More like this?

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It's roman history from it's dubious origins to 212 when everyone in the Roman Empire was granted citizenship. It's very well written

now that youve read that, youre ready for something more indepth
I recommend The Roman Revolution by Syme if you're interested in the transition from Republic to Empire

>The Roman Revolution by Syme
Reviews seem great for this.

Can you tell us a little more about it...quality of writing, research, etc?

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For well-written history, try Simon Schama (eg the History of Britain series) or Jonathan Spence's books on Chinese history.

>Written by a womeme

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made me cry.

also
Schama's Citizens is great. Napoleon The Great is good too. The Black Jacobins by James is unbelievable.

That argument only works with fiction

>Peter H Wilson
His "Europe's Tragedy: The 30 Years War" is excellent. CV Wedgwood's take is also great.

I just got this

Michener, Irving Stone

Isaiah Berlin- Three Critics of the Enlightenment, The Roots of Romanticism, etc. Where history meets philosophy- clear, well-written, informative and remarkably entertaining. Great place to start if your interests include Herder, Vico, DeMaistre.

Any books similar to this about the history of WE

I read this book recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. Never read this sort of history book and I'm hungry for more. Considering ready more of her work.

I've been recommended 'The Ghosts of Cannae' to learn more about the stuff surrounding the battle. Apparently 'Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic' is good for learning about the fall of the Republic.

I've recently been interested in reading about Alexander the Great and have heard the book by Philip Freeman is good. Anyone know if that's any good or has other recommendations?

Tom Holland is usually excellent. I actually preferred Dynasty to Rubicon. Dynasty tells the story from the end of Caesar's life, through Augustus to Nero, perhaps the most interesting period of Roman History.

i'm not the one who recommended it but can advise a little:
it was written in the 30s under the shadow of rising fascist states, which you should always keep in mind since he tries very hard to relate Augustan-era Rome to Europe in the '30s.
having said that, it is undoubtedly one of the best books of Roman history from the 20th century and an absolute must-read for anybody interested in the early Roman empire.
it's a lot more dense than most modern 'popular history' books and is clearly more focused towards academics.
personally, i wouldn't recommend reading it from cover to cover, but would recommend picking the chapters that appeal to you.

I brought this book up on Veeky Forums once and everyone told me it was shit. Based on this thread Veeky Forums generally likes it. Wonder what that says about both boards

Veeky Forums are pretentious when it comes to popular history, what they fail to realise is that popular history is simply history that is written well enough to be appealing to a large audience, it isn't necessarily 'less accurate' or 'more basic' despite what they try to suggest

Veeky Forums has some real problems with unironic /pol/ infestation. I've heard SPQR cited by scholars in several courses, and she is a scholar with impeccable academic qualifications. Furthermore the arguments against the work- "muh popular history, muh woman, muh social history" "muh appeal to authority" discounts the fact that there are literally teams in Egyptian middens right now looking for scraps of papyrus to enlarge our knowledge of the common man and women.

not to mention that in my occasional jaunt over to Veeky Forums i dont see many scholarly monographs cited. Its usually "WE WUZ KANGZ" and "Hannibal vs Alexander" and "who's yo favorite dictator" with citations from wikipedia.

>muh pol boogeyman

excellent response. Mary Beard is a professor of classics at cambridge, and I have seen, several times on this board, the "red pill" response that women cannot be historians, and that the study of social history is "sjw". I am not averse to dismissing popular female authors as producers of pap for the undiscriminating female popular readership, but the dismissal of ideas and academics based on inverse identity politics is poison to informed discussion, and usually made by individuals who refuse to argue their position from anymore more than a drive-by greentext, like yourself, faggot.

Stop assuming every shitposter, that have always been in Veeky Forums, are your more or more imaginary pol boogeyman.

