Thread 24673620

ITT we discuss the details & literary merits of various history books.

>>24673620 (OP)
>killing hope
oi vey goyim you cant post this!

The most lit history book.

>>24673620 (OP)
>In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. Tracing Communism’s ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx’s writings to the rise and fall of the USSR under Stalin to Mao’s rise to power in China to the acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century. McMeekin argues, however, that despite the endurance of Communism, it remains deeply unpopular as a political form. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force.

i enjoy mcmeekin's writing style

>>24673839
>mentions of the word "Israel" (not including the index) in the book: 36 times
Oy vey. What a shoah.

>>24673620 (OP)
Hmmm...

>>24673910
another soviet book from a historian who has an opposite view

>>24674045
Forgit the image

>>24674047
>The period from September 1939 to early 1942 was crucial for Soviet foreign policy and coincided with the early stages of the Second World War, including the Great Patriotic War. In Stalin’s Great Game, Michael Jabara Carley unpacks the complexities of Soviet diplomacy during this time, addressing key issues such as the Soviet-Finnish Winter War, Soviet views on the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, efforts to remain neutral in Europe, Soviet relations with both Britain and Nazi Germany, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers.
>Drawing on extensive research from multilingual archives in France, Britain, the United States, and the USSR, Carley offers a comprehensive narrative that explores Soviet intelligence activities, especially of the “Cambridge Five” spy ring and Nazi Germany’s preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The book also re-evaluates historiographical debates on Stalin’s interpretation of Soviet intelligence and Hitler’s intentions towards the USSR. The third volume in Carley’s trilogy on the origins and early conduct of the Second World War, Stalin’s Great Game provides a fresh re-examination of key events and interpretations by both Western and Soviet historians, introducing new ideas and perspectives on this critical period.
third book is also out

>>24673620 (OP)
Looks interesting
>>24673929
never mind

>>24673620 (OP)
>As the driving force behind the Allied effort in World War I, France willingly shouldered the heaviest burden. In this masterful book, Robert Doughty explains how and why France assumed this role and offers new insights into French strategy and operational methods.
>French leaders, favoring a multi-front strategy, believed the Allies could maintain pressure on several fronts around the periphery of the German, Austrian, and Ottoman empires and eventually break the enemy's defenses. But France did not have sufficient resources to push the Germans back from the Western Front and attack elsewhere. The offensives they launched proved costly, and their tactical and operational methods ranged from remarkably effective to disastrously ineffective.
>Using extensive archival research, Doughty explains why France pursued a multi-front strategy and why it launched numerous operations as part of that strategy. He also casts new light on France's efforts to develop successful weapons and methods and the attempts to use them in operations.

I need rip-roaring great books about red-blooded mercenaries. The best of the best. Preferably focused on Africa during the 60s-90s. Elsewhere in the world is acceptable if the narrative hops from location to location. Memoirs and really detailed accounts preferred, I'm not looking for a run-of-the-mill boring recitation of economics and politics.

>>24674047
>>24674441
These covers are absolutely godawful.

>>24674975
You might as well just read the classic African mercenary tale. All his other books are good as well

>>24675250
His stuff was what I was looking at tbqh. Is that the best one?

>>24675257
Its his best known one, and most likely his best. He is also well known for the Seychelles Affair, a book detailing his involvement in a failed coup in the Seychelles in the 70s.

OP here. Yeah the book definitely has a lefty bent. It's not exactly inaccurate though, and it's exactly what I wanted ie a collation of clandestine CIA intervention in the 20th century. The author also puts a lot emphasis on the invasion of the Soviet Union by the United States in 1919 in an attempt to win the civil war for the White Army.

>>24676227
>invasion of the Soviet Union by the United States in 1919

You mean that time the US sent a tiny expedionary force after Trotsky begged for it? And the American commander then refused all entreaties by the Brits and Japs to do anything more than just guard railroad lines and postal routes?

Such intervention, much imperialism, wow.

>>24676233
Well the author was basically saying that that invasion in the infancy of the USSR forever made enemies of the United States.

>>24673849
I'm reading The Tunnel rn, it's great and I'm going to read a lot more of his stuff in the future

>>24676237
Except for all those Soviet factory towns like Magnetogorsk built by American industrialists in the 1930s. And the flood of lend lease aid that kept the Soviet war effort going in the 1940s.

Forever enemies indeed.

>>24673910
>acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century.
like what? I thought most modern initiatives have had more clear inspirations from the private-state relationships. nation backed subsidies supporting certain private initiatives. Like what China, the USA, and like everyone else I can think of does.

