Recommend books on history

Recommend books on history.
>inb4 start with the greeks

Seconded, was a fascinating read

I recc pic related; the politics make it quite the potboiler, it's got wonderful prose, and it's sprinkled with fascinating contextual asides.

"Is there anyone on earth who is so narrow-minded or uninquisitive that he could fail to want to know how and thanks to what kind of political system almost the entire known world was conquered and brought under a single empire in less than fifty-three years?"
--Polybius, Histories


r/ing more classical history
>in;b4 Mary Beard

whoops

FREEDUMBS

bump

This is a great all-in-one account of a topic that usually doesn't lend itself well to a single book.

I remember getting a bollocking from my professor in 1st year history for relying on it too heavily in an essay.

Churchill's Marlborough and The Black Jacobins by James are my two favorite. Shelby Foote's Civil War is great too.

There is nothing wrong with Mary Beard, she just tried to use her academic acclaim (if you watch a lot of open lectures she is cited all the time by chairs of history departments) to popularize social history, and of course identity obsessed assholes on both sides had a field day. My favorite classical work of history is Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander, of which a brand new landmark just came out.

Also Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Gospels is a fantastic primer on first century christianity, and The Venture of Islam is a fantastic history of the early muslim world.

Oh, and A Distant Mirror, Plagues and Peoples by McNeil, and CV Wedgwood's 30 Years War are great. Also really fun is Tuchman's Distant Mirror and Keegan's Face of Battle.

Thanks senpai

Mary Beard's main mistake as far as I can tell is being charitable to a teaching of history that considers Roman Britain to have been multicultural. She likely saw the inclusion of black people in that cartoon documentary as having a little too much artistic license, but she probably didn't consider it such a grave offence that she needed to chastise them for it.

SPQR is unironically a great survey of the Roman Empire.

That documentary was trash, and I hate this argument, but for the sake of discussion I have no doubt that in the Roman military they were importing north african (read carthaginian berber and numidian horse, NOT subsaharan blacks) and especially illyrian troops into britain. But what she didnt mention is that they were all pulled out by honorious and during the crisis of the third century. Not to say there arent outliers, but her statement is generally half true.

That said, her social history is both good and necessary.

also i have been listening to the podcast "archaeological fantasies", and you wouldnt believe what producers with a motive, be it white settlement pre-vikings in the americas or fairies or multicultural britain, or solutrean hypothesis will pull to make historians say something that can be edited into consent.

user I agree with that, and my post was an observation mixed with what I believe her impulse to not chastise it was.
If she were in a position to be a bit more casual about things, I would wager she would have been a bit more upfront with how odd the inclusion was.

Not only that but I would love to read a cited article regarding her position on the cultural makeup of first and second gen immigrants to britain during britain between claudius and constantine II

People like her need to tread very carefully on matters of ethnic composition these days, because it really has become impossible to not stir controversy and then to be subjected to a channel 4 "so what you're saying is" type of interview.

I found this one pretty enlightening, and covers a topic that routinely gets brushed over in schools. Schools basically say about the whole "indenture servitude" thing, "Oh well, these people were servants, which is way different than slaves, and they volunteered and they were treated very well and they were white anyway so they had so much privilege in the first place, and uh, end of story, everything was good."

The book goes over the real history, most were forced into slavery, 90% would be worked to death, oh and the whole slavery is a unique thing to africans thing too...

>SPQR is unironically a great survey of the Roman Empire.

I dunno, I consider that the worst book I've ever read on Rome. It's rambling, pointless, and focuses on some very minor incidents in rome. Most biographies of roman individuals do a much better job of painting a picture of what rome was like at the time period.

Not him, but

>biographies of roman individuals

Is what she is trying to get away from. The history of the elites is always different than the history of the worker, the common man, and even the domestic sphere of great houses. Yes the history of someone like Metellus Macedonicus tells us tons about the political sphere, but very little about the situation in which his sons died.

...

I was making the point that books written about roman individuals, not about rome as a whole, still generally do a better job of describing what rome was like even though that wasn't even their goal.

That's how shitty her book is. I don't really see how she desribed the life of the average person in rome either. whenever it came to that she'd just say, "Well we don't really know, but we found half of a roman condom wrapped in shit so we know they were all buttfuckers" or ramble on for pages of speculation.

