/hbg/-History Books General

Hew Strachan's "The First World War"

Currently reading the book "Rubicon"

Just finished reading this. Great book and highly recommended.

Currently almost done with "The Coming of the Third Reich" by Richard Evans. It's an excellent history of Weimar Germany and the Nazis' formation and rise to power.

If you want a really good "taste" of WW1 reality and not an overall history of the conflict, try "They Called it Passchendaele." It's a great snapshot of how fucked up the Western Front was.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a book about the Greek titans? I want to read about how the Greeks thought about and interacted with the Titans, but haven't found any books about them.

Reading Marc Van de Mieroop's "A History of the Ancient Near East" at the moment. Pretty bare-bones, but I'm enjoying it.

Blackwell drops are great.

Alaster Hamilton: The appeal of fascism - A study of intellectuals and Fascism

Jean - Paul Bled: Bismarck

Boris Sokolov: Baron Ungern - Black Horsemen

Currently finishing The Great Game; next up is either White Eagle Red Star or Lenin's Tomb

It's all bullshit though.

>It's an excellent history of Weimar Germany and the Nazis' formation and rise to power
If you like it, you should read Hitlerland by Nagorski. It's about the early NSDAP years.

When Veeky Forums first formed there was a google docs of a bunch of Veeky Forums books, whatever happened to that? It was really going for a while iirc

It was just Harvard and few other schools recommended bibliographies. Nothing major and completely derivative shit that you can find yourself.

t. That one autist that thinks we shouldn't have a recommended reading list.

Here are my ww1 books, am ready to take further pics and questions

Other Veeky Forums literature I have. Too much to detail everything, but will provide info I anyone asks.
Personal favourites are the Little ice age by Fagan and the Practice of diplomacy by Keith Hamilton. Really good entry level books on both subjects.

What I have about the US.
You don't realize what autists the founding fathers were until you read the federalist papers.

You're Slovenian and French? Some of it is good, yet too much pop history to my taste.

Forgot pic

Let's say I was raised in a Francophone environment.
Yeah there's a lot of pop history, but I like to get some fun reading sometimes. I think the biggest surprise I had is the "WW1 for dummies" book. It's written very well and is a good starting stone for France in ww1 with loads of references to serious works. It's only downfall is that it concentrates almost exclusively on France.

Some of my father's stuff

Fun game: guess grandpa's allegiance during ww2

...

May i borrow the diolimacy book? I will pay shipping.

I'm reading sexual personae by Camille Paglia, and listening to an audio book version of Thomas Sowell' s basic economics.

It was often used in college courses through the 90's, I'm sure your local library must have it.

Does anyone have any good recommendations on the scramble for Africa and any also on the effects after they left, with the new Chinese and Indian expansion into Africa?

Asked earlier about books on Africa pre-colonization but all I got was we wuz kings and pol, so if there's any good books on that that'd be well appreciated.

Don't know any specific books on that, but A History of Africa by J.D. Fage has a good overview of the colonization of Africa.

Any entry-level early modern/pre-WW1 stuff, like Napoleonic or Succession stuff? Not very versed with that era.

Pakenham, T. 'The Scramble for Africa' (1992)

booklist on napoleon
pastebin.com/rqnADNEp
what do you mean by succession stuff?

this list has books on greco-roman magic. if you ctrl f gods you'll find books on ancient prayers on worship but i can't guarantee that you'll find within them anything about praying to titans or studying their relationship to them.
pastebin.com/fLXNVTp3

I think Veeky Forums could synthesize all those recommended bibs. the goal is to create a resource that centralizes all resources or links to make it as easy as possible for people here to pursue their interests and, hopefully, raise the level of discussion on this board. even if it doesn't fulfill this ambition, the fact that we would have created such a resource will be good for board morale. I enjoy the Veeky Forums wiki and browse it and I appreciate the anons who put effort into making it. I'd like to have such an institution on this board

>I think Veeky Forums could synthesize all those recommended bibs
It can't. Veeky Forums's inherent bias makes it entirely incapable of any sort of reasonable recommended reading list. People unironically recommend Diamond and Zinn on this board. The best we can do is teach people proper research methods for sources which I've continually recommended for the sticky but it's never happened. A recommended reading list for this board is as laughable as a recommended news source list for /pol/.

