Thread 24534219

Post and discussion about any type of history book.

>American Colonies : The Settlement of North America to 1800 (The Penguin History of the United States Series) by Alan Taylor

>Starts with the earliest years of human colonization of the American continent and environs with the Siberian migrations across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. It ends in around 1800 when the rough outline of the contemporary North America could be perceived.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12607708-american-colonies

>A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (The Penguin History of the United States Series) by Steven Hahn

>The era from 1830 to 1910 witnessed massive transformations in how people lived, worked, thought about themselves, and struggled to thrive. It also witnessed the birth of economic and political institutions that still shape our world. From an agricultural society with a weak central government, the United States became an urban and industrial society in which government assumed a greater and greater role in the framing of social and economic life. As the book ends, the United States, now a global economic and political power, encounters massive warfare between imperial powers in Europe and a massive revolution on its southern border―the remarkable Mexican Revolution―which together brought the nineteenth century to a close while marking the important themes of the twentieth.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34625019-a-nation-without-borders

Previous Thread: >>24504339

>Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.

>Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

>Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics—the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?

>In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

>In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

>Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

>Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

>Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

>Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

>Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

>>24534716
I've heard of this book from starcodex. Does it branch out from the state into corporate or other areas?

>Migration began with our origin as the human species and continues today. Each chapter of world history features distinct types of migration. The earliest migrations spread humans across the globe. Over the centuries, as our cultures, societies, and technologies evolved in different material environments, migrants conflicted, merged, and cohabited with each other, creating, entering, and leaving various city-states, kingdoms, empires, and nations. During the early modern period, migrations reconnected the continents, including through colonization and forced migrations of subject peoples, while political concepts like "citizen" and "alien" developed. In recent history, migrations changed their character as nation-states and transnational unions sought in new ways to control the peoples who migrated across their borders.

>This volume will explore the process of migration chronologically and also at several levels, from the illuminating example of the migration of a individual community, to larger patterns of the collective movements of major ethnic groups, to the more abstract study of the processes of emigration, migration, and immigration. This book will concentrate on substantial migrations covering long distances and involving large numbers of people. It will intentionally balance evidence from the now diverse people's of the world, for example, by highlighting an exemplary migration for each of the six chapters that highlights different trajectories and by keeping issues of gender and socio-economic class salient wherever appropriate. Further, as a major theme, the volume will consider how technology, the environment, and various polities have historically shaped human migration. Exciting new scholarship in the several fields inherent in this topic make it a particularly valuable and timely project.

Nice thread. Am interested in these stuff. Keep this posted friends.

>>24534219 (OP)
>>>/his/

A Certain Idea of France

>In six weeks in the early summer of 1940, France was over-run by German troops and quickly surrendered. The French government of Marshal Pétain sued for peace and signed an armistice. One little-known junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. ''Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.'' At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered into history.

>For the rest of the war, de Gaulle frequently bit the hand that fed him. He insisted on being treated as the true embodiment of France, and quarreled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. He was prickly, stubborn, aloof and self-contained. But through sheer force of personality and bloody-mindedness he managed to have France recognized as one of the victorious Allies, occupying its own zone in defeated Germany. For ten years after 1958 he was President of France's Fifth Republic, which he created and which endures to this day. His pursuit of ''a certain idea of France'' challenged American hegemony, took France out of NATO and twice vetoed British entry into the European Community. His controversial decolonization of Algeria brought France to the brink of civil war and provoked several assassination attempts.

>Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran

>This book convincingly argues that the sasanian empire was far less centralized than generally assumed, and had far greater continuity with the previous parthians than is commonly depicted. The interdependency of the monarchy and the five major noble houses are discussed, and parvaneh examines the pre-zoroastrian mihran/mithraic religious beliefs more prominent in irans' east

>>24535994
/his/ doesn’t read.

If /his was like this thread, it'd be a great board

>Spoilsmen in a "Flowery Fairyland": The Development of the U.S. Legation in Japan, 1859-1906

>From its initial days as a place to fob off political supporters owed patronage, the American delegation was crippled by its completely amateur administration with no unified policy or knowledge of the country, and the lack of a professional American foreign service reflected badly when compared to the operations ran by Britain, France or Russia in Japan at the time. Despite an almost universal lack of cultural knowledge or language skills, and neglect and disinterest from Washington, the American delegation in Japan gradually and unevenly grew from a slapdash spoilsman dumping ground to a more professional diplomatic institution, although even into the 20th century relations and understanding of Japan were not what they could be because America consistently sent the personnel equivalent of loose change they found under the couch there and then promptly forgot about them

>>24534219 (OP)
Once again asking for good intellectual history like Isaiah Berlin, Samuel Moyn and David Armitage

>>24536269
Not sure if id like this

>>24536640
its willfully iconoclastic, so the way the author insists on terminology nobody else uses or won't use terminology that everyone knows can seem perverse, but its also really funny when you understand he is just on an anti-english crusade that seeps into everything he says

>The Silk Road by Luce Boulnois

>Boulnois writes about the Silk Road from its earliest days, beginning with an overview of sericulture, to its the modern day. Her account covers the goods traded, the cultures doing the trading, as well as war and conflict, religion, and politics along the Silk Road. In the modern day, she echoes a Pravda reporter in her view of the modern history of the Silk Road: "Before long, there where once the caravans made their halt, our two countries will meet with a steel handshake." She also predicts that silk may return to its old glory of being one of the most highly esteemed luxury goods, given that it takes roughly 2,500 cocoons to produce one pound of silk thread.

>But it was not long before silk, a material more iridescent than any known hitherto, became familiar to the Roman world. This generation who fought in the Syrian campaigns was the first to come by it, whether by trade or as booty in more fortunate encounters, but less than ten years after the defeat of Carrhae, the crowd witnessing Caesar's triumph at Rome were astonished to find that, among the luxuries exposed to the public gaze, the triumphant general had caused canopies of silk to be stretched above the heads of the spectators.

Anyone can recommend book about Occitania? The history of the region and culture. Not just the Albigensian Crusade.

>A History of Venice, by John Julius Norwich

>John Julius Norwich, besides being a well-traveled, urbane author who loves a good story, has a personal connection to Venice as his father he greatly admired always wanted to write a book on its history but died before he could. JJN also has books on the architecture of Venice, Byzantine history, Sicilian history, and a general history of the Mediterranean, so his passion for it is palpable and makes the book better. It is low on analysis and rich in stories, and at its best covering the republic in decline, like the siege of Candia or the dissipated lifestyles rife in 18th century venice

>>24536692
"Montaillou" by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.

It's a voluminous work detailing a Catholic inquisition in the titular Occitan village to root out Catharism that gives a lot of context about the regional divide between Occitans and northerners

>The Seleukid Empire Trilogy, by John D. Grainger
>A history in three parts of the most schizoid of the hellenic successor states, too big, too diverse and too full of other people's cities
>Seleukos I is a smart survivor, the only one of the diadochi to keep his government-issue iranian waifu, and he turns in his good boy points to get the lion's share of the persian empire
>Grainger is the anti-Norwich, long on facts and short on sentiment, and seldom buys into great man stories when it is more plausibly explained by something like Babylonian particularism

>>24536688
>The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

>The author makes their main idea "The real engine of world history lies between the eastern Mediterranean and the Himalayas." Europe and East Asia are important but peripheral, and goods, religions and innovations traversing Eurasia is the main sweep of world history. A short and general global survey book, more useful for recalibrating your perspective for world events rather than carefully covering any one event. Even western dominance from the early modern era is (rightly) framed in how it arose by challenging the traditional economic arteries of Eurasia.

>>24536877
>diadochi
Shame there isn't more from then. The amount at stake and number of players makes political dramas look like childs play

Currently reading Julius Ceasar - The Gallic wars

>>24537121
Last time I read a history book because of the pretty cover I got this absolute slop, is it actually good?

>>24536253
What do they do?

>>24537418
Debate genetics and religion.

