/lit/ - Literature

Starting with a favorite of mine.

this counts, right

This is supposed to be good.

>>6767223
>Foucault
>even vaguely accurate
Literally the spookiest faggot of all time, second only to Nietzsche in his giant piece of shit wankery. Fucking continentals.

>>6767190

I posted this pic back in may.
Howard Zinn is one of the historians I use (also use plenty others) for my AP students.

>>6767190
Any good novels about commie China?
It's such a wacky period.

>>6767190
>mfw thinking about the fall of rome

Greetings, m'lads! I was hoping to pick up a book on my *favorite* genre of music, classical (second only to jazz and technical death metal), but reddit.com/r/music isn't the most literary bunch. Could someone here point me in the right direction?

Bach, Beethoven, the list could go on...

>>6767258
I'd be careful, there's a lot of potential for anti-commie bias and muh 23 to 46 quintillion.

>>6767283

How much does it cost to get a collection of those books? Also, how many are there?

>>6767289
Usually around $8-9 US, but I've seen as low as $4.50 on a few sites.

>>6767260
you know whats funny is i know this faggot named dylan who acts just like this

My favorites:
Empires of the Sea
Enemy at the Gates
Roots of the Western Tradition
Cities
Better Angels of Our Nature

Books that are on my radar to read:
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Black Jackobins

Does anyone know of a book that traces the development of what conceptions civilizations had of the wider world?

I mean, a book that deals with what the ancient near easterns, Greeks, Romans, Medievals knew about the wider world, what they thought the geography was like, how much they knew about distant civilizations and what they thought they were like, etc? And deals with how this knowledge changed over time.

Perhaps my favorite center piece of history is the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire, specifically 100BC to about 25 AD. The amount o world shakers in this time is incredible, and Caesar is such a fascinating character.
Recommended books for newbies
1. Rubicon - Tom Holland
2. Adrian Goldsworthy's biographies of Caesar, Augustus, and Cicero.
3. For an overall understanding of roman culture, I like "Themes in ancient Roman Culture " by Oxford. It's a bit expensive, but my Roman History Professor assigned it and I learned quite a bit from it.

I'd like to get into more histories of Middle Ages Europe or Islam, I have just finished Inheritance of Rome (super dense, read at your own caution) to bridge the gap between the fall of Rome and everything else. Gonna start "The Middle Ages" by Morris Bishop, then move onto "Byzantium: The Suprising life of a medieval empire" and finally "The Crusades: The Authoritative history of the War for holy land" by Thomas Asbridge.

Is there any other titles in the Middle Ages period they would reccomend? Let's say these are the only titles I have/will read regarding this period

Literally life-changing

Best read in conjunction with Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy

>>6767420
the 'landmark' series has great editions for both herodotus and thucydides too

>>6767420
I hear the landmark histories of Herodotus, Thucydides and Arrian are great. What do they bring to the table? Lots of footnotes? Maps?

>>6767259
>mfw some etruscans were niggas

>>6767258
fug I read a really good book in college about life during the Great Leap Forward. it was really good but I can't remember its name or who wrote it.

>>6767446
>mfw the Egyptians were black

>>6767336
That's a huge topic which one book wouldn't be able to cover, but there is a lot of relevant scholarship, like whole books on Greek attitudes to 'barbarians.' Obviously most of our ancient sources come from an educated elite, so you have to be careful about generalisations.

If you can narrow your request down I can try to dig up relevant books.

For the Near East there's inscriptions and tablets which record diplomatic transactions. Amanda Podany - Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East is a general introduction.

The history of cartography can provide a lot of information about geographical knowledge, the series 'History of Cartography' edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward is probably the most comprehensive overview and can be downloaded from the U Chicago site for free: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/index.html

>>6767260
Note: I am serious and my meme post was meant to entice.

>>6767446
What do you call one black man minus two black men? niggative one

>>6767481
You mean black boy? Blacks can't be men,

Where do you start with Byzantium?

>>6767457
Shame. The great leap off a cliff is really interesting.
I'd really like to see something analysing how the fuck it happened.

>>6767190
i want to read the real history of the Inquisition, what books do i read?

>>6767486
Not true. They have to be at least teenagers, which is roughly 3/5 of an adult

>>6767497
With Warren Treadgold, if you want something solid.
With Judith Herrin's 'Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire' if you want something lighter.

>>6767462
>me on the left
Talking seriously, were the egyptians multikulti?
Since Old Egypt was pretty much an empire is there a possibility that they didn't care about the race/blood of their monarch?
I've seen some indo-european looking mummies and nigga mummies (don't remember its name sadly).
I mean "multikulti" like the Ottomans. There were even rulers who weren't turks/altaics/turan(lel).

>>6767481
kek

>>6767527
They might have had sub-Saharan slaves, they were in contact with them, though.

>>6767283
>>6767289
I'm reading pic atm, it's probably the best book on Ancient Egypt right now, and up to date with all the recent archeological discoveries. It's pretty long but very easy to read.

>>6767608
I mean its royal family.
After all they conquered the nubians.

>>6767199
that feel when got the folio edition from a library sale for 10 dollars

>>6767616
There were no black pharaohs, sorry.