>>24675250
I have a collage for that topic

>>24676269
Lend and lease was an enemy of my enemy thing. There were already 20-30 years of red scare in the US and Truman, as a senator, basically said when Germany and Russia fight, the US should support the losing side just to keep them killing each other. When Germany surrendered, the heat was on between the Soviets and the US.

Just finished reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage about the Antarctic expedition, great stuff.
Recommend me some other books about a group of guys going on an dangerous adventure.

>>24676769
Thanks!

>>24677459
This if you haven't already seen it.

>>24676244
>the grasshoppers
One of the most perfect things ever written, every aspect is perfect.

Still making my way through the Short History of WW2. Finally made it to 1993. D-Day is in sight. Tons of stuff mentioned in the book that I need to look into further:
>The uprising in Paris
>The Polish resistance
>Marshal Tito fighting the Axis
>The entire Italian campaign

So the CIA toppled a few democratically-elected governments that had nothing to do with the commies, big whoop.

>For two hundred years historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution―bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view.
>By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that England’s revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 1688–1689.
>James II developed a modernization program that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The postrevolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution―not the French Revolution―the first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.

Any good reads centered around Indochina?

Anyone got any recommendations on books about Jiang Zemin and of China's development in the 1990s? I am interested both in the historical side of things as well as the political philosophy of the CPC at the time, especially the Three Represents.

>>24673620 (OP)
Good books on historic state formation and development that aren't Tilly, Fukuyama, C. Scott, etc?

>>24680681

Not specific to Jiang but pic related is a book on urban development in China with a focus on the 80s and 90s, and especially on the Guangdong/Hong Kong/Macao region, where the latter two and environs were used as growth engines under Deng's One Country, Two Systems. There's also a lot of basic info on modern (commie) Chinese history, details on the Five Year Plans up to that point, etc. I've actually read the second volume (about American malls, a rather quaint subject by today's standards) but I only got about a hundred pages in to this one. Still I think it's germane to your question, having flipped through the rest pretty thoroughly.

>>24679668
The American Revolution was 100% an effect of this, the Fpunders talked about it and were essentially authorized by it.

>>24680748
Fried rice book

>>24677459
I started reading Endurance once but never finished it. I still want to read it someday.

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on the Middle East during the First–Second World Wars, in relation to the wars (WWI specifically) and the great colonial powers? I want to know how France and Britain came to colonize the Middle East and what WWI and to a lesser extent WWII looked like there.

Any cozy or atmospheric medieval (or adjacent periods) social history books?

>>24682240
Maybe this one?

>>24675905
Kino alert

>>24682245
Montaillou

>>24682278
Looks good, thanks bud.

>>24673620 (OP)
Peter Dale Scott & L. Fletcher Prouty for me

>>24683015
Looks self-published.

>>24677419
I think anons point was that the pre wwii interactions were far from mortal enemy educing.

>>24683069
Russia was for most parts the polar opposite of the US. Lincoln already said if he wanted to enjoy despotism, he'd move to Russia. Of course Western countries weren't great at that time, but Tsarists Russia was just alien. The serfdom, the oppression, the pogroms, the October Revolution, ... I can't think of a country that makes a better archnemesis.

>>24673620 (OP)
previous thread >>24593197

---------

I'm trying to source this screenshot discussing historical American literary habits and literacy rates. Anyone have any leads? So far I've only sourced two of the citations in the excerpt with no clues towards the source of the screenshot itself.
>[137] Rev. FB Zincke. "Last Winter in the United States"
https://archive.org/details/lastwinterin00zincrich/mode/2up?q=%22lowest+and+most+vicious%22
>[138] William A. Bell. "New Tracks in North America"
https://archive.org/details/newtracksinnorth00belluoft/page/14/mode/2up?q=%22like+mushrooms%22

Any good biographies on Jean Lamarque?

Thinking I'll read this soon.

Any books about the sengoku jidai and samurais?

What are some of your favorite ancient histories? I’m currently reading Diodorus Sicilus (specifically picrel) and I’m having a blast.

>in the middle of reading Marx' das Kapital
when you get to the point where he describes how Factory owners literally worked children to death and created a "degenerate" class of midgets because of overworking entire families to the point that even their offspring turned out fucked up, it finally clicked how communism was able to take over the world (partially) in the 20th century

bump

>>24674975
Try Peter Kemp memoirs. It's not exactly what you asked but you might like it.

>>24681355
everything flows

>>24689719
Oh fuck off.

>>24679668
The revolution against James II always feel like pure scummy business. His daughter betrayed her own father for this random dutch guy, and his general betrayed him too. No wonder English aristocracy degenerated so much after this, basically only traitors were left in the higher ranks.