>>24537121
Persia, Asia Minor and Central Asia then?

>>24537469
"Debate" is a generous term

>>24536712
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it our.

The American/British/French contribution to the war effort was complimentary, at best
The rise of the Nazis was partly, if not completely, a reaction to Soviet Communism
The Soviets were worse
Way worse

>>24537332
I thought it was pretty good, or at least superior to something like The Bright Ages. It is not a thorough treatment of one time or place, but the revisionism Frankofriend is going for is much more productive and reasonable than the bright age's "the dark ages were GOOD, actually"

>>24537418
There’s mentally ill people that spam their obsessions, Adolf Hitler, and nazi Germany apologies, ancient ancestor rape and genetics, and uneducated and uninformed arguments about history and religion.

>>24538397
I tried to keep up a historical linguistics general thread on that board and gave up because it kept getting derailed by haploautists ranting about how Etruscans weren't white

>>24534738
>"communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of "from each according to their abilities"
>David's mother, Ruth Rubinstein (1917-2006), was from a family ofPolish Jewswho moved to the United States in the late 1920s
Coincidence?

>>24538493
>David Grabbler, the economist

The Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 by Donald R. Morris

>An account of the rise of the Zulu nation in southern Africa, and its fall under Cetshwayo in the Zulu war of 1879. For more than a century after the European landing at Cape Town in the 17th century, the Boers had advanced unopposed into the vast interior of Africa. It was not until 1824 that Europeans came face to face with another expanding and imperial power, the Zulus, the most formidable nation in black Africa. That confrontation culminated in a bitter war between the Zulu warriors and Victoria's British Army. It was the last despairing effort of Africans to stem the tide of white civilization. The result was a dramatic, legendary and bloody defeat at Isandhlwana for the British; the aftermath was the defeat and fall of the Zulu nation. This work sets out to be not only a history of the Zulus but also a full-scale study of the British colonial and military policy in relation to southern Africa, and of those involved.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/805200.The_Washing_of_the_Spears

Reading picrel right now. Thoughts?

Eric Christiansen's The Northern Crusades

>From the early conquest, conversion and expulsion of slavs along the elbe to the holy orders in the baltic, this book is an exhaustive, careful look at a subject poorly served in the English language. Christiansen starts with an introduction of the baltic sea itself, and how the environment shapes the different cultures. While it is an excellent, well-sourced overview, covering everything from finns, balts, the princedoms of rus, german and scandinavian ambitions alike, there are more niche books that specifically serve the Teutonic Order and Lithuania's struggles better. A great springboard to start reading about this time and place before getting into something more specific.

>>24534738
It is a fucking anthropology, not a history. ffs.

>>24538397
>and uneducated and uninformed arguments about history and religion.
At least here on /lit/ we read Robert Graves.

>>24539034
Ehhh, read Chris Hill instead. Or Annales.

>>24539635
I've read both honestly. What now?

A Life For Hungary: Memoirs

>Unintentional comedy from the unreliable narrator self-important ruler of Hungary. From a position of power he sees the final golden days of pre-war Europe, and manages to ascribe a shocking amount of importance and warmth to his naval career.
>Enjoy the proud and honor-laden memoir of a noble written at one of the last times that was a thing! Flawless gentleman-officer of the sea and sometime dictator of a landlocked nation!

>Not only did I fell the stag with one bullet, but His Imperial Highness remarked on my exceptional form. I could hardly demur, given the truth of his statement.
>A paean for the golden era, when everything was courteous and everyone knew their place (Horthy's was at the top), and the Archduke himself praised his marksmanship. As Horthy is known for nothing if not his honesty (and also marksmanship) he was unable to disagree

>>24539688
Well it depends on if you find World-Systems and post-structuralist meta-narrative useful in terms of outlining how things are and the possibility of dismantling them by destructuring them, or if the appeals for working and popular history is more convincing to you as a way of rebuilding narratives of immediate power in the here and now from the bottom up.

If you want a job, I suggest sucking cock and being someone's daughter. If you're genuinely interested in history I suggest working class narratives because if you can find a local archive you can work it on your annual leave, long service, sick leave etc while working the union job you find to pay rent. Or you could conduct oral histories as radical creations of history, but I honestly prefer paper archives to the rambling of 80 year old trots.

>>24539751
Fair enough, but im going to university more or less as a backdrop to my writing project, to gain some credentials. Working a 9 to 5 is fine otherwise

>>24539760
So I assume you write fictively? I guess the central point to take out of both of them is that man makes his own history, but not in the circumstances of his choosing. Which is to say the function of history to the novel is that or reinforcing great or socialist realism's claims to better position the man in relation to himself in the face of the social order.

If you're a dramatist then look at how Shakespeare or Brecht or Dario Fo or Peter Weiss butchers history in order to get a story about how characters act onto the stage.

If you're actually a historian, then my previous advice stands about how to get achievable writing projects while eating.

>>24539766
No, I write polemically and philosophically

I'm looking for good recommendations regarding The Scramble for Africa and The Great Game, or things related to late 1800s imperialism. Seems pretty dry on quality on the topic

>>24539912
Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland

>The author weaves the great game into the modern superpower's ambitions in Central Asia, and in a fairly concise book gives good coverage of many interesting events in the 19th century great game as well as their 20-21st century echoes.

Great book btw, really enjoyed it

the premier english-language book on the history of the pagan duchy of lithuania has yet to be written

>>24536207
Enslaver of France to jewish rule.

>>24536695
His histories of the Norman kingdom are good

>>24539781
>No, I write polemically and philosophically
In terms of your polemics, I'd avoid treating "history" as something which teaches us something. It is a decent way to summon a pack of historians if your writing becomes significant who, like the majestic lemming, will helplessly attack you in public on points of evidence and theory until you're remembered as a pop-historian not a polemicist. Wave after wave of lemming.

Graeber hasn't shat me to tears yet with his anthropological "illustrations" from history in Debt, because he's choosing examples not making structural castles in the sky *with history*. Also when he's polemically talking about process: Irish whore money for example; he's so interested in the social meaning rather than the causative factors, that he's instantly forgiveable because he's making a polemical argument about how the general structures of men's domination of women allow for women to become convertable exchange units. But he's summing up a lot of anthropology for that, and shows you at least 12 societies at various phases of the conversion of women into moveable slave property. So I guess there's an example of a polemicist using history: picking and choosing to make an argument in his core discipline, but doing so without making particular historical arguments about the specifically Irish enslavement of women. I mean he's also writing Irish fanfiction at that point, so hey, take your pants down like I did.

>>24539912
The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner

>A mixture of biography and investigation, this book looks at the life of one of the most colorful and obscure of the west's central asian adventurers, and tries to verify the accuracy of his lurid tales of swashbuckling and marrying afghan nobility. Gardner appears in the verifiable historical record already an old man, and a general of a Sikh army, but is the decade he spent wandering amongst the uzbeks real? Even his age- was he in his 80s, or his 90s? The details of his stories verify just enough to suggest he may truly have visited the places he said, which alone would make him unique among westerner in his time.

>Keay generally writes (excellent) histories that sweep across centuries, and clearly has a lot of fun with the change of pace of studying the life of one remarkable man. Keay's excellent knowledge of the area and talent for the wider picture make him a great choice for the biographer, as someone less expert in the field would get bamboozled by all the claims and succumb to the temptation to either reject everything the mad old scot says or uncritically accept it for a breathless victorian pulp story

Gets posted often here but I found the concept of studying human groups from a biological/evolutionary standpoint fascinating

Not my blurb:
>This book attempts to understand an ancient people in terms of modern evolutionary biology. A basic idea is that Judaism is a group evolutionary strategy-what one might term an evolutionarily significant way for a group of people to get on in the world. The book documents several theoretically interesting aspects of group evolutionary strategies using Judaism as a case study. These topics include the theory of group evolutionary strategies, the genetic cohesion of Judaism, how Jews managed to erect and enforce barriers to gene flow between themselves and other peoples, resource competition between Jews and non-Jews, how Jews managed to have a high level of charity within their communities and at the same time prevented free-riding, how some groups of Jews came to have such high IQ's, and how Judaism developed in antiquity. This book was originally published in 1994 by Praeger Publishers. The Writers Club edition contains a new preface, Diaspora Peoples, describing several interesting group evolutionary strategies: The Gypsies, the Hutterites and Amish, the Calvinists and Puritans, and the Overseas Chinese.