>>6767627
There was a Nubian dynasty actually.

>>6767650
Hi, Louis.

>>6767247
Do you not own a table?

>>6767651
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt

>>6767660
He sold it, so he could buy more American flags to burn.

>>6767664
BIG

I recommend this book on /lit/ a lot. If you're interested in urban planning, local and state politics, the city of New York, the period of the 1920s-1950s, or epic stories of flawed but ambitious people, you'll probably like this book.

>>6767668
NUBIAN

>>6767660
That is my kitchen counter.
>>6767666
I leave symbols to the symbol minded.

Does anyone else have good historical fiction?

Also thoughts on this book?

>>6767679
COCKS

>>6767685

Who doesn't like Graves? Even his autobiography was good.

>>6767258
How about this one, anon?

Can anyone recommend good fiction set in the Russian Civil War?

I've already read pic and want more.

>>6767627
I'm not afrocentrist nigga, but I do remember there was a nigga mummified, I don't remember his (or her?) name.
I give a shit about whether they were black or not, but I'm more interested if they were a "Multikulti" empire like the Ottoman Empire.

>>6767685
Just looked into this one, sounds very interesting. Will most of it be lost on me without a proper knowledge of Roman politics and political figures?

>>6767715
Don't call me a nigger, as I am more evolved than that.

>>6767726

pls go back to >>>/pol/

>>6767730
I'm not the one calling people niggers here.

>>6767436

yes, and great appendixes full of information

A History of Rome by Mommsen

Can someone recommend me an up-to-date general history of rome from pre-history to the fall of the western empire? Preferably one that has further reading and of good quality. Cheers :-)-:

The Odyssey by Homer

Anyone have some reading on the the Sikh empire? The books I've read lack detail, especially on the final and most tumultuous decade of its brief existence.

anyone know of any good books dealing with ancient hoplite phalanxes? More in depth with illustrations to back up what they say and actual reconstructions?

Picked this up in a second hand bookshop with little knowledge of it's contents, and now it's one of my favourite books to just pick up and read a few pages of.

Compilation of short articles from The Spectator, published during the war.

>>6767684
Tables are a societal construct of the bourgeois anyway

Based Achmaeneaid (I can't spell for SHIT) and the Greco-Persian Wars. Anyone reccomend me more books on pre-Islamic Persia. Tom Holland's "Persian Fire" was a solid 8/10.

>>6767420
does this only deal with the military history of Alexander or does it comment on politics and culture? I would read The Age of Alexander and The History of Alexander but ones a scholarly work and the other is a collection of biographies.

>>6767258
jonathan spence- search for modern china covers from the qing period through the republican period and has recommended reading at the back, if you want i can post some of them if youre interested

>>6768976
through the communist period*

>>6768846
I knew they history. When they lost Maka, all their empire had crashed. Maka is a magical place.

>>6767385
Reading rubicon made me realize how much of a power hungry asshole Caesar was. Long live the republic.

>>6767997
I just bought A History of Rome: Down to the Age of Constantine, by M. Cary and H. H. Scullard. I was looking for exactly what you asked the other day and this seemed to be the best book on the subject

>>6768860

There are extended discussions of these topics in the appendix.

Here are some books I want to share with you guys which I plan on reading in the future. I'm only posting ones I have links to:

A History of Venice
>Elegantly written, sprawling popular account of the whole span of Venetian history.
http://bookzz.org/book/1198890/64a3a1

Mallett, Michael Edward, and J. R. Hale. The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice, c. 1400 to 1617.
>The challenge of mainland expansion required Venice to develop what it had never had before: an army, necessarily a mercenary one, though under the supervision of patrician legates. It innovated effectively, controlling its hired captains, managing new technologies, and handling the problems of recruitment and pay.
http://bookzz.org/book/995812/20f657

Gene Brucker- Florentine Politics and Society
>Lucid reconstruction of one of the most turbulent times in the republic’s history, riddled by political coups and factionalism, class strains, war with the papacy, and a major uprising of wool workers against oligarchic control.
http://bookzz.org/book/861733/7ff32b
(I also recommend reading Brucker's Renaissance Florence, which is a fantastic general overview of the city)

Caroline Finkel- Osman's Dream
>An accessible, well-researched introduction to and overview of Ottoman history from its beginnings to the creation of the Turkish Republic. More narrative in character than İnalcık and Quataert 1994, it focuses on high political history and traces a somewhat traditional rise-and-decline trajectory.
http://bookzz.org/book/2189705/e579c9

>>6767981
Is it considered outdated? The assistant told us we're not going to look into it. Ihave it on my shelf, tho.

Strongly recommend to have it on the side whatever you're reading.

Any suggestions on Early Republican Rome? I wanna read about Samnite Wars, Pyrrhus the Eagle, the Etruscans, etc.

My main problem is I'm not looking for an introduction. I've been reading history intensively since an early age.

Is there anything on the Early Republic for a serious student?

>ctrl + f
>No "After Tamerlane."

Plebs

>>6769159
Livy's History of Rome.

>>6769175

I'll don my sacrificial feathers and off to battle then.

