What are some must read history books?

What are some must read history books?

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pic related really helps you understand how ancient people thought. I read the whole thing twice now.

Which group fascinated you?

The cover and title makes it look like conspiracy garbage, is it?

Bumping for interest

Response to this? I want to know

Germany's Aims in the First World War, also translated as Grab for World Power by Fritz Fischer

i Googled it and yes it is daft conspiracy garbage

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wtf I love killing now

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Let's get the meme out of the way.

Can confirm. Got it as a gift.

Daily reminder that atheism and Muhammadanism are the only 2 religions that held science back.

Edward Gibbon? At least he's a good storyteller.

herodotus histories

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>how the Old Testament got more interesting

What is this one about? I had to read 1492 for my college world history class, and the parts we had to read only focused on the Columbian Exchange. There was an entire chapter dedicated to the potato.

All memes aside, why does everyone hate this book?

First off, witnessed.

Second, it's disliked because historians consider that Diamond removes too much human agency from human history. Diamond's core thesis is more or less correct to an extent, but he takes it too far. It also doesn't help that he's nowhere near the first guy to think up geographic determinism, and all the others that preceded him wrote about it better i.e.

To put it simply, the book using more recent findings about Native Americans to re-contextualize their various civilizations and cultures in opposition to the older narrative that most are familiar with.

Classical Civilizations: Rome by Russel Geer. I picked it up at a book sale (was written in the 1950s) and its a better rundown on Roman history than any post-60s leftist revisionist garbage I've ever seen.

Anything by Victor David Hansen.

>Anything by Victor Davis Hansen pre 1988
FTFY

Wait a sec. Compare the older narrative to the new narrative real quick?

The older narrative is that native americans were mostly disconnected nomads with low populations that lived simple lives off the land. The new narrative is that they had a much larger impact on the earth they inhabited (think farming and earthworks), had much higher populations, and were much more connected through trade than initially thought. The prevalence of the older narrative is seen as a result of European explorers only witnessing and recording the natives at their absolute worst due to their former positions having been heavily compromised by wide spreading disease well before most colonization began in earnest.

This one and the author's Thirty Years War book as well.

>Reading landmark
Commit suicide

what wrong with having maps, annotations and photographs to aid the content of the book?

Yeah his book about the 30 years war, Europe's Tragedy is very good.

That's all fine it's the garbage translation

Absolutely required.

anyone who lacks formal training in history should start with Penguin History of the World.

amazon.com/Penguin-History-World-Sixth/dp/1846144434

It's really hard to think seriously about history without some outline of the development of human civilization.

Arrian of Nicomedia's "Anabasis of Alexander"

(otherwise known as The Conquests of Alexander the Great)

The Gallic Wars
By Julius Caesar

Literally everyone who is anybody reads this book.

Is it readable? I just find many of the classics to be a bore

Bump

Have you tried an audiobook?

literally kys

my first.

What does Veeky Forums think of Tom Holland? Need a new book, lots of good looking stuff here.
I liked this one lost my copy though. Read a pretty good novel called The Wake about the Norman invasion, forget the author's name.

I think The War That Ended Peace is really good. It's all about the events and details that lead up to and caused World War One, not leaving it as just an archduke getting shot.

He doesn't source his info and puts too much emphasis on geographical determinism. Of course it plays a large role in human development..but he downplays other factors such as political and economic systems. They all have an impact of how civilizations come to evolve.

Sup Veeky Forums, I'm a nerd that's been into RPGs and whatnot for a while, particularly medieval fantasy, but lately I'm finding myself wanting to develop a better general knowledge of military history (all of a sudden I've started finding historical wargames appealing even though I've never really been into wargaming).

Is there any kind of book you can recommend that goes through the last few thousand years and gives you a sort of 'history of the world in X conflicts' or something like that?

havent read it, but couldnt you just say that political and economic systems also stemmed from the environments people were in?

I'm personally fond of The Crusades Through Muslim Eyes.

It's like reading a fantasy novel where orcs are invading the frontier but none of the lords can manage to stop stabbing each other in the back for the 5 goddamn minutes they need to start dealing with the problem

No, he's a hack shit writer

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Anyone else read this? Pretty good read, and Deutscher does a great job explaining everything.

You COULD say that, but it would be a hypothesis at best if you couldn't provide clear evidence that the institutions of a people are a direct result of the environment they live in, for every environment. It's a line of thinking with so many variables that you couldn't reasonably prove it, or even say that it's a better line of thinking than any alternatives.