The Vanished Kingdom Travels through the history of Prussia- James Charles Roy
Or
The Habsburg Monarchy from Enlightenment to Eclipse(1765-1918)- Robin Okey

I can’t decide between these two for my next history book to read. Has anyone read either one by chance?

>>24534711
>>24534716
these two books are very worthwhile reads

The House of Morgan

>Candid history of the American banking dynasty spans four generations and chronicles both the evolution of modern finance and the glamorous social strata of the times

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1771523.The_House_of_Morgan

>>24541774
Saved this one. Anything more like it? This sounds great

The Ancient Celts

>Barry Cunliffe is a very respected figure in his field, and this is perhaps his seminal work. The emphasis is heavily on archaeology and material culture, and I get the strong sense he was over-conservative because he was shy of accusations of celtic romanticism. No romanticism here! Dry coverage of settlement patterns, sea-based trade networks, and linguistics. If you want to know the facts about the old celtic cultures of europe, this is a good book for it, but it likely won't be kindling any new passions in people who don't already believe GAUL is MOTHER TO US ALL

>>24541707
Fair enough. But history is not the only thing I do, I dabble in social psychology too.

>>24543160
Plan to read this soon

>>24543164
I haven't read it personally, but the best match might be "The Man Who Would Be King- The First American in Afghanistan"

It is the tale of a yankee who traipses about afghanistan, claimed a kingship, and was promptly thrown out by the British. He is a lot more historically verifiable than Gardner, and a lot less successful, but still extremely colorful, and together with Gardner himself the sort of stuff that inspired Kipling's story.

For a book I have read but a bit more staid and relaxed, there is White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

It is largely about the romance of the British "advisor" to Hyderabad, who, fluent in persian, urdu and tamil, fell in love with a princess and went about as native as it gets while also doing his job as the British Crown's man on the job. The book covers other cases of British accepting and intermingling with the islamic upper class of India, before gradually attitudes hardened as the natives position become more unambiguously lower (and, perhaps more importantly, anglo women began showing up in significant numbers and wanted it all shut down)

>>24543235
Gotta ruin everything don't they?

has anyone here read any of peter hart's books on the irish revolutionary period? Are they any good?

>>24544606
>Oh I won't read Chris Hill, I'll read some Tory shite.

Anyone know any great history books about human sacrifice?

>>24534219 (OP)
>finally find a match on a dating app
>have a good, long conversation
>she asks what books I like
>mention history books
>*immediate block*
Moral of the story, history books make vaginas drier than the Sahara, so one should hide them like porn magazines.

>>24534219 (OP)
What are some of your favorite history books?

>>24545524
Fellowship of Kings. It's just diplomacy in the ancient Near East, and the sometimes funny, rude and petty letters the most powerful men in the world sent to each other at the time. One of my favourite letters is the Babylonian King complaining that the Egyptian King didn't wish him well when he was sick, as the envoy coming for a different reason was sent beforehand and he didn't know he was sick, and therefore didn't have a letter and he mad to make excuses as to why the Pharaoh didn't wish him well.

Early Carolingian Warfare. Says what it is on the tin, but I found it pretty revealing of war was conducted and how it was organised and even trained for

The Crusader Armies: 1099-1187 as well for the same reason, though not as good as the former.

>>24545369
>Anyone know any great history books about human sacrifice?
White Goddess

Reading this right now and would highly recommend it. If you don't know Montgomery he's the general that won the battle in Egypt in the second world war.

>>24545497
You dodged bullet friend. A wise panty will get wet for a wise cock, such a cock can only be formed through the study of history.

>>24545641
>Feminist theories about mythology
Fuck off faggot.

>>24545524
Classics: Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Polybius

Others: The Thirty Years War by Wedgwood, The March of Literature by Ford, The Campaigns of Napoleon by Chandler, Frederick the Great by Blanning, The Sleepwalkers; and The Iron Kingdom by Clark, Citizens by Schama, The Guns of August by Tuchman, The Lyndon Johnson series by Caro

>>24547159
>Caro
Do you think he's gonna finish the series before he kicks the bucket? He'll turn 90 this year.

The Peninsular War

>For centuries Spain had been the most feared and predatory power in Europe - it had the largest empire and one of the world's great navies to defend it. Nothing could have prepared the Spanish for the devastating implosion of 1805-14. Trafalgar destroyed its navy and the country degenerated into a brutalized shambles with French and British armies marching across it at will. The result was a war which killed over a million Spaniards and ended its empire.

>>24548091
I always have a hard time picturing how wars like this and some of the Napoleonic battles went down. I would love to see a reenactment. My brain can’t seem to imagine anything other than classical formation type of battles where two sides just lined up across from one another with muskets, shot some, and then charged with bayonets. It’s my understanding that there was a lot of guerilla type of fighting in the Peninsular War, and there are even paintings of troops firing from houses at Waterloo, for example, but it’s hard for my imagination to accept.

The Peninsular War and the Thirty Years’ War are two brutal wars that often get somewhat overshadowed

>>24543160
>Ron Chernow
Has anyone here read his newest tome about Mark Twain?

>>24534219 (OP)
Anyone read Twelve Who Ruled by Palmer?

>>24540422
I would definitely be an eager consoomer of that but the language skills alone needed to write it would be daunting I suspect. Not to mention the difficulty of getting any 500+ page history book published about anything past the fall of the Rome to the early modern period

>>24548091
>$18 for a fucking ebook
You can suck my ENTIRE ass

>>24548296
>paying for ebooks

>>24548386
You are poor

>>24548117
Small unit ambush usually involved one coordinated shot at the head and tail of the supply convoy, and then a bayonet charge. For Horse (*note*: Horse, not Cavalry): two shots from dragooned ambush followed by a knife / "acquired sword" charge into the head and tail of the supply column.

Cavalry is a different matter.

Unit scale would be Company or Bn.

>>24548117
Watch this channel https://youtu.be/frfmNC1ZPrQ
You should get a good idea of how battles went

>>24546858
>>>White Goddess
>>Feminist theories about mythology
Femdom cannibal drug snuff mpreg isn't feminism son. It is poetic tradition and the traditional role of women in the family unit. cf: Odyssey. Greek Myths. The Welsh as I Imagine Them While Masturbating.

>>24545524
The Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote

It reads like literature, emotive and with a focus on the characters, the narrative and the dramatic momentum of the war. The elegant writing makes scenes stick in my mind long afterwards, and I like to just open it up to random passages to revisit the atmosphere now and again. He researched religiously and took long years writing it, but refused to give citations because it would "break the spell" of making the war an epic narrative that later generations could draw upon.

>>24548407
act poor, stay rich

>>24548918
Shelby Foote is the definitive Civil War writer. There's a reason Foote appeared so many times in Ken Burn's documentary.

>>24548252
I want to

>>24545524
This

>>24545497
You should've got her nudes first and then posted them on /s/

>>24549551
British Empire never fell.

>>24541684
His Byzantine trilogy is also nice imo

>>24543191
>GAUL is MOTHER TO US ALL
Isnt that a line from TW Rome 2?

>>24536207
Ultrafaggot and father of the islamic france. Rot in hell

>>24549711
I heard it so much that it permanently embedded in my brain- I was already very susceptible to gaulposting, and now it is an integrated part of my worldview.

(I agree the byzantine series is great, but holy relics being prised from the grip of a terrified six year old boy before he was murdered outside a church was terrible to read about.)

