You guys wanna rec your favorite history books? Post what you enjoyed reading.
I'm a big fan of Sarah Wise's trilogy on Victorian England (The Italian Boy, The Blackest Streets, Inconvenient People), she does a great job of telling the story in an interesting way without getting too whimsical or interpretative in her narrative. I'm also a big fan of the 19th century so that obviously helps in keeping an interest.
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I'm oddly fixated on the German Pacific colonies and the German East Asia Squadron. Or WW1 in general.
English in the West Indies (aka Bow of Ulysses)
>tfw you will never see the Caribbean producing at its full potential, supplying the world with delicious foods
>tfw the plantations lie derelict and the native population lives in poverty and crime
this sounds like a really cool book actually
Are Durant doorstoppers worth the time? I heard its a very opiniated history
looks interesting, any links?
>back when historians wrote daring syntheses
is this not available as an ebook anywhere? I'm retarded and can't read regular books.
There is a pdf on my user. A physical copy should only cost a few cents though.
the physical copy was like 20 pounds on amazon.co.uk
When you say there's a pdf "on my user" do you mean that one merchandise store that popped up when I googled "my user"? cause that didn't seem like it had it, or any kind of literature. Just Le Veeky Forums Man masks and other retarded /b/ shit.
any recommendations on ancient mesopotamia (pre achaemenid preferably)
I mean myanon. The tracker.
Oh.
Schiller's History of the Thirty Years War
Well here you go: sendspace.com
Thanks for the spoonfeeding my man, really appreciate it.
You don't happen to own a Bibliotik invite eh? I don't live in the UK or US and therefor apparently have no way of joining because of >muh overdrive library.
Sorry, I don't have access to any kind of private trackers for anything. I had a What.cd once but I was too stupid to figure out how to get my seed ratio up and got banned.
Not that I know of
Have an Emden
Anyone have any recommended books on the Phoenicians (NOT CARTHAGE) focusing on their culture/ religion/ mythology?
I enjoyed and recommend Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, but I would take it with a grain of salt as not everything might be accurate and might be based on rumours/ gossip of the time.
My favourite is probably The Sleepwalkers about the causes of WW1.
I also liked Civilization by Niall Ferguson. A brief history of western civilization. One of the topics that i'm most interested in is the decline of the west and Ferguson writes quite well about it.
Bump
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Burckhardt.
Long, long out of print.
Ernest Cox bought the rights to salvage the scuttled German Fleet in Scapa Flow, despite the fact he had no experience in the field (and no-one had ever raised and scrapped ships of this size).
Remarkable forgotten story of a man with a vision.
If you haven't read Jan Morris' Trilogy about the British Empire, I can't recommend it strongly enough.
Last one from me.
The Frontier Scouts, by Chenevix-Trench.
One of the best books I have ever read (and re-read). Tiny British Army units on the north-west frontier of India, and how they used the local tribes (fanatical Muslims all) to police their own lands for the Empire. One of history's greatest confidence tricks--and yet, the young officers sent out to this end of the world place grew to love it, and the Pathans that they led (and were sometimes murdered by).
...
>The Frontier Scouts, by Chenevix-Trench.
I'll check this out buddy thanks
I really liked this one
I'm a newbie, curious if 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire's and Carlyle's 'The French Revolution' are good reads and if they're considered accurate? Tks
I've heard many people say the decline and fall of the roman empire is one of those must-read classics.
>I enjoyed and recommend Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, but I would take it with a grain of salt as not everything might be accurate and might be based on rumours/ gossip of the time.
Literally tabloid tier written sometimes a hundred years after the person he is writing about lived. It inaccurate as fuck.
>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
It's a classic and some people consider it the first real work in the field of historical science (by modern standards). Having said this it's considers overhauled since a long time. You could continue reading other "classics" on Roman history like Symes* Roman Revolution or Theodor Mommsen (his lecture on August are great and reconsidered right now but I am not sure they are available in English).
Bit of a tangent, I know, but how reliable is Procopius' Anecdota?
>Procopius' Anecdota?
>666
>Another said he stood beside the Emperor as he sat, and of a sudden the face changed into a shapeless mass of flesh, with neither eyebrows nor eyes in their proper places, nor any other distinguishing feature; and after a time the natural appearance of his countenance returned. I write these instances not as one who saw them myself, but heard them from men who were positive they had seen these strange occurrences at the time.
confirmed.
The point is not to say ancient historian x or y is wrong but what we can do with his writings. What does it say about his estimated audience? What is considered good behavior? What is considered immoral behavior? etc.
>plebs who shill outdated books because of ebin racism or "muh modern historial elite"
>going to the source.
That's pretty smart of you, but Procopius seems to have a hate boner against the Emperor
>racism
>muh modern historial elite
If you think Elias is outdated you prove you haven't touched the theoretical debate about modernization going on right now. But judging from your comment I will just assume that you simply never read Elias and just googled the title of the book.
Disclaimer: I strongly disagree with Elias' thesis.
>Procopius seems to have a hate boner against the Emperor
>muh objectivity
High School confirmed
>That's pretty smart of you, but Procopius seems to have a hate boner against the Emperor
It's more like he seems to hate women in power. He tells this long story about Belisarius being a cuck just to make his wife look worse.
>Procopius
Read: jstor.org
I like that it's able to be a fairly balanced look at the actors/causes of the war without going into full on "GERMANY DINDU NUFFIN" territory, even though Clark's obviously a Germanophile. Both that and Iron Kingdom are great books though. What helps is that they're pretty well written: very thorough but easy to read and follow.
I'd also like to know this.
I didn't say it was accurate, I said I enjoyed it. I like reading stuff from the worldview of an ancient person.
Meh. I enjoy a well-written and researched account of historic events on a tactical level, and don't need a lot of polemics to make me feel like I'm edgy.
But have fun staying woke.
Bump
> I would take it with a grain of salt as not everything might be accurate and might be based on rumours/ gossip of the time.
Well okay then. I just thought this was a HUGE understatement. You just gotta take into account that one of the main reasons we have these sources is because horny medieval monks copied it instead of better stuff that didn't include sex and crime.
Just finished the Ghosts of Canae. It was a really well written synopsis of the second Punic war and the events surrounding it. Pretty easy to read, provided you already have a basic understanding of the people and country around it. also the author explains in detail why war elephants were such a bad idea which is refreshing