I've heard any books on ancient times and basically pre 1400s are all partially fiction or can be related to historical events as its so far back no one can be really sure what happened. Then with china supposedly there was hundreds if not thousands of years of history burned when some ruler took over. How accurate is this?

>>6769141
An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 1, 1300-1600, Halil Inalcik with Donald Quataert
>This monumental synthetic overview of the Ottoman Empire, from its founding to its fall, brings together a “who’s who” of Ottoman studies. The authors focus on Ottoman society and economy, areas that have produced much useful recent scholarship.
http://bookzz.org/book/1063629/a31e5a

A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain, Dickinson, Harry T., ed.
>The best overview and introduction for students, offering a range of up-to-date essays by leading scholars, covering a wide range of topics, with suggestions for further reading for each section.
http://bookzz.org/book/809182/94154b

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707– 1837
>One of the most influential overviews, arguing that the period was crucial in the formation of a national, British identity, and that Britishness was the product of Protestantism, war, economic strength, the integration of Scots and (Protestant) Irish, popular loyalty to the monarchy, and gender. Very well written and accessible to students as well as specialists.
http://bookzz.org/book/983859/1b4313

Making of the English Working Class
>Of iconoclastic importance in the historiography of the period, bringing a Marxist interpretation and refocusing attention away from the elite. Originally published in 1963
http://bookzz.org/book/959177/ca73bf

Earle, Peter. The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society, and Family Life in London, 1660– 1730.
>An implicit rebuttal to Thompson 1974, focusing on the middle class, principally in London.
http://bookzz.org/book/965071/d1b757

Connolly, S. J. Divided Kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800
>The best single-volume history of early modern and 18th-century Ireland has a chapter dedicated to Ireland in the Atlantic economy. The book also examines in detail the effects of the Cromwellian and Williamite settlements in Ireland. Despite the major changes brought by these attempts to pacify Irish Catholics and to transfer their property to loyal Protestants, Ireland remained a kingdom and not just merely a colony.
http://bookzz.org/book/2530699/fecec1

Great book for those wanting a clear and comprehensive look at England's development from a colony to a country with its own identity and plans for mastery, as a apposed to being centrally involved with continental empires.

>>6769116
Cheers dude. Will look into it.

>>6767259
>implying Tacitus wasn't entirely right about the Roman Empire and every empire before or since

>>6769212
Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue and the Old Regime, James E. McClellan III
http://bookzz.org/book/828896/aba462
>Through an exploration of Enlightenment culture and thought in colonial Saint Domingue (Haiti), this book provides one of the most detailed portraits of the social and cultural life among the planter elite in the colony.

Garrigus, John D. Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue. Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World
>Provides an analysis of research on free people of color from the southern province of Saint Domingue, following the history of the group from colonial times through the revolution. Emphasizes the frontier nature of the colony and argues that this characteristic allowed for the development of a large mixed-race population and a society organized by a class hierarchy.
http://bookzz.org/book/837808/d9e03c

James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)
>This narrative by a radical Marxist activist from Trinidad was the classic treatment of the subject until Fick 1990 and Dubois 2004. James insists on the connection between French revolutionary principles and the revolution in Saint-Domingue, then Haiti, and on the role of the masses. Sees the revolution as part of the international class struggle. Reprinted in 1963 (New York: Vintage).

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
>Relying on secondary and published sources as well as primary sources, this narrative has been translated into French and is considered the most compelling synthetic account. It is an excellent introduction to the complex questions raised by the Saint-Domingue insurrection and the successful revolution that ensued. Graduate students will greatly benefit from its erudite yet balanced coverage.
http://bookzz.org/book/931032/621a04

>>6767289
>how many
+100, and more are still being written. It's a huge series.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=very+short+introductions+series&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=29539658267&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6855766563690730359&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_2dlz40qz90_b

>>6767259

mfw Justinian Took Rome Back.

>>6767715
No they weren't. They had a few nigger slaves in the Sudanese border, and that's pretty much it.

In fact they were pretty anti-nigger. Egyptians made the first anti-nigger laws in the history of the world. The pharaoh Senusret III enacted a law banning niggers from entering Egypt except for trading purposes.

Niggers BTFO

>>6767500
Actually, I'm pretty sure I read an autobiographical account of the Cultural Revolution. I'm looking on Amazon and it may have been "Born Red" but I can't remember.

I wish I had my syllabi from my college years :(

bumping, love these threads

Any good books about the French Revolution and Napoleon?

>>6769877
The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler

Any good books about the monastic orders, and what life was like within their states?

>>6769877
I've heard Reflections on the Revolution in France is good, albeit quite conservative.

>>6770041
Reflections on the Revolution in France is the greatest work ever written in English.

>>6770013
Lowe, Kate P. J. Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
>A comparative study of extant but unpublished chronicles compiled in the 16th and early 17th centuries in three Italian convents: one in Venice, one in Florence, and one in Rome. This study shows a vibrant convent life in which cultural creativity and cultural production thrived.

Clark, James G., ed. The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England. Woodbridge, UK: Brewer and Boydell, 2002.
>This volume of essays introduces a range of topics relating to the spiritual, cultural and educational role of the religious orders, with the most relevant to the dissolution of the 1530s being those F. Donald Logan on departures from the religious life in 1535–1536 and Peter Cunich on the fate of the ex-religious.