>>24549691
The Roman Empire never fell either.

>>24545524
Son of the Morning Star

Is there a book or book series that covers the whole history of literature throughout the world, including Africa and Europe?
What's the closest you know?

Got my copy of picrel a few days ago. I've heard it's really good. I was planning on reading more science fiction next but I may read this since it's not even that long.

>>24545524
I haven't read A TON of history books, but this one was good.

Current read
Looking up how many different communist parties Nepal had/has is very funny. Impressive that they pulled this off in the 21st century.

Recs for books on medieval Italian history? There is plenty about the Roman Empire and the Renaissance but not much in between.

Over on /his/, I'm trying to get a good list of books on the Northern Ireland Troubles.

>>>/his/17842657

>>24534219 (OP)
Consensus on Christopher Clark?

>>24551112
The Sleepwalkers is good, maybe a bit more Kaiserboo than some would prefer, considering his specialization

>>24550969
These are general history books but they have very good sections on medieval italy.
The age of faith by Will Durant.
The rise of the west by Mc Neil
The year 1000 by Valerie Hansen
The forge of Christendom by Tom holland
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture by Christopher Henry Dawson
The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor

>>24551148
>The age of faith by Will Durant.
Is a fantasy novel.

>>24551148
The last two are definitely to-read for me

>>24550753
Looks interesting. Wonder what other histories of political culture exist?

>>24550323
It is a whole cavalcade of cruelties at times, aye

>>24551148
I appreciate this but I am looking for more specialized books, ones with detailed focus on Italy in the period. There are hundreds of books on the Renaissance in Italy

>>24551725
normans in the south was already recommended in this thread, thats an extensive coverage of exclusively medieval italy

Best book on french revolution?

>>24550590
It, indeed, fell.

>>24550750
Patrick Radden Keefe is one of the best writers currently working.

>>24550753
>The Story of Nepal's Moist Revolution

Any good book recs for
1-the reconquista and
2-the Spanish civil war?

Pic unrel

>>24551725
Gibbon. I know you just wrote you want specialized but if you haven't read him you must. Plenty on medieval Italy.

>>24552994
Kingdoms of Faith is a relatively accessible book on the interaction between the moorish and christian kingdoms in Spain. It is a very interesting subject and i've read a few books on the subject, but this one is probably the best introduction.

For the spanish civil war, I think beevor is the best english language treatment

>>24552019
Tocqueville wrote that excellent book about France leading UP to the revolution, not exactly what you're looking for but recommended nonetheless.

>>24551725
Well then you've got two of the best history books ever written waiting for you:
The Sicilian Vespers by Steve Runciman
Frederick II by Ernst Kantorwicz

>>24552994
By far the best English overview is The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brenan. Antony Beevor's book is good if you're mostly interested in the military history but he struggles with complex social background which imo is the most interesting element

>>24551215
>Wonder what other histories of political culture exist?
What are you looking for?

Any books that explore the maritime history of particular countries? Viking Scandinavia, America, China, or Japan would be especially interesting. Or really just anything maritime since it's a favorite topic of mind.

>>24553833
I can't swear to its veracity since I've never owned it, but I was rec'd this on here a long time ago and have had it in my Amazon wishlist ever since, but I think this fits what you're asking for re Vikings.

>>24553833
Of mine, damn it.

>>24553833
The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΩΝ

>>24553827
How certain groups in history were predisposed to certain attitudes in political thought, and how they evolved over time or led to ideological mutations. Looking for stuff primarily in the late medieval/early modern period, 19th century America and possibly indigenous stuff.

>>24553853
>>24553866
Now that's just what I was looking for, thanks.

>When a man willingly exiles himself to a forgotten island, he expects solitude. What he finds instead is ritual of survival, of silence, and of self. But his rhythms are broken when a young revolutionary, cast away by force, washes ashore. As the two men learn to coexist, a dog becomes their silent guardian and bridge between past and present.
>Set on a Mediterranean island, Pioggia Solida is a novel of elemental survival and evolving purpose. It traces the bond between two men shaped by vastly different lives, and the dog who teaches them both the value of loyalty without condition.
>As their quiet world grows, then slips away, Pioggia Solida becomes a meditation on chosen isolation, found family, and the unspoken grief of losing what once made life whole.

>>24554125
This is not history you dumb faggot

>>24554133
Historical fiction. My bad, OP said any type of history book. I just finished and enjoyed, faggot.

>>24554149
I guess Moby Dick, C&P, Les Miserables and the Odyssey also qualify, right? retard

is this thread full of /HIS users? I never go there, like crips and bloods.

>>24553915
Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Luther Blisset _Q_ on Anabaptism

>>24552994
Son, a military pace is 90 cm. A mile is not 900 metres.

>>24554287
>is this thread full of /HIS users?
No, this is the people who never left, because they realise that history is literature, and that historiography is essential, not nationalist wank fantasies.

Looking for American Revolutionary histories that take place during the ratification of the sedition act of 1789 or so

>>24554438
The Framers' Coup by Michael Klarman. Be forewarned it is a bit of a tome about the entire story of the making of the constitution, but you could skip ahead to the chapters about the ratification of the constitution, they are very well done.

Is this a good place to start on Louis XIV? Looking for something of a narrative history, with a focus on the culture and political structure of 18th-century France

>>24534219 (OP)
Highly recommend this book if you want to learn about the French Revolution. It does the thing really great history books do. It presents not just facts, but a narrative. It dramatizes the story of the French Revolution without ever making it fictive or false.

Looking for everyone's favorite Irish history books.

General Irish history, the Troubles, the Famine, etc.

>>24555964
And yes, I've already read Say Nothing

>>24534724
>Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
What ? All this has been known for centuries, what kind of retard would believe that the Indians lived in the desert without any technological or social progress.

>>24555797
Been looking for that

>>24554957
Thanks

>>24549551
This isn't polemical is it? I've been trying to find a one volume history of the Empire that isn't some dire polemic but British publishers only seem to publish either 'witty' leftist polemics or 'academic' Indian polemics. The saltwater principle is retroactively taken as a given in everything I've read.

>>24554287
I used /his/ a lot when it was first made but it's almost completely unusable now, 90% of threads are either:
-shitty bait threads about religion without seriously engaging the topic
-shitty bait threads about either nazis or communism without seriously engaging the topic
-shitty haplogroup threads

>>24554391
Mark out 100 meters innawoods
Walk it (preferably under ruck) and count your paces (1left right 2left right 3left right, etc)
Repeat a handful of times
Take average
Multiply by 16
Ta-da
Questions, son?

>>24555797
Great book. Very well written and entertaining, which can be rare at times with history books. At its best it’s a page turner. Some of the biographical sections are the highlight of the book, in my opinion. Schama also does a good job highlighting little things that don’t often end up in history books and it adds a lot of flavor. I’m actually planning on rereading it soon

Has anyone read any of Schama’s other books?

>>24556488
A military pace isn't 100 cm

>>24555964
I thought this was a good, balanced book on the famine.

Great overview of America in the height of the roaring 20s. Lindbergh-mania was probably the first of the manias and no one comes close to eclipsing it. 1927 Yankees were something else.

>>24556984
No one mentioned military pace but you, Pvt. Sanchez

>>24534219 (OP)
Livy or Polybius for Hannibal?

>>24557305
Livy.

>>24557305
Polybius is a better writer. Livy is a fuller narrative, but he isn't really introspective or really analytical at all.

The Horde
It's about the Golden Horde specifically, it's a good narrative and analysis of the state. I think the specific Mongolian political and cultural terms were explained really well and I went in as somebody who knew nothing other than the fact the Horde existed.

Starting The Longest Day today. I'm excited.

Great read but with a boring title and book cover.