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Stuff like War of Austrian Succession, Spanish Succession, etc.

yes, teaching research methods is good. but think at the very least we can link resources in the sticky. as for the people who recommend pophistory, plebs are gonna pleb. Veeky Forums also has its plebs but the people who dedicated time to making their wiki were not. anyway, if we take uni lists (barring the most tendentious and polemical works) as the standard a lot of shit would be filtered out. i wouldn't even be against a part of a wiki or google doc being dedicated to pop history or particular ideological takes to history (marxist, conservative or christian perspectives)

I'm going to say no again, because Veeky Forums is going to filter it down to select works that are shit and departmental bibliographies have their own biases inherent to them. We're better off with recommendation threads and a sticky regarding philosophy and methods.

McKay, Derek, and H. M. Scott. The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–1815. London: Longman, 1983.
>Based on a wide range of up-to-date (as of 1983) studies, this book situates early modern state building in the context of an environment of competitive warfare.

Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714. Modern Wars in Perspective. London and New York: Longman, 1999.
>The only modern overview of all of Louis’s wars, with a heavy reliance on French sources. Synthesizes existing accounts by emphasizing the attritional nature of the wars. Chapter 7 covers the Spanish Succession.

Bromley, J. S., ed. The New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 6, The Rise of Great Britain and Russia (1688–1715/25). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
>The articles by specialists in the field cover the main events of the interwar years (1697–1702), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), and the Peace of Utrecht. There are also chapters dealing with perspectives from the main participants (Spain, France, Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Austria), and chapters on international relations, economy and finance, religion, and more. Now also available as an e-book.
bookzz.org/book/637351/578373
bookzz.org/book/700466/3d6d33
bookzz.org/book/2799450/150d59
you don't have to read these cover to cover just browse the articles that interest you cause they're self contained pretty much

These are all pretty good. Thanks!

Fair enough, I respect your opinion. The objective imo, though, is not to create an purely objective resource. Obviously, such a resource is going to reflect the biases of the sources culled, the board, and the personal biases of the creators themselves. But I'm fine with this because it'd still be an expression of our board's interests and spirit. If, however, you're so concerned with bias we could also make historiography a central component of the sticky.

>we could also make historiography a central component of the sticky
Or we could just make it THE sticky like I said here
>and a sticky regarding philosophy and methods

The conversation is moot anyways. We don't have any actual mods and Hiroshimoot doesn't give enough of a fuck to do anything about that which means no sticky.

anyone got a book on the Holy Roman Empire?
specifically about the early era, the formation from the Carolingian realm, Otto etc.
wikipedia articles are so disorderly, I would rather have a sourced book lay it out

>formation from the Carolingian realm
McKitterick, Rosalind. Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
>A broad scholarly and highly respected look at the reign of Charlemagne, which covers also valuable insights into the writing of history and records in the Carolingian world.
bookzz.org/book/820570/c63484

Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
>Discusses the differences between the meanings of benefice and vassal in the Carolingian era and three centuries later. The book overall is a very detailed examination of how historians have thought—and should think—about vassalage.
bookzz.org/book/980249/c8653e
sounds technical but you may like it lol

Bachrach, Bernard S. Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
>A close study of 8th- and 9th-century warfare, indicating that it was carried out in a way closer to Roman models than to late medieval cavalry battles.

Wemple, Suzanne Fonay. Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
>One of the first books to take medieval women’s history seriously. Focused on queens and the early Middle Ages, the book, in spite of its date, still works well to introduce undergraduates to its topic.
if you're into this subject

pastebin.com/QYMYkwq8
bib on charlemagne
section on "The Context of Charlemagne’s Reign" has general works on europe in the early middle ages (probably focusing a lot on frankish realms). new cambridge histories can be found on bookzz too and will have essays dedicated exclusively to the carolingians and the ottonians

Currently reading Life and Death in Shanghai. Trying to take it with as many grains of salt as possible, as the writer is highly descriptive and writes down entire paragraphs that people spoke to her some 30 years before she even wrote the book.