Knowles, David. The Religious Orders in England. Vol. 3, The Tudor Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1959.
>The final volume of Knowles’s important history of English monasticism has underpinned all subsequent work on the subject, which has tended to be devoted to case studies of individual monasteries. Knowles remains valuable as the only historian to deal with the dissolution on a national scale.

>>6770104
Cheers :) - Out of interest, what's your souce for finding these books?

>>6770055

> *Reflections on the Revolution in France is the only work I've ever read in English.

Fixed it for you

plutarch's lives is my shit. fuck accuracy

I have this, but I haven't read it. Is it any good?

How about some Cold War recommendations?

Any good books on universal history?

>>6771430
Durant - Story of Civilization

Any reccs for books on Ancient Greece? And yeah I've seen the charts.

Really great. Lot of research went into this one.

>>6771453
>>6771453

>>6771754
I've played the game of basketball my whole goddamn life
I ain't never watched you on the motherfucking T.V
I'mma tell you something man, aye man
See me in a game of 21 and i'mma shut the fuck up man
I'm on you nigga, you know what I'm saying?

>>6771470

Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist is surprisingly historical. I especially love the place names, he translates rather than transliterate. It's a fresh perspective. Kind of like when Thucydides wrote fictional speeches, it adds to the experience.

>>6770363
oxford bibliographies, you usually have to buy the articles, which you can do on amazon, but sometimes there's a glitch or something and the articles appear for free lol

>>6772018
Could you send me a link to one of these 'articles'? - tried to google them at got nothing, cheers tho mayn

Empires of the Word motherfucker

no picture because fuck you up your linguistic history game bitch (not historical linguistics fuck those conjectural fuckucks)

>>6772018
They are free if your university library has a subscription to them

Sometimes/usually the first little bit is free but then it truncates and says PAY $10,000 RIGHT NOW FAG

>>6772105
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0146.xml

pic related is my university library site's link to log in with my uni ID. same as other resource/archive things like JSTOR and so on, we just have a subscription

>>6772134
>university

Yeah I don't have that. Anyone got a link to the JSTOR database that Aaron Schwartz died to make public?

>>6772134
Ah excellent, cheers mayn :))

>>6772211
I'm the original guy, I have many articles that I've copied and pasted onto google docs and several that I've bought for my kindle

the google doc ones i have:
-Cardinal Reginald Pole (important catholic figure in 1550s england)
-English Reformation
-England, 1485-1642 (i.e. the tudor dynasty-->early stuarts-->english civil war)
-Early Modern Catholicism
-Art in Renaissance Florence
-Persecution and Martyrdom
-Iconology and Iconography
-Late Antiquity
-Puritans, Quakers, Recusants (english catholics), Dissenters (post 1660 protestants outside the anglican church)
-Francis Bacon
-Egypt (islamic egypt really)

I can share them if you want or email to you

We always talk about Rome, but what about books on Han China? Its fascinating dudes, two equally sized empires dominating the east & west, yet only vaguely aware of each other to my knowledge. Is there any information out there on possible Roman-Han relations?

>>6772229
From my Kindle:
Ottoman Empire (and Islam)
Florence
Venice
Cities and Urban Patriciates
Hanoverian Britain (1700s)
Political Islam
Civic Ritual

>>6770548
Richard Price pls go

>>6767685
I don't know if it's available in English though, but it's wonderful.

bup

Anything good on Asia? Literally anywhere in Asia, even just near east.

Don't know if related but best edition of Lives?

>>6773528
The Search For Modern China by Jonathan Spence

this is a good thread

Any good books on the Native Americans pre-European contact? Or Meso-America? Thanks

>>6774628
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

>>6769286
Missing a link on James there

Asimov deserves to be referenced as an Historian. I've learned quite a lot about the Ancient Greeks, Romans and about Medieval Europe. Some of it is religious trivia, or economic factoids, or social intrigue, or blood-soaked suspense, but it is a fantastic overview of the last 3,000 years or so.

Plus you're learning more and more about Shakespeare's plays. So it's a solid investment if you have the time to go through it.

>tfw transcribing a 50 page bibliography where half the entries are for the swedish translations of books

STOP

CITING

THINGS

>>6774771
oops, here it is!

James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution
http://bookzz.org/book/887329/0dfd79

>>6772232
try
The Genesis of East Asia, 221 B.C.–907, Charles Holcombe

>>6772134

ayyy

Does anyone have any 17th Century European fiction, prose or poetry to recommend? It can either be written in that era or about that era. The loftier and more romantic/extravagant the better. I'm a sucker for 17th Century European Romanticism or Romanticism of the 17th Century in Europe.

>>6775651

Not that guy but this is one of my favourites too. In a similar vein, Theodore Allen's The Invention of the White Race is excellent.

>>6767724
It's a pretty easy read. It might be good to do a bit of research on the Caesarian dynasty (Julius to Nero) just for some context.