1774 by mary beth norton kinda comfy

>>24558554
I read this, its a good companion piece to other cultures in the region because the horde is usually just extras in someone else's narrative

The writer is unfortunately a w*man thoughever, and I wish authors would stop innovating with how they choose to write mongol names and just stick to one convention

>>24560572
>I wish authors would stop innovating with how they choose to write mongol names and just stick to one convention
I think this happens in less coordinated disciplines or ones that aren't close to Western ones. Byzantinists have a pretty easy job of choosing between the Greek or Latin names, both of which are completely legible to an English reader but as soon as you go East it becomes a massive problem because unless you're in scholarship these names mean absolutely nothing to a non-scholar or person already familiar with the culture. I think it's usually best to go with either an anglicised version, or full native.

>>24550749
Reading this now. Pretty good. Don't think it'll take me long to finish but then again I just "read" it on audio this evening for over two hours so I'm kind of cheating. I rewind a lot.

>>24534219 (OP)
Does anyone have a recommendation for the British EIC, preferably covering the first Opium War?

>>24534738
Shit nigger book for fags crap analysis crap history does fuck all research David grifter is a tool and happy he is gone

>>24537206
I finished picrel a few days ago, and it was very good. Light on nitty-gritty details of the campaigns but covers the whole period of the Diadochi and all the major players.

It really was a crazy amount of backstabbing and political maneuver. Makes shit like Game of Thrones look static.

After 6 months of reading on-and-off, I’ve finally finished with this history of the 1848 revolutions by Christopher Clark (also behind “The Sleepwalkers”, “Iron Kingdom”).

It was a very good read, if a little ponderous at times. It’s a blend of social history, economic history, literary history… all at once and the scope is staggering. Clark will sometimes spend almost as many pages laying out the political philosophy of an obscure 19th century Italian theorist as he does describing the March days uprising in Berlin. Many other asides like this, relating the changes in political theory across the 19th century (different conceptions of how Italy should be unified, the impact of the counter-revolutionaries on radical thinkers in the years to follow, etc.)
Clark really has his work cut out of him with this subject - having to both draw out the interconnectedness between the different revolutions in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Palermo, Milan, but also making it clear how they each took their own course, and why… even if all followed broadly the same arc of “revolution (bringing liberals to the fore), entropy, failed radical take-over, counter-revolution). It was a little complicated to keep up with the timeline of events across all the different theaters at times. I also come into the topic not knowing much, except for the French side (July Monarchy, 2nd Republic, Louis Napoleon, etc.)
I thought the writing slowed a bit too much at times, with a lot of academic fluff when the book veered more into theory (for example, when discussing the social aims and national aims coming into contradiction, or merging). Like I said, slightly ponderous and abstract in those places.

I hope Clark continues to write and get published. For me, “The Sleepwalkers” was a masterpiece.

Are there any history books on why the rich and afluent members of society often turn to having sexual intercourse with children for entertainment purposes?

Any good history magazines recommendations? Started looking into these and like what I've read so far.

Is Dikötter’s Mao trilogy actually respected / credible, or would I be wasting my time?

>>24561449
International Review of Social History
Labour History
Labor/La Travail
Journal of Social History

American Historical Review has gone downhill: it no long publishes field specifying articles.

What's the best book covering this motherfucker and the case involving him? Recent events have piqued my interest.

>>24562419
It isn't history yet, the archives aren't released. It is current politics.

>>24562449
There are multiple books covering it written over the last several years though.

>>24562453
And those books are necessarily not histories.

>>24562468
Wrong.

>>24562419
One Nation Under Blackmail by Whitney Webb is as close as you're gonna get, but it's very dry and very dense (ie not casual or particularly pleasant reading), so I've heard.

>>24562474
Jesus fuck, cunt, take a 4th year course on historiography.

>>24562495
Rude faggot.

>>24562520
So is not knowing the basic requirements for a text to be considered history after Ranke in a history thread.

Can we please talk about this? It's kind of confusing with the timeline between June 4-5. I guess the decision to cancel the June 5 invasion was made early the day of June 4, and the final decision to invade on June 6 was made late the night of June 5, but BEFORE the armada on its way to attack the morning of June 5 turned around? Is that right? It seems like there are a lot of tightly-packed, overlapping details. It took me awhile to get un-confused, and a bit of Googling too, and even then not 100% of what Ryan says makes sense when taking Chapter 7 into account. Ryan said "the stand-down" was early June 4, but the aborted invasion on June 5 was cancelled when exactly? Early June 4 I guess??

>>24550749
Can we please talk about this? It's kind of confusing with the timeline between June 4-5. I guess the decision to cancel the June 5 invasion was made early the day of June 4, and the final decision to invade on June 6 was made late the night of June 4, but BEFORE the armada on its way to attack the morning of June 5 turned around? Is that right? It seems like there are a lot of tightly-packed, overlapping details. It took me awhile to get un-confused, and a bit of Googling too, and even then not 100% of what Ryan says makes sense when taking Chapter 7 into account. Ryan said "the stand-down" was early June 4, but the aborted invasion on June 5 was cancelled when exactly? Early June 4 I guess??

>>24555459
Yes this is likely the best overall book in English on Louis XIV ever published in my view

Its a shame there are so few books on pre-roman gaul

>>24564300
probably barely any sources

Why is genuinely entertaining, page-turner history such a fucking rarity? Nine times out of ten it's the driest garbage list of factoids imaginable.

>>24564965
Was your pic a page turner then or very boring?

>>24565077
It was very entertaining.

>>24564965
>BERNARD CORNWELL
So it is porn for 17 year old LARPers

>>24558168
Why?
>>24558234
Who do you prefer and why?

>>24565889
Livy the multiple oxford classics edition and you wait for The Landmark Polybius that will drop hopefully next year. Thank me later

>>24565801
Retard

>>24565901
I’m not holding my breath for the Landmark Polybius. It’s been years we’ve been waiting that and ammianus marcellus. I do love Landmark books though. Only one I haven’t read is Xenophon’s Hellenica. I just want to read about the Punic Wars soon

Maybe not the right thread but since he’s a historical figure I’ll ask: anyone read Frederick the Great’s Philosophical Writings? It’s published by Princeton and has like 3 reviews on Goodreads. I might just buy it and go in blind

>>24563517
thanks anon

>>24557305
>>24565889
Definitely read books 21-30 of Livy's history of Rome, not sure if it's still in print but I still very much enjoy the older Penguin edition/translation.

Unrefutable and undisputable.

Since /biz/ doesn't read, would market history be included here? I particularly enjoy those written around the turn of the 20th century like pic related.

>>24566514
It's welcome here

>>24561449
>Zenobia of Egypt
Wasnt she from Palmyra?

I just finished The Conquest of New Spain, which was fantastic in my opinion. Finished it in 3 days. Now I'm trying to read Heart of darkness, which is extremely exhausting.

>>24566228
Yeah if you're brown

>>24566598
Yes. Pretty sure the article is about her annexation of Egypt, but I haven't read it yet.

>>24566125
Wish they would publish an abridged or selections of Livy history of Rome. Modern library did one in the 1950s I believe and also a basic works version of Cicero as well.

>>24566228
Pic rel is the only approved US history overview book I think.

>>24567037
How does Paul Johnson rate as a historian overall objectively?

>>24566514
I heard this is good

>>24562476
She's a bit of cutie

>>24564965
You haven't read much history, then.
>In glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains, flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in dreamy blue. ... At that early day a white flag fluttering over a cluster of palisades and embankments betokened the first intrusion of civilized men upon a scene which, a few months before, breathed the repose of a virgin wilderness, voiceless but for the lapping of waves upon the pebbles, or the note of some lonely bird. But now the sleep of ages was broken, and bugle and drum told the astonished forest that its doom was pronounced and its days numbered.

>>24550753
They're all fake communists

>>24567037
https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/paul-johnson-rip-objective-history

>>24567037
Good book, but Modern Times is even better.

The House Of Medici

>At its height Renaissance Florence was a center of enormous wealth, power and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were the Medici.

