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Rad Dog Turbo posted:Can anyone recommend a good basic history of India or the Ottoman Empire? For the Ottoman Empire, I found Osman's Dream to be the most up-to-date and readable one-volume history of that epic empire. For India, John Keay's India: A History to be about the _only_ one-volume, English language history worth a drat. Much of India's pre-Islamic history is also pre-literate, which makes it a bit of a pain to suss out, but Keay gives it a damned good try. I also just started his new history of China, based solely on how well put-together I thought the India book was.
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Sep 26, 2012 02:56
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sc0tty posted:Can anybody recommend a good introductory book to Ancient Egypt? I will be travelling to Egypt in a few months and would love to learn some more about the major places and people that I might encounter in the major museums, palaces and sight seeing. This book focuses on Greece and Rome also, but I still find it one of the absolute best primers to the ancient world I've read. Egypt, Greece and Rome Also, someone mentioned Wilkinson's "Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt", which I just finished and found thoroughly enjoyable, too, but not as much as the book above.
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Nov 5, 2012 17:48
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Damon posted:I spend a lot of time reading book on the third reich, until I found the definitive book on the subject in my dads library right in front of me all those years: A lot of it has been superseded by later research, but yes, it was the first and it remains a worthy, canonical read.
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Nov 15, 2012 01:31
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dokmo posted:What you want is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. A warning: it is huge, but it won't be surpassed for a long time. Seconded, heartily. My copy from the library was soft-bound and it literally fell part to where I was just taking chunks of it with me on my commute by the end :S Soooo good, though, just rich with detail and readable and one of the best urban histories I've ever read. My only regret is that it was supposed to be Part 1 of a duo covering NYC to the present-ish day but I've seen no sign of Vol. 2 coming anytime soon.
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Apr 15, 2013 17:35
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Re: Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy: I LOVE THIS SERIES. One of his stated goals when Vol. I came out was to refute the then (and still, somewhat)-popular belief that the Americans who fought in WWII were somehow unique among history armies, full of good guys and heroes doing good things. No. Like all armies ever, there were heroes and cowards, scoundrels and champions... it's not at all anti-American from a polemic sense, it just wants to show how the Army developed from a complete neophyte organization in '43 that almost managed to fail to invade North Africa against next to no opposition, to the much more capable if still not-up-to-Wermacht snuff force that hit Normandy. The first two volumes were very, very good, covering a lot of the indecision and inglorious failures of the earliest American generals and leadership that seems to me to always get short-shrift, if mentioned at all, in the typical Ambrose/Hastings books. I cannot wait for the last volume, already pre-ordered it on Amazon. The Thirty Year's War: Europe's Tragedy: Also backing up the other recommendations for this book. Comprehensive yet never quite tiring, it's a solid and deep review of a very complex period, and it benefits from the most recent scholarship on the topic.
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Apr 24, 2013 22:20
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Seconding the love for the The Great Sea. Just a wonderful read with a solid research foundation underlying the story. Pop/General history at its finest.
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Nov 21, 2013 18:37
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:Norman Davies is probably gonna be your top pick here. Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland or its 2001 follow-up: Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present What he said, but I'd recommend skipping the short versions and just going whole hog on Davies' "God's Playground", a two-volume history of Poland. It's honestly not that long, the books are smaller-format and larger print. Quite good, but he's got some biases you need to keep in mind (very pro-Western, viciously anti-Communist, possible light anti-Semite, depending on who you ask). That said, I didn't find much to fault with the scholarship and narrative as presented in God's Playground.
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Dec 12, 2013 22:12
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Ferrosol posted:Can anyone recommend any good books on Polish History? I'm interested in finding out how one of Medieval Europes superpowers became such an economic and political basket-case by the time of the partitions. Though, to answer your specific question in short, the answer kind of literally boils down to the "Liberum Veto". When 10% (WAY too much of your populace) is "nobility", and your noble-based parliament has a rule that ANY SINGLE DUDE can veto any loving rule from passing, and so many of said "nobles" are broke-dicks willing to accept payment from bordering superpowers willing to bribe any and everyone to keep Poland from ever regaining its early-Commonwealth strength, well... you vapor-lock your system of government entirely for centuries and then you disappear. There's a lot of details that go into that story, but that IS the story, in a nutshell.