>>24682245
Picrel.

>>24683222
Interesting. I know the Soviet Union was comparably a lot worse than Tsarist Russia, but would you please elaborate on the despotism of the Tsars? Were the people really that bad off? Sorry if this seems like a stupid question.

>>24686531
I don’t know about favourite but the Historia Augusta is a very fun read. Skim the wikipedia page if you aren’t familiar. One of the most fascinating and puzzling texts from the ancient world. I recommend the Loeb edition with the editor’s excellent footnotes.

>>24690537
Different anon here, Imperial Russia was an extremely despotic country. The majority of the population lived in bondage only slightly better than chattel slavery until 1861. The urban/rural wealth divide was so stark that there might as well have been a millennium separating the two worlds. In the final decades, the state was more than happy to scapegoat the country’s minorities, their deaths a release valve for boiling revolutionary sentiment. Most of the Soviet Union’s police-status apparatuses had precedents in the Empire. The USSR was often equally despotic, but the causes of its existence are pretty clear.
I’m currently writing my thesis on how Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s agricultural reforms (1903-1914) should be seen as emblematic of an elite Russian culture which fetishised and dreamt of total administrative control over its stupid and backward populace. It was not a nice place.

>>24690556
what do you think of martti j. kari's lectures?

>>24690537
NTA, but Tsarist Russia was a paradise compared to the Soviet Union. Most social progress was made under them and they turned a poor Asian state into the biggest country on earth by extension. Peter the Great and Catherine reformed the state apparatus, and social progress although slowly was made. Alexander II abolished serfdoom and some imbecile came and killed the guy with a bomb. The result was that his son started to supress reforms. Then Nicholas II came and he ALSO started to do reforms, and gave almost total power to his ministers for the country to built industrial and middle classes, and take measures to appeal to the working class. An anarchist came and again killed Stolpyn, who was the minister giving away farmland to disfranchised peasants as a form to create say middle class. Revolutionaries outright made the country worse because they didn't want for things to be better, they wanted the REVOLUTION.

>>24690559
Never heard of this person. I watched a few minutes. I'm generally skeptical of this cultural determinist criticism of Russia which comes largely from IR freaks who get off on grand narrative even more than historians. This seems to fit my preconceived notions, but I'll keep watching. What do you think?

>>24674976
I have to agree, abstraction can be quite effective if the composition is able to convey the substance but these look like half a composition both too busy and too lacking in detail

>>24690607
i'm not sure which video you're watching and i'm not an expert on russian culture but from what little i do know about it, he seems to hit the nail on the head in tracing certain traits back to their source although sometimes i wonder why he suddenly says seemingly irrelevant things like "they have dark hair, dark eyes" so that might be irrational bias but i don't know
just about everybody in the comments section of his lectures is blown away by his speeches and i would be too, if not for the fact that he doesn't fully explain why some specific elements of foreign cultures were absorbed into their society so much more easily than other elements

>I'm generally skeptical of this cultural determinist criticism
i'm curious why you're skeptical of that type of thinking

>>24690627

>if not for the fact that he doesn't fully explain why some specific elements of foreign cultures were absorbed into their society so much more easily than other elements

This is the essence of my issue. He is in the business of 'anticipating Putin', i.e. looking back at Russian history with an a priori assumption that Russia's current state can be chocked down to some primordial cultural difference. It's reductive. Russian despotism, like all historical phenomena, is contingent. The immediate material factors which led to Putin's rise were far more important than some nebulous cultural servility. Note that Kari is a strategist and not a historian. That does not preclude him from making a good analysis of Russian history, but it is something to note regardless.

>>24690681
For an excellent analysis on why Russia is what is is today, >>24675905 is a great read. It shows how the immediate (often hubristic and panicked) decisions of Gorbachev directly led
to oligarchical consolidation and inadvertently deflated what was quite a keen attempt at democratizing the Soviet system.

Boomp

>>24675905
Terrific and the only pop history to get the reasons for the USSR's fall right (it was all Gorbachyov)

>>24679802
"Street without Joy" by Bernard Fall. Classic study by French journalisy embedded in French forces fighting in Indochina. Not a great linear history, but captures the personalities, vibes, and reasons for French failure

>>24680681
Not a book, but you won't find better than this article: https://chuangcn.org/journal/two/red-dust/
Also summary here: https://knowledgeshouldbefree.blogspot.com/2020/10/summary-of-chuangs-red-dust-transition.html?m=1

>>24683222
Rich coming from a guy who was a despot

New to reading about history. Looking for general biography recs, but would specifically like ones on Einsenhower, FDR, any founding fathers, important European figures between 1000 ad - 1800 ad

>>24690681
i sort of get it
it's such a complicated topic that some of the greatest minds ever who had spent their lives trying to figure it out still had trouble with it, so it makes sense that a guy making relatively brief lectures on a tangential topic wouldn't do a deep dive on it
with that being said, people can't change their nature

>>24692217
People/cultures can change their nature, and do every day. That's the essence of my disagreement with him.

