posted:

This is sort of history-adjacent, but has anyone read all of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series set in Second Empire France? I was interested in reading Debacle and Germinal but didn't know whether it's necessary to read the series up to that point first.

They're all independent works and the connections between them are usually laboured, tenuous and improvised. Haven't read Debacle yet, 11 down 9 to go, but Germinal is fantastic

# ¿ Dec 12, 2022 15:52

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Plutarch famously wrote about the death of Pan.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2022 10:19

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Megasabin posted:

Looking to get a comprehensive understanding of non-modern Turkish history before I travel there. Basically a book on pre-islamic turkish history & then islamic.

I was thinking of using The Turks: The Central Asian Civilization That Bridged the East and The West for Over Two Millennia for the pre-islamic piece by Erol I. Yorulmazoglu.

There are more options and it's harder to choose for the Ottoman period. Based on what I read I was between
1.The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 by Halil Inalcik
2. Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel

Anyone have thoughts on any of the above? Also I am absolutely open to suggestions for books that aren't these three.

Thanks!

I've read the Finkel and it was fine. So... an endorsement of some sort

# ¿ Jul 30, 2023 11:27

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

You can do lots with "all of human history" but you need a very specific angle. Like the Smil book about the total biomass of the Earth during the history of Homo sapiens

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 17:00

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 07:23

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Bagheera posted:

Multi volume history of India? Something accessible to an amateur; I'm reading for leisure, not study. But something will sufficient detail; 5k years of the subcontinental history is impossible to cover in a single volume.

I've enjoyed these:

Richard Eaton - India in the Persianate Age (1000 - 1765)
Ramachandra Guha - India After Gandhi

# ¿ Mar 18, 2024 15:06

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