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Dec 12, 2013 22:15
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Wondering if the book I want even exists... I'm looking for something like Tony Judt's "Postwar", but for World War I. Like a global overview of everything from the end of 1918 when the war "ended", to say 1922 or so, when the last of the ancillary conflicts actually stopped. There's been a lot of publication in this area for World War II lately, which I've enjoyed tremendously because I'm more interested in the immediate post-war periods than I am in the wars themselves, usually. There's plenty on the 20's as a decade, but I'm specifically interested in the winding down of the Great War, the brutal little conflicts as all of Europe's new states were birthed and figured out boundaries, etc... If someone knows of anything in this arena, I'd be obliged.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:39
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vyelkin posted:I read Roger Crowley's City of Fortune a year or two back and it's a good read. Not an academic history, so if that's what you're looking for then you'll want something with better documentation, but it's well-written and I learned a lot about Venetian history that I never knew. I can second this. Not quite "scholarly" but apparently well-researched and footnoted and is very well-written. Moves along at a good clip and goes into a pretty deep level of detail. I enjoyed it. That said, big fan of Norwich anything, too, so there you go...
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Mar 3, 2014 19:59
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I like Bauer's other work, though I haven't read that particular one yet. The global history she's working on of everything from the dawn of literacy in each culture as it occurs across the globe is still ongoing, but up to the mid-Middle Ages now and I'm finding it a great quick "grab and read a chapter" or "look up this particular event/year/happening" resource.
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May 6, 2014 06:01
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head58 posted:Any recommendations for something on the planning/logistics/development of the interstate highway system in the US ? The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighway is basically precisely that. And surprisingly readable for a book mostly about engineering and politics. I enjoyed it and doubt there's a better single volume out there that covers this topic.
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May 8, 2014 15:51
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:
Oh god, I just finished that book. It's VERY good, but man, Massie books are such a commitment. I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I finished the last page. I'm still sitting on his history of naval warfare in WWI because Dreadnoughts, the prequel, _exhausted_ me.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:46
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sbaldrick posted:Has anyone ever seen the mini-series based on this book? ! Didn't know one existed, sounds right up my alley. Did you see it, was it any good?
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Nov 25, 2014 17:36
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smr posted:! Oof; 1986 and looks it. Might be too cheesy to really get through but then again...
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Nov 25, 2014 17:36
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Can anyone recommend a good history of the sub-continent (I don't want to separate India from Pakistan in this as they really need to be considered together) particularly from the start of the colonial era through today? I've read Keay's book and enjoyed it but that's a total survey, looking for something with more of a tighter focus on the last 300 years or so.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:26
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Irisi posted:Can anyone recommend a good book on the Stuarts and the English Civil war? I've been looking at Peter Ackroyds' book on the subject, has anyone here read it, or can recommend any other book on the subject for someone who's not read much on that area of history before? I can't speak to that exact book, but I just finished Ackroyd's first volume of his general history of England and I liked it quite a bit as a wide-lens history of England, so I imagine the volume that covers the Civil War and the Stuarts will give you the background you probably should have before proceeding into the more specific texts.
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Feb 21, 2015 07:31
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pengun101 posted:Are there any good books about the Crimean war? especially from the ottoman prospective or people who were there. I found a collection of William H Russell dispatchers from Crimea. that is pretty good. Hm; Orlando Figue's "The Crimean War" is the best single-volume comprehensive history of that conflict in English that I think even exists. Covers all sides fairly neutrally, but the Ottomans weren't really primary in that conflict so they naturally don't get as much coverage as Russia or the Western Powers. I recall there being a good lot on the Ottomans, though, particularly in the lead-up to them getting the West involved on their behalf.
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Feb 21, 2015 07:33
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Stravinsky posted:It is funny how people will fall all over themselves to say how depressing and how it made them lose faith in humanity after reading Leopold's Ghost when history is littered by events that would make this seem trivial. Geez, feel better now about belittling both the Congolese Genocide and the person who felt bad after informing themselves about it? And your later snark about people doing nothing about current tragedies seems awfully assumptive regarding what the poster may or may not have done with their time so far. In short, maybe not be a rear end in a top hat? On topic, since it was asked, I've read Wawro's book and found it to be decently comprehensive and up-to-date on sources and research. Read quite drily, though, given the momentous nature of the events being covered. I'd give it a recommendation, if not a super-enthusiastic one. I don't think you'll find much better in English on it other than Howard's from the 1960's, which I found to be quite a bit Franco-centric.
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Mar 20, 2015 22:19
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TheFallenEvincar posted:I'd be interested in a good nonfiction historical account of the internment myself as well, though I'm still looking for some more nice sizable French Revolutionary histories ala Simon Schama's Citizens. I might just reread Citizens since I read it what feels like a billion years ago and remember enjoying it as a kid, but the more I hear people refer to it now it's with talk of how politically biased it is, so maybe it'll have lost its charm for me. I'm slowly working through my soft-cover copy of Citizens right now whenever I can deal with the falling-apart spine and general hatefulness of physical books too large for their spines, and the bias is there (but all historians have bias so... so what? Be aware of it and read on) and the dude can WRITE. It takes a lively, beyond-interesting era of history and its characters and writes the gently caress out of 'em. It's very enjoyable, though I'm basically infuriated that I cannot buy it in e-book form in America (found a store in the UK that sells it in e-format but gently caress that tap dance). I hope his The Story of the Jews is as lively because that's in the queue.