I quite like my first-year college history textbook, Patterns of World History. Authors are Stow, von Sivers, and some other name I don't remember. My first-year history professor was even a student to one of the authors. It's the most dense a textbook discussing the entire history of human civilization could be.

What are the best primary sources?

You should check out Kelly DeVries The Norwegian Invasion of 1066. Pretty dope book. Has a different perspective than most on that year.

Shit book with shit thesis used only as political narrative in the Post-War era. Fischer is a fucking hack.

WITNESSED

With that out of the way, it doesn't hold up to historical criticism. I've gone through this every single time this book is posted so I'll keep it short:

>China had dissident movements and a desire for reform unlike he claims
>Africa had large domesticable animals such as cattle
>the realities of Native Americans differ wildly from his viewpoint which is predicated mostly on mythologization
He's first and foremost an ornithologist who stepped into geography (perhaps wrongly) and tried to reconcile those two into a historical framework and fucked up to the point where few, if anyone, have written a positive academic book review about GGS.

can someone recommend a comprehensive book on American history? also are there other books about Rome like

>can someone recommend a comprehensive book on American history
Patriot's History and A People's History. Read both, not one or the other. They're pretty much the two main historiographies with wildly different views (Patriot's is conservative, People's is economic determinist/liberal revisionist).

thanks lots

Пoжaлyйcтa, финляндия

Think it's safe to argue that Shelby Foote was and is the definitive expert on the Civil War. Plus his voice was auditory candy.

>The Crusades Through Muslim Eyes
I see some audio series on youtube. Is that the same thing?

Stephen Runciman's History of the Crusades.
Barbara Tuchman" Guns of August.
Both works are sound history and wonderfully readable.

In order to save money, I suppose, they used the Crawley translation, which is so old it's now in the public domain. The editor modernized some of the vocabulary, but if you just want to read Thucydides--and you should--get a newer translation.

came by to say Ring of Steel by Alexnder Watson, best WW1 book of all time

>ornithologist
What?

He's a biologist who studies birds. You know, an ornithologist.

30yw was mostly just Germany's tragedy

France had a fucking blast with it

>Nobody mentions The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire by Gibbon

Weak Veeky Forums.

True
fuck off

My favorite, beautifully written and a must for anyone interested in medieval history.

Patterns in Comparative Religion (Eliade)
The Golden Bough (Frazer)

>gibbon
typical memeing faggot

whats the best translation?

which is better for it oxford or penguin same question for the civil war

What does anyone think of Churchill's book about English history?

Bump

Along similar lines, I'm really enjoying Watson's Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud

Can someone help me out here. I am an American trying to get more info on WW1 Battles, particularly The Somme/Verdun. I want to know about overall strategy, details of the battle, the lead up, how horrific it was etc. Are there any books that do a good job of this?

I am looking at Amazon right now and see "The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916" by Alistair Horne and " The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front' by Peter Hart. Are these good starting points?

The Bible.

Which translation?

Which ever one you want they all say the same thing for the most part, I just recommended it as a context read.

bump

the main history book of the west would be herodotus' histories while that of the east would be qian sima's records of the grand historian

You will need to read many, many books. There is no one to really Kickstart you unless you want to go into a big box book store that is barely surviving and go over to the dinkyass military section.

Look over the books being talked about here.

No way. It's interesting but in no way a mind blower. It's basically all:
>I went here
>moved some legions around
>bribed a couple gauls
>massacred cities

Feudal Society by Marc Bloch

pretty much anything by Marc Bloch, to be quite honest with you famalamaram

Can confirm, fascinating book

I'm wondering this too.

All I know is John Green tried to push his agenda once againg by making some dyke do a vídeo arguing against this book, created a huge shitstorm because the agenda-pushing was too obvious and had to take two videos down from YouTube and apologize via tweeter.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=UvaRcDvGPck
>John Green tweeted that they will be removing parts 1 and 2 of this series from the Crash Course channel due to errors:
>archive.is/rEIVA

What mindset should one have when reading history texts? I feel I'm not getting the most out of the stuff I'm reading. I appreciate and comprehend the information but it still doesn't go down right.

Bump

bumping this one

I like Rex Warner's in the Penguin paperback (ISBN 978-0140440393). Marvin Hammond's is also pretty good (ISBN 978-0192821911).

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Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion

Her Privates We is a great WWI novel. It really hilights soldiers' everyday actions, routines, and social encounters. The characters' names have been changed from who they represent and the author has embellished it a tad but it's still an account of events that actually occurred for the most part.

Highlights*
Fug

>but it still doesn't go down right
What do you mean? Honestly, it's best to read the intro and the conclusion first, maybe skim the whole thing if you feel like it, then read the whole thing through.