>>24692077
>Einsenhower
The Age of Eisenhower by William Hitchcock

>FDR
Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek

>>24692582
>People/cultures can change their nature, and do every day.
can you name some examples?

>>24690517
>random dutch guy
I am SICK of retards who don’t know the most BASIC shit about this event talking about it. He was Charles I’s grandson and James II’s nephew. He married his cousin, Mary II. He was about fourth in line for the throne and the next man in line outside of James the Old Pretender. William III’s half “Dutch” side came from a German dynasty and his other half was British, being raised by Scottish courtiers and generally separate from Dutch society.
He had a closer relation to James II than James I had to Elizabeth I. He was hardly random.
>But no lmao I looked at /his/ and reddit memes and he was a random dutch guy
Retarded.

I was searching for books on the Trojan war, both the myth and reality and found this on a lit infograph, is it a good place to start? Anything else on late bronze age Greece in general?

>>24692011
Incredible read, thank you anon

>>24693982
I've read this, it is what you're looking for. Good to read right before The Illiad.

31% of the way thru Killing Hope.

>>24693982
The War That Killed Achilles is quite good.

>>24695542
im sorry but i'm not going to read a book about war from a female author. I'm just not!

>>24695014
Sexo.

>>24695659
Not even Tuchman? Or CV Wedgwood?

>>24673929
So what some of the most formidable anti Zionist figures are Jewish like finkelstein pape mate

>>24686531
>favorite ancient histories?
I have only read Herodotus and Thucydides. Xenophon is next in queue. Considered reading some Diodorus, specifically timeframes not covered by others, but not sure if I'll actually do that.

>>24696422
Tuchman's guns of august was awful.
CV Wedgwood's thirty years of war I'll admit was comfy but i didnt know she was a woman before i bought it, i swear!

Is this a good book on the crusades?

>>24693976
The guy was an invader from Netherlands bro, this midwit "akshually" just make you look goofy. And my main point was that the people who welcomed him like Jame's daughter were traitors. After that the english monarchy declined and the aristocracy become more and more traitorous to English people.

>>24697707
You can call it treacherous, but it was no more uniquely treacherous than Henry IV usurping Richard II or Edward IV usurping Henry VI. William III and II wasn’t some random asshole invader like William the Conqueror, and I’ve partly explained why by being the next male in line for the throne. Calling him an invader is also a complete distortion—and I won’t even bother explaining why because you wouldn’t listen anyway. It’s like calling James I and VI a Scottish invader or the Hanoverians German invaders.
It’s not a fucking “erm akschually.” If you don’t care about what actually happened, just say that. Stop reading history and just make shit up then.
>And my main point
Blah blah blah. I don’t care about your main point or how you feel about what happened after. Your underlying facts of what happened are wrong, distorting the event and your understanding of what happened.

>>24684767
Very kino book, reads often like a zombie movie. I loved a certain river scene, and his unnerving forays into the surrounding woodland, but can't actually remember much of anything

>>24697962
I'm glad to hear that. I'm defo in the mood for some plague doctor kino.

>>24692077
>any founding fathers

>George Washington
James Thomas Flexner

>John Adams
David McCullough

>Thomas Jefferson
Jon Meacham

>Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow

>Benjamin Franklin
H. W. Brands

>Paul Revere
David Hackett Fischer

>Ethan Allen
Willard Sterne Randall

>John Paul Jones
Samuel Eliot Morison

I need a bunch of books.
A book that deals with Brahmanism and Vedic religion and explains how from it were born Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
A book about the various sects of Hinduism, their history and beliefs.
A good book that gives an overview of the Bronze Age.
And one that goes in depth about the Mycenean and Minoan civilizations, their culture, religion, art and fashion.
A book on ancient mystery schools. Mystery Religions in the Ancient World by Joscelyn Godwin seems very short and so I don't know if it is detailed enough.

>>24673620 (OP)
Good histories of religion similar to Eliade?

Do you niggas know just how close we came to nuclear war during the Gulf of Tonkin incident? It's insane we're all still here. Also, did you know Jim Morrison's father was the admiral of the fleet that was carrying nuclear weapons, and Jim was there.

>>24699431
Its pretty well known Jim was a glowie

the great "artistocratic reading general" book that never happened. kek