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May 13, 2015 18:31
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Austen Tassletine posted:Is there a go-to book on the Korean war that anyone can recommended? My knowledge of it so far consists of the fact that the British government couldn't really afford it and from mash. "The Coldest Winter" by the guy who did "The Best and the Brightest" is decent, but obviously very Amero-centric. "The Korean War" by Bruce Cummings is also good, but is overly-biased (I believe) towards the NK. That said, it does a better job than the above at giving the historical context of the Korean War, and goes into good detail on the preceding two decades of poo poo you really should know if you're trying to understand the Korean War itself. "Brothers at War" seems to be the most well-regarded modern all-rounder, but I can't speak to it myself, I've bought it but haven't read it yet.
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Jun 10, 2015 22:07
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Disinterested posted:Weinberg's A World At Arms. This. A fantastic book, best one-volume work produced so far, and the only one that treats the war as truly global with a focus on how each theater's major events reverberated into the other theaters. And quite readable.
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Jul 6, 2015 15:25
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Roark posted:As the other posters have said, a single monograph on something like that doesn't really exist. However, there's been some good, readable work on the Late Empire that's come out in the past decade or so. Peter Heather's books are academic but readable, and in particular I'd go with The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians and The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, which form a single (more or less) narrative of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the immediate aftermath. I have to second this recommendation. Both books are wonderfully readable and as up-to-date on the scholarship as a printed book can be. His bias is towards the continuity/very slow decline/no dark ages per se side of the conversation, but that's what the evidence seems mostly to confirm at this point vs. the "Hard Break in 476AD" side that has dominated since Gibbons. He makes his argument quite well. The second volume gets way more weedy as far as religion goes, but out of necessity, just to note that.
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Jul 16, 2015 14:55
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Roark posted:Darwin's The Empire Project and Unfinished Empire (although it sounds as if you might have read those) for broader overviews. If you've read both of these, can you explain the difference between the two? I have Unfinished Empire in the queue but looking at The Empire Project, they seem similar. Wondering which I should read first, if either. I also have his After Tamerlane, which seems like it should come last of them all. As for the fall of the empire, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire by Piers Brendon was a good narrative/chronological walkthrough of the slow then fast then lingering dissolution of Britain's overseas empire.
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Jul 16, 2015 15:04
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PittTheElder posted:Although that narrative is certainly not without it's critics. I much prefer Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations, which asserts that it's not that the barbarians eventually outsmarted the Romans, but instead that they had been closely related to it for centuries, and it was weakening Roman authority that brought them in the first place, often by invitation. The 'barbarians' weren't trying to destroy the Empire, they were just trying to carve themselves a powerful spot within it, and were going out of their way to be as Roman as possible. But a century of internecine conflict, giving rise to regional power blocks, proved so damaging to central authority that the whole empire never got put back together. Heather's books agree with and reinforce this thesis, particularly that the Roman Empire didn't even end in the west in 476, as the barbarian successor states fought over claims of continuity and legitimacy and kept many forms of the empire intact. It's disintegration over a long time generally against the wishes of those actually causing it, basically.
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Jul 16, 2015 15:30
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Roark posted:It's more of a difference of emphasis. The Empire Project is written chronologically, with Part I covering the heyday of 19th century expansion by area (ie chapter 2 is Canada/the Atlantic world, chapter 5 is the Raj etc.) and ending with the Edwardian apogee; Part 2 does 20th century decline, from 1914 through the final end of empire in the 60s. Unfinished Empire is organized thematically. Colonization, colonial government, colonial life, rebellions etc. Got it and thank you. I think I'll go with The Empire Project first and then hit Unfinished Empire down the road a ways.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:37
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CmdrSmirnoff posted:This is a little bit of a different request, but are there any good print collections of old maps out there? Large coffee table format would obviously be preferable, but I'll take what I can get for now. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Maps-Smithsonian-Jerry-Brotton/dp/1465424636/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442246845&sr=8-1&keywords=great+maps%5C Moms got me that for Xmas, it's a big ol' beautiful coffee table book. Thinking my next tattoo is going to come out of this.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:10
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clean ayers act posted:Embers of War is a great book for the Lead up/French experience in Vietnam and does a great job explaining how the U.S. came to be involved Seconded. Read this one earlier this year and it really fleshed out my knowledge of the Indochinese wars prior to our country lumbering into the mess.