Essentially it's a Chinese Woman who lived an opulent life in China with several servants and a 4 story home in Shanghai while working as a manager for Shell corporation. She had invested wisely and made shit-loads of money held in over-seas banks and this made her a ripe target for the 1966 cultural revolution, where they smashed her home, kidnapped her daughter and beat her to death, and put the author in solitary confinement for six and a half years while trying to force a confession that she was a spy.

It's greatest historical contribution is showing the confusion of the Cultural Movement of 1966 and the collapse of Chairman Mao's grip on the country. Essentially 1965-1978 was a period of pure anarchy in Chinese major metropolitan areas. Multiple 'Red Guard' groups formed by multiple working-class factions openly fought each other and suppressed all politically neutral parties- kidnapping, murdering, and imprisoning middle class and upper class chinese and taking over their homes. Apparently, from what I can gather, it was this period in which the great Purge of Corruption we saw in the People's Party back in 2001-2010 was required, as those members who were found to be massively corrupt during the 21st century probe were young Red Guard members during the Cultural Revolution who used the anarchy to amass huge amounts of money, property, and artifacts that were illegally sold to fund private interests.

Life and Death in Shanghai is a good read, but one must be aware from the point of view it's being written from and the fact it was written nearly twenty years after the events took place.

Unironically this

Don't, it's painful.

Second this. Guns of August is great. If you want a history of the rest of WWI I'd go for A World Undone as a great comprehensive book.

The Fate of Africa covers independence on. Even being quite long, it does get a bit thin in some places because the scope is so huge, but it's a great book. He has one about colonial Africa too that came out more recently.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters is a good, and covers the collapse of the DRC. Apparently King Leopold's Ghost is a great book on colonial Congo but I lost it soon after I started.
-- would also highly suggest The Glory and the Dream for a great work on America from 1932-1972.

The Third Reich in power was really illuminating for me, if not as good of a read. It's a bit more disjointed, because, instead of being as much of a narrative, it goes through how the Third Reich influence each area of life.

Still, most histories cover the rise of the Nazis, then the war, and leave out the 6 years that they lead Germany during peacetime.

It totally blows to shit the idea that the Nazis led a perfect society that was going to benefit most Germans. It also make their loss easier to understand. Despite being so effective early in the war, their economy and governance system had some pretty deep rooted problems, and that probably didn't help them later on.

I also made it like a 3rd through the Third Reich at War but I think I just lost steam at that point. It is like 2,800 pages for all three.

i'm almost done with the second book. I listened to the audio books for that and the coming of the third reich. is there anything bad about the last one, or is just that you got fatigues as you say?

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Almost finished reading "a history of warfare" by Keegan. It's decent and apart from the fallacious anti-klausvitz rambles, pretty interesting in terms of some of his ideas. A lot of the book concerns human and state motivation as well as strategic methods. There isn't much on tactics though.

Btw I almost gave up though when in one of the early chapters Keegan states that the samurai katana was the "best" sword having been folded a thousand times. How can a military historian not only fall for the katana meme but also suggest that there can even be a "best" sword at all? That really got my goat.

Is this any good?

Could anyone suggest me some books about Jihad and Terrorism as well ? I am interested in those topics.

these
terrorism
pastebin.com/fhHXmeCT
political islam
pastebin.com/dkbPxdpz
jihad
pastebin.com/6BhNAUYx

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I just finished this, first history book ive read

Did I do good?

yes

Very good

don't see it on the web, do you have it on mega by any chance?

possibly epub?

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reading this cause im new

does Veeky Forums have any recommendation lists for different periods of time and civilizations?

I'm currently working my way through "Rome and Jerusalem", and it's quite good

Next I'm going to either work through my Landmark herodotus I got for Christmas, or pick up the new Adrian Goldsworthy title that just came out. I can't quite decide.

It's great if a slight bit revisionist (not a bad thing IMO) in that Clark, while not letting Germany and Austria off the hook, doesn't go full on "IT WAS ALL THE FAULT OF THE GERMANIC MONGRELS" like most. It's divided up into three seconds: the first covers mainly Serbia and the situation in Balkans starting from the coup against Alexander Obrenovic in Serbia and the rise of pan-Slavism, establishment of Black Hand and the large irredentist system, the Balkan Wars, etc. The second goes country by country with the major players in the war regarding the domestic situations that influenced their decision making, the third is Ferdinand's assasination and how the fallout of that led to the War with everything else taken into account. The biggest endorsement I can think of is that it caused the Sonderweg historians to throw a shitfit because implying that Germany isn't the root of all evel in the world is highly triggering to them.