>>6778251
Locke, Descartes, Hobbes, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes the list goes on :^)

Bacon's Essays are supposed to be good

Consider reading Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) and Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) reading. Both wrote in the early 18th century, but they were a product of English historical development from the previous century. Most obviously, they lived under Stuart rule, which had started in 1603 and would end in 1714. To add to that, post-1660/civil war politics saw the emergence of political parties along whig/tory lines, which became reality from 1770s/80s onward. But political organization became increasingly sophisticated after 1695 with the laspe of major censorship laws, which led to greater press freedom. Both Defoe and Swift were MAJOR writers whose skills politicians would use extensively in the early 1700s.

the bible
/thread

>>6778522
Fuck off

>>6767259
>mourning Rome
>not Greece
smh

most underrated emperor of all time coming through

>>6778519
Oh my god I love Jonathan Swift so god damned much

Hey guys, I'm looking for good books on Subotai the Valiant. Does anybody have any good recommendations?

>>6778560

He kinda fucked his own legacy by preferring to let the mohammedans overrun the eastern provinces, rather than take a bath.

>>6771177
John Lewis Gaddis wrote a good introduction to it

Anyone know any good books about pre-columbus
latin america?

Or books about women through out history? Any period/location.

>>6778647
>pre-columbus latin america?
see>>6774716

>women through out history
...

>>6778647
Kellogg, Susan- Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present

hits both of your requests

>>6778682

>history

Women's history is an oxymoron. You are looking for 'herstory.'

>>6778682
Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. History of the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
>Calloway presents a native-centered history of the American West from 500 BCE to 1804, analyzing how native peoples jostled with expanding European empires for regional power. Of particular note is his argument that the 18th century rather than the 19th was formative of social and cultural relations in the West.
http://bookzz.org/book/1162041/4be579


Carmack, Robert M., Janine L. Gasco, and Gary H. Gossen, eds. The Legacy of Mesoameríca: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization. 2d ed. Exploring Cultures. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007.
>This overview, appropriate for undergraduates, synthesizes the history of the Mesoamerican culture area, from its foundations to the early 21st century. Unit 2, “Colonial Mesoamerica,” coauthored by Louise M. Burkhart, engages most fully with Atlantic history themes, such as conquest, colonial society, and indigenous literature produced during the period.
(no dls for this one)

>>6778687
lol

>>6778665
>>6778682
>>6778710
Thank you.

>>6767479
classical? jazz? i just throw on capital public radio whenever im in the mood

>>6778560
wtf is up with that guy on the bottom right? First ever contortionist?

>>6767259

It was inevitable as it is with all empires.

Corruption, power grabs, and size will diminish even the greatest of empires.

>>6767190
I prefer Durant because I love his writing style, but his work is pretty outdated now.

>>6767685
Cornwell's historical fiction is fucking top shelf. Pick up any Sharpe's Rifles series book or one of his Saxon Stories.

His Warlord Arthur series is really good too, but it's not as historical and cleaves a little more on the magical side but it's still an amazing Post-Roman Britain historical fiction.

>>6769024
Fuck the Republic and its cabal of plutocrats. The Gracchi were right; Rome for the Romans!

>>6769024

>dfw you read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with Brutus as the hero.

>>6771177
Overthrow has a lot of good Cold War stuff on proxy states.

>>6780512
In what way is it outdated? I just picked up Our Oriental Heritage. Can you recommend better ancient history books?

>>6769877
The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle

Got this to read
900 pages long

Has anyone read Joyce Tyldesleys Egypt books? Any good?

>>6781791
Looks very nice m8.

I ordered this among others. Is Goldsworthy a good introduction?

I quite like this book

What's the most dishonest or inaccurate history book that has ever been considered a classic?

>>6783810

The Bible.

>>6781791
It's very comprehensive, and probably the best book on English history. Enjoy it.

Started Rubicon today, hopefully I'll finish it before my new books arrive from Amazon. Seems good so far.

>>6783810
Spengler's Decline of the West is considered a classic here, but modern historians don't agree with a lot of Spengler's assertions. Same goes with Gibbons Fall and Decline and Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages and Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. But unlike Spengler historians consider those guys as the founders of classical, medieval and renaissance studies respectively. They consider Spengler as a contributor to World History on the basis of his broad effort but not so much merit or his arguments

>>6783951
>Gibbon's Rise and Fall
>not so much on the merit of his arguments

>>6783962
Why is that? I've got an abridged version of Gibbon's Fall (only some chapters) and I'd like to know why it is that he's considered outdated.

>>6784055
It's what I've heard; I'm not familiar with the Gibbon's work or the many debates around it. But what I've heard is that his emphasis on Christianity as an important factor in the decline of the empire has been thoroughly debunked. I'm sure there are other quibbles historians have, but this is the major one I've heard. Remember, too, that an enormous amount of archaeological work has been done on Rome since the 18th century, so even if Gibbons' arguments are sound, the physical evidence has probably complemented, revised or refined his arguments i.e. aid to a better understanding of rome than ever before

>>6784199
Thanks. I'll look into that when I read it.

>>6784199

How hard is it to fathom that a heterodox empire is more stable than an orthodox one? The only monotheistic ancient empires that truly survived to this day are Persia and Ethiopia, and this is mere survival, not glory. China on the other hand with its Big Three: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, proved much more robust, and has not stopped expanding its territory to this very day.