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Sep 19, 2015 19:57
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Tulalip Tulips posted:I'm looking for some good stuff about the Gilded Age. I just finished reading Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage by Hugh Brewster (it's a pretty good and really easy read on the first class passengers who lived and died on the Titanic) and it's given me an urge to read more about the time frame since I'm not really very familiar it. I recently enjoyed: http://www.amazon.com/1913-Search-World-Before-Great/dp/1610393805/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443456242&sr=8-1&keywords=1913 Basically, the author takes the reader on a global trip, hitting a variety of cities across the planet to report on what they were like right before the Great War hosed everything all to hell. It gives a good flavor for the era and is well-written as well. It's also not entirely eurocentric, spending a fair amount of time in colonial and independent non-white cities along the way. Not super-deep scholarship, but a good pop/socio/cultural look at that specific period in time.
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Sep 28, 2015 17:06
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MonsieurChoc posted:Jesus, that soudns grueling and soul-crushing to live through. As another posted mentioned, it does sound like the Austro-Hungarian take on The White War, which I read last year and was quite enough on the incredibly depressing suffering of men on a WWI front in the mountains in winter for at least another year or two :S *sadly throws this book into Amazon Wishlist anyways*
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Oct 20, 2015 22:46
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Hedrigall posted:SPQR by Mary Beard, is it good? Gonna ask for it for xmas. Bought it a few weeks ago so it better be. Hopeful. The negative reviews all seem to be "whyyyyyy does she spend so much time on women and slaves, who cares", which is usually the sign of a book I'll actually like.
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Dec 7, 2015 17:46
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AdjectiveNoun posted:The War of Wars by Robert Harvey is what I'd recommend. It's a big book, but it presents everything approachably and with a bit of character-driven narrative following key figures. It focuses a bit much on the British and not enough on the Austrian or Prussian contributions to the war IMO, but it's still a very good overview of the Napoleonic Wars IMO. I just finished this about two months ago and can second the recommendation. He occasionally throws in some weird bits about the main actors' sexuality but, other than that, I found it a fine read, with a good grasp of the modern scholarship and written in an engaging fashion that keeps you going through what is a pretty thick book.
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Dec 29, 2015 18:17
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Just finished The German War and hooo boy, is that ever a depressing read. It's _really_ good, though; it's basically a longitudinal study of various "average" German's opinions towards the war and the Jews, with the subjects taken from people who survived at least into the middle war years AND who left multiple records (letters to home, diaries, in some cases, poetry or prose...). Naturally, those criteria limit the possible selection subjects, but Starhardt does a good job in making the argument that the people selected are reflective of wider societal beliefs. He also found some good material from Jewish victims who survived the whole war IN Germany or the occupied territories, and compares the German trains of thought against theirs. It's a book that starts out grim and gets worse as it goes on, but it's very well-written and compelling. smr fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Feb 2, 2016 23:24
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:So I picked up Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine since it was on sale and I wasn't so familiar with the period. Yes, because all authors have it. That said, I've read two of Dikotter's books (though not Age of Openness) and I found them to be pretty objective, though obviously Mao was a pretty indefensible shitbag in a lot of ways. I didn't find the author's interpretation of anything to be unjustifiable.
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Apr 9, 2016 02:02
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dublish posted:Not to judge or defend the author's biases (I don't know anything about the guy), but don't publishers get the lion's share of the input on a book's title and cover? Keep in mind that A Human Heart is a poster who thinks Stalinism was awesome so....
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Apr 9, 2016 16:41
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TheFallenEvincar posted:Since people were recommending a glenny book on Yugoslavia earlier, is this any good? I liked it, Glenny's a bit close to the topic but tries to remain objective. Be aware that there's a revised and expanded edition that carries this out to 2012 and is available as an e-book, too.
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Apr 18, 2016 17:01
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vyelkin posted:Start with Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, and see if you have the stomach for anything else afterwards God, that loving book put me into a multi-day depression.
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May 13, 2016 21:58
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Handsome Ralph posted:So I've started reading Massie's Castles of Steel and holy gently caress I'm mad at myself for buying it two years ago and not starting it till now. I'd recommend reading Dreadnaught first, then Castles of Steel, since the latter is effectively a sequel to the former. I realize that that's like a 1200-page commitment because Massie.
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Jun 1, 2016 02:21
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Abu Dave posted:will do that also thanks man I can give a solid recco to the aforementioned SQPR by Mary Beard. It's a modern history that does not assume much in the way of prior knowledge, and does a great job of looping in larger themes around specific individuals. It was a fun read. It covers Roman history from the mists of time up to the peak of Empire (the granting of citizenship to all citizens in the 2nd Century AD), so you'll need something else for The "Fall" of Rome (I can recommend Peter Heather's "The Fall of the Roman Empire" for that topic).
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Jun 15, 2016 18:40
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Captain_Person posted:Does anybody have any suggestions on books about the Nuremberg Trials, or the Khmer Rouge? "When The War Was Over: Cambodia And The Khmer Rouge Revolution" by Elizabeth Becker is one on the latter I read last summer and it's gut-wrenchingly thorough :S
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Jun 21, 2016 23:14
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