>Charts the family’s huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty under the near-legendary Cosimo de Medici, it moves through their golden era as patrons of some of the most remarkable artists and architects of the Renaissance, to the era of the Medici Popes and Grand Dukes, Florence’s slide into decay and bankruptcy, and the end, in 1737, of the Medici line.

>>24568898
thank you for the random recommendation. this should compliment my copy of The Habsburgs by Martyn Rady.

Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration by Antonia Fraser

>The story of King Charles II is one of enduring fascination if only because, as Bishop Burnet wrote, he was the greatest instance in history of the various revolutions of which one man was capable. The golden childhood of the boy Prince in the Van Dyck pictures gave way to an adventurous youth in Civil War England and abroad, ending traumatically when his father was executed in 1649. Charles II, King at eighteen, succeeded to 'nothing but the name'. After his valiant attempt to regain the throne was defeated by Cromwell at Worcester, the King made his epic escape - to years of exile, poverty and humiliation in Europe. The 'miraculous' Restoration ushered in a reign coloured by a series of equally dramatic events: the Great Plague, the Fire of London, two Dutch Wars, the bizarre Popish Plot, and finally the efforts of the Whigs to exclude his Catholic brother James from the succession, culminating in the King's unexpected triumph over them at the Oxford Parliament of 1681.

>>24571185
I was looking at reading
The White King: The Tragedy of Charles I, and reading these two as a set sounds really comfy

What's the quintessential book about French Revolution?

>>24572144
Citizens - Simon Schama

Bump

What are some good books on ancient Greece?

>>24573343
Greek Lives by Plutarch
The Greeks and Greek Civilization by Jacob Burckhardt
The Rise of Athens by Anthony Everitt

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, by Tamim Ansary

>A general overview of history, centered on islam, with its irrepressible centuries long rise and flowering that suddenly isn't so irrepressible and more generally just repressed. What went wrong? A study of a distinct civilization with its own golden ages and declines that intersects with western history, the book pays special attention to how islamic civilization's historical mission and destiny was perceived by muslim intellectuals in different periods. A very useful book for filling in broad gaps if your history education is overwhelmingly Europe and East Asia, Ansary's writing is passionate, casual and engaging in a way few history writers are. The broad survey style comes at the expense of greater detail, but it is a great launching point for looking into specific times and places in islamic history, and /lit/ probably doesn't know enough islamic history to be bored by a general introduction. The description of islam as a self-conscious community that tries to regulate its own behavior via political means was personally particularly informative

actual history or history books? you dont even read history books after your freshman year

>>24574596
I generally read around a dozen history books a year thoughbeit

>>24534711

>From sunrise till sunset, may the name of Grain be praised. People should submit to the yoke of Grain. Whoever has silver, whoever has jewels, whoever has cattle, whoever has sheep shall take a seat at the gate of whoever has grain, and pass his time there.

I found this book that seems right down my alley.

>In this first environmental history of Italian fascism, Marco Armiero, Roberta Biasillo, and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveal that nature and fascist rhetoric are inextricable. Mussolini’s Nature explores fascist political ecologies, or rather the practices and narratives through which the regime constructed imaginary and material ecologies functional to its political project. The book does not pursue the ghost of a green Mussolini by counting how many national parks were created during the regime or how many trees planted. Instead, the reader is trained to recognize fascist political ecology in Mussolini’s speeches, reclaimed landscapes, policies of economic self-sufficiency, propaganda documentaries, reforested areas, and in the environmental transformation of its colonial holdings.

>The authors conclude with an examination of the role of fascist landscapes in the country’s postwar Mussolini’s nature is still visible today through plaques, monuments, toponomy, and the shapes of landscapes. This original, and surprisingly intimate, environmental history is not merely a chronicle of conservation in fascist Italy but also an invitation to consider the socioecological connections of all political projects.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74783234-mussolini-s-nature

>>24572173
Thanks.

>>24568898
Just found out this guy had a son who looked like Steve Albini. Curiously, both wrote for music magazines but only one made music.

>>24572144
>>24575050
Twelve Who Ruled by R.R. Palmer is also good if you're specifically interested in the Reign of Terror

>>24534738
FUUUUCCCKKK David Graeber. That man wrote the most god awful book I read in grad school The Dawn of Everything. Fuck that book.

>>24537418
m00t was right. /his/ just became historical /pol/

>>24539912
This is decent for how the German military worked in German Southwest Africa.

>>24542026
I always found Prussia and the Hohenzollern much more interesting than the Hapsburgs and Austria.

>>24545524
Probably the best book on WWII I've ever read.

>>24547245
Neither he or GRRM will finish their series. Though The Last Lion got finished by another guy.

>>24551112
He's one of my favorite writers. I really enjoyed this.

>>24566514
I quite like me a tulipomania or south seas bubble. Markets are great fun for history both when their crises are regulated and when their crises are dis regulated.

>>24577639
Not exactly what im looking for

Sharing one of my favourites.

I’m extremely blackpilled about the quality of any historic analysis, even from modern times. Outside of a very limited subset of military histories and very narrow, specific fields of study that history, generally, is garbage. Histories are written primarily for the purpose of pushing a narrative a certain audience wants to consume and makes feel good, the truth is barely a consideration at all.

>>24567185
>Subtitle is The Story of Economic Genius
>Karl Marx is pictured on the cover

>>24577871
This is only an issue if you solely read history to soak up everything in a book like a sponge. Read with a critical eye, keeping in mind possible biases and cross-reference what you're reading with other resources, or even your own knowledge and experience, and you'll get a better picture of the truth.

>>24577871
>Histories are written
Popular histories are published

Histories are written because some mad cunt with a capacity to do a PhD literally cannot help him or herself from writing up the results of their archival research.

>Truth
Doesn't exist. Texts exist. Read Ranke. Ranke was a reactionary German by the way. [Other people are happy to tell you what history means. I am content merely with representing the documentary sources.]

>Outside of [narrow fields] history is garbage
Why do you think Historians work in very very narrow fields?

You might enjoy _Ordinary Men_. It is the story of one unit's fun times in the Baltic States in 1941, and how the unit had a great deal of fun. You will want to compare it to Einsatzgruppen Nord's unit cohesion collapse in 1941/1942.

Personally I prefer institutional and social history of work, consumption, social violence and organisations. Because I've read my fill about how to kill n-million europeans or non-europeans most efficiently. Pro-tip: death squads fail, you want ordinary men in middle age.

>>24577894
>Einsatzgruppen Nord's
Einsatzgruppen A you stupid drunk fuck.

>>24577887
Marx's critique of political economy and his attention to the value-form as labour power caused marginalist economics as a reaction against the cohesive criticism of labour theories of value that Marx supplied.

Marginalism would have been unnecessary and impossible without Marx. This would have held up firm internal accounting and epochal capital goods replacement as marginalism supplied the basic tools for massive strategic reinvestments.

>>24548918
I impulsed bought all three books because Joe Abercrombie recommended them. I've never read him, just randomly stumbled upon his recommendation. It was funny to me that a fantasy writer would recommend these history books. Normally they recommend lesser known fantasy stuff. Then I saw a letter from Foote where he says this was meant to be an epic, a sort of American Iliad and I just had to get them due to how ambitious that sounded.

>>24577923
So as a historian raised in a lit crit household, I'd call Foote's attempt a "Mythopoesis:" an attempt to produce a foundational myth in libidinality to justify a state. Now I've not read Foote myself, but Ken Burns was huffing that chrome like a sick cunt in Bankstown the night before a Bulldogs/Bunnies game. So if Ken Burns accurately reflected the erection he had for Foote, then Foote's project was a foote-job for the US state after 1917.

Is this good? Who cares.
Is this history? No, no it fucking isn't. Mythology belongs in the 800s, not in the fucking 900s. Shelby Foote, you are sent down for a literary, not a historical, motivation, demoted from the graces of the 900s when you get dewy in your decimal to the 800s.