I'd also give his other book, Iron Kingdom, a read too.

oh hey!

I thought I'm the only other guy in the universe to have read this

I found it at my library

quality response
thanks

I'm interested in the Middle East in the 20th and 21st century, books about dictators, wars, anything; does anyone have recommendations?

>Currently finishing The Great Game
How did you like it? Have you read any other books about the Great Game?

What are the best books about this absolute madman?

The century of Louis XIV, Voltaire.

np. i also meant the new cambridge medieval history on bookzz btw

this is a bib on libya. the first section on historical overviews has books on libya and they also cover the qadhafi era.
pastebin.com/hK7LFbRq

iranian revolution, if you're interested in the upheaval surrounding it
pastebin.com/B5DX4p9C
maybe you'd be interested in khomeini
Moin, Baqer. Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.
>In addition to being a detailed biography of Ayatollah Khomeini, this book also provides an excellent description of events in the months leading to the overthrow of the monarchy.
bookzz.org/book/2523127/1f8e42

Milani, Abbas. The Shah. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
>This is one of the most through and balanced accounts of the rise and fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It is rich in detail and well researched, with numerous references to primary sources.
libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=E798769F2E5738FF63CE4FB7CB29354E

you can find tons of history books on the twentieth century in here
tunisia
pastebin.com/txSqKPhQ
egypt
pastebin.com/D8jwPCYZ
greater middle east
pastebin.com/MLFXmx1x

section on biographies for books focused solely on the person of louis xiv
pastebin.com/y78Xhu0H

I was looking for a book about governemntall changes without legislation. Specifically the processes that US has went through since 1900.

Rec the new Goldsworthy, its good.

bump i guess

saving from back page

Just starting Decline and Fall of the Roman empire.

What am I in for?
Is it even worth it or should I just move on to more contemporary authors?

>Muh degeneracy
>Muh Christians
>Barbarians dindu nuffin
>Excellent source use

Ishmael

Can anyone recommend good book on crusades specifically on first one.
And does any one have library of alexandria pasta? That thing should be pinned on top page.

pastebin.com/7h8fASgv
there is a section dedicated to books on the first crusade, so check there

thank you

Can anyone give recommendations of books in the classical era?

ancient greece, rome, persia? what in particular

np

I really enjoyed the Great Game. It was like a book of adventure stories, except they were grounded in the reality of great power struggles.

Anyway, I just finished "Eating Soup with a Knife". It's more of a research paper than a history book, but that worked in it's favour. Definitely an interesting look at how an army's structure, mentalitity and culture can win (and lose) wars.

Oh, and can anyone recommend any good biographies of Theodore Roosevelt? I know he's become a bit of a meme president by now, but as an European, I know little about him.

The Theodore Rex Trilogy
Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Those looks pretty neat, thank you.

Anything on Greece, Rome or Alexander you can recommend?
Thx for the rec

Reading pic related right now. It's a good overview of Brandenburg-Prussia, and it goes into depth on issues like religion, education, and society, which a lot of works on Prussia neglect.

By the Spear - Ian Worthington

Great read.

Not the user you're responding to but for Alexander:

By the Spear - Ian Worthington

Great read.

>greece
here's greece hellenistic history bibliography
pastebin.com/JQKwB1GT
another dedicated to historical works on alexander the great
pastebin.com/i92Wjwg2
could also post any section from pic related, or i can post the entire bib though i dont want to spam the thread and ive posted is several times in the past

gr8 read

also got one on greek history archaic to classical age

let me say i've also listened to caesar: life of a colossus and thats very good too.

more bib spam
Roman Empire
pastebin.com/ibgv0LH6
Roman Army
pastebin.com/iiyMSsDP
Roman Cities
pastebin.com/PN4dRtGe
Roman Imperialism
pastebin.com/6AWmurU7
The Severans
pastebin.com/iEbEHcsU