That is a real historical fact though. If they found a feces smeared buttplug it would be article worthy in journals

would anybody be interested in some books on Soviet Avant garde art history?

>Is what she is trying to get away from. The history of the elites is always different than the history of the worker, the common man, and even the domestic sphere of great houses. Yes the history of someone like Metellus Macedonicus tells us tons about the political sphere, but very little about the situation in which his sons died.
>social history is the only "real" history
>the social is the real
kill yourself

Can anyone recommend a good book on general world history? I feel like I only know bits and pieces on some time periods and civilizations. Would like a general overview on mankind's time on this planet

I dunno. Maybe Guns, Germs, and Steel.

I really dislike the book, but a lot of people seem to like it.

This book is pretty good for the obvious Patrician part of the world. Some prehistory is included.

not this please

Shit

second this, although I'm not always a Davies fan. All the tankie apologist fags on this board will probably hate it though.

Jews gave him plenty of flack as well for daring to, as he called it, "juxtapose" the actions of the Germans during the Nazi regime with Jewish post-war cooperation with communist atrocities.

Sounds similar to "The Redneck Manifesto" by Jim Goad. I'll have to check it out.

i'm also looking for this. i feel like my knowledge has gaping holes in it but every time i try to read a big general summary of anything it puts me to sleep in a way that history books on specific topics never do. i tried doing the world history course on khan academy but it turns out that it's some middle school shit so that even on the topics that i thought i knew nothing about i actually know more than the course is trying to teach me.

It seems pretty interesting, what didn't you like about it?

This one seems really good, will definitively have a go at it

Guns Germs and Memes is an interesting idea that someone had to write a book about (geographic determinism or whatever you want to call it), the issue is that the author plain doesn't know what he's talking about so it includes a lot of bullshit

Overview US history:
OP is good
so is: Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy
and really anything in that Oxford History of the United states.

The most interesting area of historical study, and one that's always at the forefront methodologically, is the study of the French Revolution. Some terrific books include:
The Day the King took Flight - Timothy Tackett
The Return of Martin Guerre - Natalie Davis
The Great Cat Massacre - Robert Darnton
The Republic of Letters - Dena Goodman
Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution - Lynn Hunt

Those are a few titles by a few authors who are huge in the field. You can find similar titles on U.S., Chinese, Latin American, etc history, but none are nearly so well written.

>history book
>written by an anglo

I'm fine with kind of at least considering the authors point, but it seems like a really resentful an jealous book. It's basic point seems to be, "What's so fucking special about europe that made them so succesful? I bet nothing, bet they just got lucky with a bunch of factors. Fucking stupid Europe, think they're so damn coo. Goddamn I hate those fags. you know there's a lot of better cultures, like these idiots here walking around with spears and sticks attached to their dicks, these are some bright fucking people. Like....no they haven't really achieved anything, but Europe didn't either and that's just 'cause they got lucky! Fuck them! Goddamn i'm tired of Europe's shit."

>writes post in English

Well it's not like you know any language besides that one friendo

Try me, asswipe

Same author, I picked this up during the last Verso sale (when are they not having a sale these days) and it's very good. If you're at all interested in that sort of thing.

itt: long awaited brawl between johnny p dumfuk v. jimmy "dumb as a rock" nitwit

The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn
Good survery of medieval European heresies and hyaterias which usually wound up in massacring whatever jews were in the vicinity, though every now and then they attacked the nobility or some bishop and wound up getting slaughtered

>From Dawn to Decadence
>The World of Odysseus
>1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
>War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
>The Collapse of Complex Societies
>Warrior Kings of Sweden: The Rise of an Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
>The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
>Rubicon
>Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933
>Europe in the High Middle Ages
>Good Behavior: Being a Study of Certain Types of Civility
>The Invention of Science: The Scientific Revolution from 1500 to 1750
>Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present
>The Landmark Series
>Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
>The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
>After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
>To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
>The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000
>The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
>Vanished Kingdoms
>Iron Kingdom
>Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
>Ancient Scandinavia: An Archaeological History from the First Humans to the Vikings
>The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
>Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe
>Broadsides: The Age of Fighting Sail, 1775-1815
>The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
>A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

I think that's enough.
Anyone familiar with nonfiction, especially history, will find each book recommends a hundred.

:(

Post them
I have a large backlog but it sounds like an interesting topic I know nothing about