Indeed religious conflicts spurred most of the dissolutions of Empire. From Arians to Monotheletes, to the 4th crusade that ultimately sounded the death knell of Nova Roma.

>>6784055
Gibbon is a master of literary sources but he is firmly an 18th century historian, and predates modern methods of historiography by a century or more. He has plenty of critical acumen, and source criticism technique definitely predates Ranke (the supposed father of critical historiography, coming in the 19th century), but he just isn't self-conscious about his reconstructions of the past in the way that modern historians are, or think of themselves as being. His book is still moralising and didactic because it's a literary production in the old European style of writing history, and he doesn't have any "scientific" methodology or fixed object (e.g. developments in the State, or a specific set of events that can be circumscribed and studied, like the French Revolution).

tldr He came just before historiography became self-consciously stylised and positivistic, so he's left out of the kool kids klub. It's not that big a deal. Get the annotated version by Bury or the more recent one by Penguin and you're not going to be fed any bullshit, really. Ironically I think you'd be fed more bullshit if you read some of Ranke's own students, since they founded nationalist historiography. Honestly, most of the Rankeans and post-Rankeans are just about as scorned as Gibbon, right up to the '40s in many cases.

>>6783962
Are you German? The only person I've ever had respond positively to Spengler when I mentioned him was an East European who worked heavily in Germany. Every North American historian I've mentioned him to was like "????", I guess because it was a passing curiosity here but provoked much more sustained response from intellectuals in Germany along with his other work.

But yeah Spengler should probably be seen as philosophy of history and not really "history," by modern orthodox standards. It's a great book though. Spengler wasn't a kook, he just doesn't fit into the track of academic historiography.

>>6784199
Gibbon's thesis about Christianity isn't THAT bad. Every Roman history professor I've ever had mentioned it, because it's an interesting idea, not just to ridicule it. It's the basic idea of the elite's culture and mentalities changing, and this affecting their interaction with state/social functions (staffing bureaucracies, financing urban commerce, the slave economy, whatever) etc. Similar ideas are still common as fuck.

>>6784224
Thanks m8.

>>6767677
is good book indeed


Requesting some book on Bactria. I just like the name of the region and the hellenic-indian culture seems really interesting.

Also requesting some good coffeetable books with a lot of pictures/map instead of just text

>>6784214
hmm, I agree that religion is important in history, but I think you give it too much importance. The Persian Empire, in fact, collapsed numerous times throughout history, and the resurrected Persian Empires that followed eachother were probably more different from each other than they were similar. The Persian Empire of Cyrus and Xerxes, for example, was famous for its religious tolerance. The Parthians were tolerant too iirc, but the Sassanians, particularly later Khosros, fought successfully against the Romans despite increasing their persecution of Nestorian Christians in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, but they ultimately lost from economically exhausting themselves against Rome, which paved the way for the Arab conquest.

Don't know about medieval Persia (there were dozens of dynasties), but if we're talking about the Safavids, they imposed shiite orthodoxy over the empire and were militarily successfully, but they collapsed, due to reasons other than religion, to the qajars, who failed to use the shiism as a rallying cry as Shah Abbas, the most successful Safavid, for a strong central Persian state.

The Byzantine Empire had great successes even though attempt at orthodoxy, though I agree that that policy a lot of problems

>>6784224
No I'm American. Spengler is admired in history wing and history threads on /lit/, though, so he's not unheard of around here or by americans on /lit/ for that matter

I actually haven't read Spengler myself though, but I've read about his ideas in a historiography class I took that focused on world history.

I just finished watching the rose of versailles and I feel like reading more about the french revolutions, any book you could recommend?
I'm not much of an history books reader but I really liked asimov's history books, so I'm looking for something like that

>>6784725
The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle

Anyone read anything about the Irish slave trade in America? I've heard that this is a decent book on the subject but if there's anything else I'd love to know.

>>6784729
thanks, I'll check it out

>>6784733
I read reviews that say it has a lot of bullshit sources. I haven't actually read it though.

>>6784733
I think you'd would be interested in Irish history. The English effectively conquered it in the 16th century and turned it into a colony; encouraging English and Scottish settlers to immigrate there by giving grants of lands seized from the natives. Then there's the fact that during the settlement of Jamestown in the early 17th century, Ireland was actually a more popular destination to move to and would continue to serve as a model for north American settlement.

Connolly, S. J. Divided Kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800
>The best single-volume history of early modern and 18th-century Ireland has a chapter dedicated to Ireland in the Atlantic economy. The book also examines in detail the effects of the Cromwellian and Williamite settlements in Ireland. Despite the major changes brought by these attempts to pacify Irish Catholics and to transfer their property to loyal Protestants, Ireland remained a kingdom and not just merely a colony.

check out this oxford bibliography article for the relationship between ireland and the atlantic economy:

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0248.xml?rskey=thnpip&result=8&q=ireland#firstMatch

I already linked a dl, Divided Kingdom, to one of the works here
>>6769212

also try:

Brady, Ciaran and Raymond Gillespie, eds. Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986.
>A significant collection of the best scholarship on Ireland up to 1986, with the Tudor contributions relating to England’s governance and reformation impositions, as well as the Gaelic aspects of the insurrections and the state of Irish towns during the period. Brady’s article “Court, Castle and Country: The Framework of Government in Tudor Ireland,” is especially illuminating.