(Here the theologians and information scientists may laugh: FUCK YOU, 900 > 001.)

>>24577947
You're a pseud.

>>24577894
If you like institutional history why don't you just read Bloch or Braudel instead of Ranke?

>>24577904
>Marx caused marginalism
Complete and utter nonsense
There is no evidence to support this claim
Posts like these reek of desperation
You understand that Marx is not taken seriously by the economics profession, so you take that as a given and you contend that his ideas on public policy were so hilariously shit that they caused the economics profession to revolutionize itself in response
In your pseudoscientific garble of a response to my post is included not one shred of evidence for your claim
Not college material

>>24577950
You don't know how to use a text.

>>24577975
I'm talking to a fucking Nazi. And Ranke was the most commonly cited foundational scholar of the 19th century Discipline of History as in historiography. Sure there were a bunch of poms that the pom cunts like to raise. But Ranke is the first cunt commonly cited as a historian who first established in published form the criterion of the discipline. Bloch or Braudel are accusable of marxism or post-structuralism (I would plead guilty and yet claim that no crime existed). But Ranke is a reactionary fuckstick who supported Prussian settler colonialism: yet he specified that historiography did not hector, but merely accounted for the contents of the texts of the past as they are. If you can't convince a nazi fuck that Ranke was correct with Ranke, then you can't convince him of CLR James, Thompson, Hill, Annales, Bloch, Braudel, Worldsystems, etc.

I use Ranke because any Nazi fuck who loves textual coherency can get Ranke's point. I'm not here to educate the cogniscenti, I'm here to educate the illiterate.

>>24577985
>Not college material
Thank you for the compliment. Fuck off back to your four year trade school. I exited a University with my cap and gown, and my cap was not a mortar board mate.

Read more about marginalism's foundation in the critique of Marx. Actually read some history of economics as a discipline. Bohm-Bawerk on Marx is the foundational text.

Fuck me: "college." Jesus christ cunt.

Looking for some recs on Bourbon Spain, Spain leading up to the Civil War and Franco's Spain.

>>24577993
You're a pseud though.

>>24577947
>>24577993
>So as a historian raised in a lit crit household
>but Ken Burns was huffing that chrome like a sick cunt in Bankstown the night before a Bulldogs/Bunnies game
>accurately reflected the erection he had for Foote, then Foote's project was a foote-job
>No, no it fucking isn't.
>I'm talking to a fucking Nazi.
>fuckstick
>a nazi fuck
>any Nazi fuck
Millennials were a mistake.

>>24539912
This gets posted all the time and I likes it. It was a comfy read.
I also enjoyed “The Scramble for Africa” by Thomas Pakenham. I think either will give you a comfy read for those events and that era.

>>24577947
>now i've not read Foote myself

while this was funny and your opinion is uninformed, you are missing out, it is a great read while also being carefully researched and painstakingly crafted history

>>24577993
You're so annoying that reading your post will turn people into reactionaries

>>24577993
See>>24578440

>>24578386
I've read Foote. He's right. Foote's a wonderful historical writer, but he does fall into the "muh glorious lost cause" meme. He's got too much self-respect to be a total retard but The Civil War does heavily imply that the Southerners were these special tactical geniuses who were simply overrun with traitors and bad luck, which was already an outdated scholarly idea when he wrote it

>>24578380
Not all of us are like that

>>24577871
Try this one

>>24578480
I don't see that it implies the Southerner were special tactical geniuses at all, unless its Forrest, where the shoe fits

He makes it very plain the mistakes Lee makes in the seven days or gettysburg, or what a risk chancellorsville was and how it succeeded primarily -due- to luck

And that's just in the eastern theater, where people will generally make a case that the South had better commanders. Obviously Foote doesn't hold any water for Bragg or Hood, although he takes a balanced tone with Joseph Johnston

>>24578440
>>24578462
Go back to stormfront

Anybody else got good books on HRE? I've read books about Thirty Years War, but would like more good books on HRE, preferably a linear narrative one.

>>24579468
They’re right though. People like you actively make your own enemies.

>>24577894
I agree that historical truth doesn’t exist but there are far too many people who use that as an excuse to pedal totally biased ideological garbage like Zinn’s works. Historians should still strive to be as objective and unbiased as possible even if being 100% unbiased is impossible.

What does /lit/ think of this book? If you were in grad school I know you've read it.

>>24579912
I listened to it on audiobook last month. Its interesting but he comes off as a disingenuous Marxist

>>24579912

Its been a while, but I remember being disappointed that it mostly focused on Asia instead of Europe. And alot of it seemed like hairsplitting over definitions and what counts as a "real" community vs an imagined community. Marxist materialism was the main lens of interpretation.

IIRC he makes the argument that any community in which all the members don't know each other personally is an imagined community, which seems true but not very useful. The same could be said about basically any large-scale organization - trade union, guilds, religious organizations, voluntary associations, towns and cities, etc. - and calling them all "imaginary" doesn't seem helpful, unless you think only small communes or villages are "real" communities.

I just finished David McCullough's biography of Truman. Huge, mostly focuses on his political career (county judge, presiding county judge, Senator, Vice President, President), great for understanding the 1944 VP shenanigans and the early Cold War.

Favorite part was quotations from notes Truman would write to himself. Basically, he self-regulating by taking out his frustrations on paper, and then keeping them to himself.

>Dealing with Communist Governments is like an honest man trying to deal with a numbers racket king or the head of a dope ring

Very 19th century guy, but adapted well to the 20th century given his role. Probably a lot smarter than people then or now think, given his personality and old-fashioned habits.

AMA

Great books on the Mexican Revolution

>>24579941
>trade union, guilds, religious organizations, voluntary associations, towns and cities, etc. - and calling them all "imaginary" doesn't seem helpful, unless you think only small communes or villages are "real" communities.

If he did that he would no longer be a Marxist

>>24579941
>any community in which all the members don't know each other personally is an imagined community
Good thing those imagined communities have imagined effects on the world.
>>24579993
Is there a writer that points out Marxists coming to reactionary conclusions, e.g. Frankfurt school complaining that mass media and the mechanical reproduction of art removed a spiritual qualia from mediums?

Anyone have recs for books about the Serbian/Balkan/Yugoslav/etc wars of the 90s? One of those time periods I never learned about in any kind of schooling.

>>24545524
Part biography, part history of NYC. Extremely long and detailed, but incredibly rewarding and consistently fascinating.

The King's Peace, 1637-1641 by C.V. Wedgwood

>The years 1637-1641 marked the ominous shift from the days when King Charles I of England felt himself the world's happiest monarch to the calling of the Long Parliament which presaged his downfall. Even in 1637 there were Problems that pointed the way,- the Hampden case, the reform of the Scottish Church, various prosecutions in the Star Chamber, changed conditions in Ireland, and so on. Problems of revenue dogged the whole of his reign. The signing of the Covenant consolidated the forces against him in Scotland. But issues came to a head in the struggle for the control of the military.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18750920-the-king-s-peace-1637-1641

>>24580002
Oh I agree with you completely - my point is that its not useful to call them "imaginary" because they *do* have very real effects on the world.

DESU the whole project comes off as a dishonest or at least disingenuous attempt to de-legitimate the nation-state as a historical entity. There's plenty of reasonable, historically-grounded criticisms of the nation-state and nationalism, but "they're not real because no one who call themselves French knows everyone who calls themselves 'French'" isn't one of them.

It's definitely true that nations are political creations influenced by the ebb and flow of history. But so are all the other kinds of groups I listed before (eg trade unions, churches), so that doesn't take us anywhere.

>>24580121
>Oh I agree with you completely - my point is that its not useful to call them "imaginary" because they *do* have very real effects on the world.
Think so too, should have used meme arrows to make taking the piss more identifiable.
>the whole project comes off as a dishonest or at least disingenuous attempt to de-legitimate the nation-state as a historical entity
You said the main lens of interpretation the author used was Marxist materialism, does he talk about left-wing nationalism at all?