Canny, Nicholas P. The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565–1576. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976.
>An earlier contribution to the now-weighty field of Elizabeth and Ireland by one of the leading scholars of the subject. Canny describes the changing policies and attitudes toward the Irish, beginning with the appointment of Henry Sidney in 1565, discussing not only the intricacies of financial and other policies but also the increasing polemical barbarization of the Irish that would color English attitudes from then on.

Lennon, Colm. Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest. Dublin: Gil and Macmillan, 2005.
>An important survey of Ireland under the Tudors, with particularly strong chapters on town and country, society and culture in Gaelic Ireland, the fall of the Kildare ascendancy, and the impact of the Reformation. Emphasized in the second part of the book are Ireland’s responses to English centralization, as well as the introduction of plantation schemes.

>>6784733
The Irish weren't White until the 19th century. Not sure if that's the author not acknowledging the social nature of race or if it's just a flashy title.

Can someone recommended me some books on Chinese history? Just a summary, I know absolutely nothing about it.

>>6767283
>>6767289
>>6767301

great series. would recommend.

>>6784984
modern, medieval or ancient china?

>>6785077
Ancient and medieval, I suppose. Better to start from the beginning.

Starting this tonight

>>6785130

Are the cracks in his face symbolic?

>>6785134
Could be. Frankly, I have no idea. Heard this is worth a read, and have been on a history kick recently.

>>6785097
Holcombe, Charles. The Genesis of East Asia, 221 B.C.–907 A.D. Asian Interactions and Comparisons. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
>A pathbreaking study that places the history of imperial China, through the Tang, within the framework of the spread of a Sinocentric East Asian civilization.

Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China: 900–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
>Mote’s massive study provides an accessible political history that is not bound by dynastic divisions. Although it covers only the latter portion of Middle-period history, that section takes four hundred pages. Its focus is on political history and it is especially informative in its treatment of the peoples and states along the borderlands.

Dardess, John W. Ming China, 1368–1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire. Critical Issues in World and International History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
>A concise and insightful synthesis of a lifetime of teaching and research by a leading scholar of the Ming period. Intended for undergraduate courses but useful for specialists too.

Also cambridge histories on the Ming Dynasty can be downloaded here:
http://bookzz.org/s/?q=Ming+China%2C+1368%E2%80%931644&t=0

>>6785134

like poetry..

>>6785142
For Modern China
Jonathan Spence- The Search for Modern China
http://bookzz.org/book/1204546/b66006

>>6785142
ty bb

Best book on the warring states period boys? There's a manga on it that's p.good but i wouldn't mind a book

>>6778555
This is the literal pleb response

>>6785172

Kai su, teknon.

>you will never read all of this

God damnit.

>>6785172
Actually it's the typical /lit/ response: bunch of lit and philosophy undergrads with little to no knowledge of history, who will 'rank' past civilizations based on the generalised school-boy notions they have of them (ie Greeks are all ultra-rational scientific and philosophy geniuses who loved peace and harmony, 'invented' all aspects of their culture out of thin air and gifted them to inferior later civilizations etc).
Just like this guy does >>6778555

>>6785226
it can be annoying sometimes but cut them some slack man, people are just interested in things in their own way. with absolutely any interest or field of knowlege, you are going to find people at every possible level of competence, and people at higher levels are always scarce in proportion to their height.

the guys you're replying to aren't trying to be pretentious or anything, they're just having fun.

How do you guys read dense history books? Do you take notes? Highlight and underline passages? How much of a 1000 page history of Ireland would you remember?

I'm thinkin back to all the history clases I took in college and how fragmentary my knowledge of history still seems.

>>6785350

When I was younger I would read books in a single sitting, furiously, like watching a movie on fast forward in my mind's eye.

These days if I read something interesting, I pause for a while, contemplating it. I think, what would I have done differently, what if something else had happened. The profound things in history are not always what did happen, but what did not happen.

The better one understands something, the easier it is to remember. There are more dendritic connections to anchor the statement with meaning. Making these connections in your brain is far more important to memory than scratchings on something external. Why take notes when the words are already written and in front of you? This isn't a lecture kiddo.

I absolutely never take notes. Although I do enjoy reading books annotated by a previous student. I feel I get a different take on things without distracting myself through pointless exercise.

I also read books I like several times. Thucydides several times, Barbara Tuchman's Crusades, books on WWII etc. Each time I notice different things, and I'm always searching for new stuff.


The most important thing to consider, is if you forget something, it was probably unimportant. Read a different book on a similar subject. No two historians have the same take on things. I've forgotten many things I have read, in part because I've found them contradicted by other books. So often the individual factoid can be disregarded unless verified in multiplicity.

I would like to volunteer the American Civil War Battles 3-book Narrative by Shelby Foote. I felt it is an excellent non-partisan book. Furthermore, the author writes with so much detail that I felt I could accurately paint a battle scene with what he described. I would also note that it played a role in Ken Burns addition of Shelby Foote's commentary in Ken Burn's The Civil War Documentary. I strongly recommend the books.

>>6785130
I have Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts, same book?

>>6767700
I believe "Quiet flows the Don" is set before and during that era. It's on my shelf waiting to be read, so i can't tell you if its good.

>>6771177
Down WIth Big Brother and One Minute to Midnight, both by Michael Dobbs, are both really good. Down With Big Brother especially.

>>6767700
red cavalry by isaac babel

What books would you recommend for ancient Egypt?

>>6767283

oh boy

>need high level history elective
>sign up for "akhenaten to cleopatra"
>this book is one of the two required texts
>enjoying it as I read it the first week

>professor posts rubric for weekly presentations
>we have to dedicate atleast two slides to roasting shaw for his eurocentrism
>think what the fug

>class is actually a dual course in history and "african american studies"
>we spend most of the time talking about white actors playing egyptian roles, teacher has an especially huge hate boner for vivian leigh as cleopatra
>every pharoah was black and the greeks stole everything from the egyptians
>talk about nubian shits who emigrated to America

>mfw

still finished the course and got an A but jesus i was rused by that course description

Reading Science: A History by John Gribbin at the moment, amazing stuf. Tempted to have a go of pic related after finishing this, is it any good?

>>6787099
sounds terrible

>>6767258
The Red Flag as a cover all for communism or Mao: The Unknown Story.

I also read Forgotten Ally a while ago which covers both the Nationalists and the Socialists pretty well as they fought their war with Japan. I thought it was pretty good.

>>6789154
>implying Mao: The Unknown Story.isn't complete shit
I'm not even a Maoist

>>6785350
>How do you guys read dense history books?

>Do you take notes?

I read them because I generally enjoy history as a whole.

Take notes? nah, I tend to retain the important or more poignant/bizarre bits and pieces.

>>6789167
Is it?

I haven't read it myself, but it seemed like a decent doorstopper and I even had it ear marked for future reading when I get interested in Chinese stuff again. (I'm a little tuckered out by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms garbage.

What's so bad about Mao: The Untold Story?

>>6769144
>Still read and qualifiedly cited, it is the prolific Mommsen's most well-known work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Rome_%28Mommsen%29


>ctrl+f hobsbawm
wtf

>>6789193
Read 'Was Mao Really A Monster: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's "Mao: The Unknown Story" '

The problem with The Untold Story, to give a few points are: half the sources they do give can't be traced by academics to see if their correct, the ones that are traceable have been deliberately misrepresented (ex: they use a source stating that Mao used up the money for himself that was for the party when the source says nothing of the sort), or they just use bad sources in general (ex: major battle didn't happen because an old lady who claims she was there said it didn't), they say things that are just blatantly wrong (ex: Mao never learned the national language and only spoke his dialectic; if he had done that noone would have understood him beyond his hometown), most of the 'untold' revelations have been known for years and the rest tend to be just wrong or badly sourced enough to not be credible, they portray Mao as a completely horrendous unredeemable monster that did everything wrong in every which way throughout each page and the people around him as his dastardly or stupid cronies. I can on and on. The book is propaganda to discredit Mao and shouldn't be considered as an academic source.

>>6769286
highly recommend dubois

also, I am working on my phd in 18th century european history (focus on enlightenment perspectives on colonialism). If anyone wants book recommendations for early modern europe/atlantic world feel free to ask.

Any recommendations for an overview of western civilization? I obviously realize that this is a pretty broad topic. I dont expect anything comprehehnsive, but I have some anxieties about getting into a more narrow topic without broader context.

>multiple plens ITT recommending tom holland

>>6770687
It's excellent, probably the book to read for the calamitist theory of the fall of Rome

>>6789445
William Mcneill- the Rise of the West
http://bookzz.org/book/1280786/32cc62
>860 pp

Robert B. Marks- The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century
http://bookzz.org/book/2385146/1e7064
>240 pp

>>6767190
American History X

>>6789657
>pp

>>6789775

>>6789500
I'm a layman. could you please tell me or link an article explain what is wrong with Tom Holland?

Looking for recs about the first Red Scare? Also looking for something about the labor movement in the US.

To be honest I'm just getting into the topic as I neglected it far too much in school. That being said:

>Sun-tzu's Art of War as translated and introduced by Ralph D. Sawyer

I liked this enough to outline it in its entirety. Before you say it isn't history, let me just demonstrate how contextually based (and fucking based) it is by pointing out that Sawyer had more to say about its impact and influences than Sun-tzu did in all of his known writings, however little he did have to say. It's a very detailed but fast-moving read, he segments his analysis into short articles to keep everything punchy.

>The Borgias: The Hidden History

Just starting this. Kinda pulpy, to be honest, but I'm fascinated enough by the history surrounding the Borjas that it weathers entertainably.

>>6789657
Cheers

>>6785154
See
>>6790077

Sawyer breaks down the major periods and their conflicts in relation to the military ideological corpus that the Art of War features in. He's thorough but readable.