>>24579984
What is this, for ants?

>>24580136

I read the book over five years ago, but going over my notes I don't think he does. I was mistaken earlier when I said it was mostly about Asia - he does cover other areas, and most of my specific disagreements with him were about the western hemisphere, which I know the most about. The most memorable parts for me were 18th and 19th century coverage.

The Marxist element comes in with an argument that mass literacy and capitalism created conditions for nationalism:

>We can summarize the conclusions to be drawn from the argument thus far by saying that the convergence of capitalism and print technology on the fatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation. The potential stretch of these communities was inherently limited, and, at the same time, bore none but the most fortuitous relationship to existing political boundaries (which were, on the whole, the highwater marks of dynastic expansionisms).

The language angle is pretty common in anti-arguments from what I've seen; its the "a language is a dialect with an army" saying. Linguistic diversity is natural, and divides up people into sub-national groups, but capitalism and the mass literacy destroys this and allows for larger imagined communities. (I'd disagree because you had people (eg Dante, the Brothers Grimm) writing about an "Italian nation" and "German nation" before there was such a thing as a standardized German or Italian language.)

In a retrospective afterward, he describes the book's argument as such:

>Finally, the book attempted to combine a kind of historical materialism with what later on came to be called discourse analysis; Marxist modernism married to post-modernism avant la lettre.

Personally, I think the book is an example of how certain kinds of left-wing thought are mainly forms of entropy, as vehicles for breaking down any and all barriers (in this case nationalism). I think that was the author's main ideological concern. Its also where the postmodernism really shines, because there *are* left-wing nationalisms that this book would be equally skeptical of.

>>24580174
>I read the book over five years ago, but going over my notes I don't think he does.
Unrelated to the book's arguments, how do you make notes for history and keep them over the years?
>the convergence of capitalism and print technology
It's early modern not 18th and 19th century but does he cover the transition between feudal and capitalism with the printing press?
>fatal diversity of human language
This phrase rubs me the wrong way. I know there are examples of people unable to communicate in the same language has killed people, see the Tenerife airport disaster, but I do not see that if humans all spoke the same language subnational, national, and international relations would improve, see resentment at Indians speaking English.
>there *are* left-wing nationalisms that this book would be equally skeptical of.
I assume any movement that promoted the local language over the language of the colonizers or imperialists would be it.

>>24580002
Not that I know of but that sounds an interesting synthesis

>>24580220

The transition from feudalism is covered in chapter 3, "The Origins of National Consciousness." It mostly focuses on Europe but brings in comparisons to 20th century "modernization" programs in Indonesia and Turkey.

>This phrase rubs me the wrong way.
Agree, you don't need to believe in the Tower of Babel to see that humans can hate and persecute each other even when we speak the same language. Social media allowed people all over the world to talk to each other, and it turns out that we don't much like each other. Furthermore, the existence of one language community doesn't necessitate a nation - the Anglosphere exists at the same time as British, American, Australian, NZ, and Canadian nationalism, and speaking English doesn't necessarily make you "Anglo".

For notes: I mostly use digital files and audio books, so I do two things when listening: First, I keep a running track of the major topics covered. Second, when the book reaches an interesting point I type out some of the specific words used at that point as a kind of bookmark. I add a brief description in parentheses to give context.

So for example:

>Well before most of Europe (probably because they were constantly denigrated by people who looked and spoke like them ie peninsulares)

is a phrase specific enough to find in the book with crt-f paired with context notes or (in this case) my commentary on the passage.

The running track is modeled after the "argument" you sometimes find in old books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_(literature)

I hadn't started doing this when I read IC but I'm also >>24579955 so the argument for a chapter from that is

>chapter 5 is Harry’s return with confidence and the “battery boys” he led (the war transformed his life, gave him confidence, persuaded Bess to marry him and got him into politics), gets married, lives with mother in law for some time, starts his haberdashery business with a Lithuanian Jew (started 1919, bankrupt by 1921), introduction of James Pendergast, introduction of Tom Pendergast, lengthy exposition on machine politics and democratic factionalism (rabbits vs goats, Harry was a goat), Harrys first foray into politics as an elected county judge, birth of his daughter, further advances in politics within the Pendergast machine (presiding judge of Jackson county), major undertaking of road construction in the county (complete with bipartisan board and a bond issue), attempted kidnapping of his daughter from school, gets into trouble with TP over not giving out favorable road construction contacts, his dissatisfaction with the corruption of the Pendergast Machine, details of family life

Its a bit clunky as a system but its great for recall and immediately finding things. I developed it in grad school as a way to index for later citations.

>>24580402
Huh. Never heard of that note-taking system.

>>24574301
>Anthony Everitt
His book on Alexander the Great is also a nice read

>>24579505
The Holy Roman Empire John Bryce

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806

I've recently purchased two books on human sacrifice. One focusing on the Aztecs, the other a general history. Thriftbooks is great unless they happen to send you a book that is particularly beat up. They give you credit towards free books with each purchase however which is of course, based.

>>24580016
It wasn't two Albanians with a bottle. It was Ustase and Srpska fascists in the dominant republics playing games with nationalism on tele. Then when Slovenia joined Germany it unleashed the first Fascist on Fascist on sad multiethnic democracy war in history. The most European of the Muslims, the Bosniaks, were massacred.

My War Gone By I Miss It So is a dilettante journalist's account of how how he masturbated and drank his way through reporting massacres.

>>24579531
>They’re right though
>[Nazis are] right though
Go back to stormfront.

>>24581593
Which ones?

>>24542026
Either one sounds good but id go with Prussia

Back when /his/ was good and they had a lot of these, people used to make lists for certain time periods. I don't know all of them, but here's quite a lot of them.

https://imgur.com/a/his-reading-lists-7YLKv

>>24581131
I would get the two Germany and the Holy Roman Empire books, but goddamn are they expensive.

>>24582707
The Highest Altar and City of Sacrifice.

>>24582910
thanks for the link anon

>How does religion stimulate and feed imperial ambitions and violence? Recently this question has acquired new urgency, and in Religion, Empire, and Torture, Bruce Lincoln approaches the problem via a classic but little-studied case: Achaemenian Persia.

>Lincoln identifies three core components of an imperial theology that have transhistorical and contemporary relevance: dualistic ethics, a theory of divine election, and a sense of salvific mission. Beyond this, he asks, how did the Achaemenians understand their place in the cosmos and their moral status in relation to others? Why did they feel called to intervene in the struggle between good and evil? What was their sense of historic purpose, especially their desire to restore paradise lost? And how did this lead them to deal with enemies and critics as imperial power ran its course? Lincoln shows how these religious ideas shaped Achaemenian practice and brought the Persians unprecedented wealth, power, and territory, but also produced unmanageable contradictions, as in a gruesome case of torture discussed in the book’s final chapter. Close study of that episode leads Lincoln back to the present with a postscript that provides a searing and utterly novel perspective on the photographs from Abu Ghraib.

>>24538290
>The American/British/French contribution to the war effort was complimentary, at best
So what, the Soviet meat grinder won in the end?

>>24582594
I'll give that a read

Any other recs from anybody?

>>24583834
Read this for a counter-thesis

>>24545524
This >>24549551 plus Bernard Bailyn - "The Barbarous Years" and Christopher Hill "The World Turned Upside Down" and Henri Pierenne - "Medieval Cities"

>>24538290
>The Soviets were worse
In terms of authoritarian state violence or sucking at war?

>>24545547
You mean "Brotherhood of Kings" dumbass

>>24539632
Most historians would benefit from incorporating anthropology into their works

>>24584541
Most anthropologists would benefit from not being eisegetic fucks imposing metastructures as if the metastructures actually existed on everything. Let an anthro touch history and he (and it is always he) will create a story about his present western society and backject it into the texts of the past.

>>24584870
I think you only read postmodern works written after the 90s