My favorite 'history' book is probably Michael Herr's Dispatches. It's about his time as a journalist in the Vietnam War. It's done in a wonderful New Journalism style but it's not some HST memey shit. Incredible book

Another I would recommend is Anthony Loyd's My War Gone By, I Miss it So. Again, the author's experience in War, this time during the Bosnian genocide. Also sort of in new journalism, even though the style had somewhat declined by the 90s. Also has something of a side plot detailing his heroin addiction. Interesting stuff

Anyone has a recommendation on chinese history?

The Podcast "Chinese History Podcast" always cites works on any given subject.

That said, John Keay is very competent and has a book about chinese history as a primer

Thanks user.

I bought World Order is it good

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson is probably the best history of the kangdoms written in a "casual" tone intended for the general reader.

I personally prefer the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, but it has a much less conversational tone, and fairly dry, academic writing, which I'd imagine is not what you're looking for.

An excellent review of Egyptian history and historiography/egyptology

I like how he came out right in front and (paraphrase) said "look, im a jew. my granddad is one of the reasons israel exists. I gotta be unbiased here, or else critics will ruin my career"

Pic related was great too, he was channeling Suetonius or Quintus Curtius Rufus without being demonstrably non-factual.

>popular history thread

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What do you guys think of Antony Beevor?

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Which lives are the most fascinating?

The single worst history of the Nazi era. Shirer wasn't even an historian, and apart from that book being a turgid read, it is rife with gossip and factual inaccuracies. You'd be better off reading John Toland's Hitler biography.

For me, Timoleon and Pyrrhus, Marius and Eumenes, and Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus

What do people think of Mao: The Unknown Story?

I'm enjoying it, but I can't help feel that it's more of a hit piece than a history. I know it's not very well sourced and quite a lot of hearsay was taken as gospel. As well as that it's very keen to interperet every move of Maos as a cynical power grab, which honestly as the book goes on I'm becoming more convinced of. He certainly was no true believer.

wild swans was shit :(

>Veeky Forums are pretentious when it comes to popular history
Really? Kind of makes me want to check it out tbph. Most internet 'history discussion' is no more than 'who would win, Romans or Han Dynasty?' with zero reference to any actual books about either.

>Its usually "WE WUZ KANGZ" and "Hannibal vs Alexander" and "who's yo favorite dictator" with citations from wikipedia
This is more how I picture Veeky Forums. Is it a bit of both, or is one user totally wrong?

Guess I'll have to find out.

They are kin to Veeky Forums in that the pretense revolves around books they haven't actually read. It is the worst of both worlds.

It was absolutely panned by real historians of China. Given that there are plenty of legit biographies, I'd say stay well away.

>Nuh-uh. In his works on the Peloponnesian war, Kagan says that Syracuse ultimately showed the failures of Athenian leadership. [4]

This is my thinking. Far too biased to be a good history. I'm going to finish it as it's fun and reads easily, but I'll not take it as a factual account

That a hell of a broad topic- anything in particular?

Without specifics, in terms of writing style, I'd say Jonathan Spence's Qing Dynasty stuff and Joseph Levenson's Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (dated but brilliant).

Also some good books that spring immediately to mind- Nylan's The Five 'Confucian' Classics and Schwartz's The World of Thought in Ancient China for an intro to early history, and Paul Cohen's History in Three Keys because it brilliantly address both the Boxer Rebellion and what it means to study and talk about history.

>His "Europe's Tragedy: The 30 Years War" is excellent. CV Wedgwood's take is also great.
Indeed. I relied heavily on both for a freshman essay I did on the subject of the Thirty Years War. I remember the time I spent on that essay seriously eating into the time I should have spent on my main Economics modules that year.

I was looking for a broader view so I could then study specific dynasties and periods of time.

Reminder to prospective students of the subject that it deranges your mind to the point where you subconsciously start capitalising the word "economics"...

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Thanks user.

IIRC Gernet's History of Chinese Civilization is a good one-volumer. It's not something that can be summarised without missing out a whoooooole lot, of course.

Dan Carlin quotes Tuchman a lot in Hardcore History

Staningrad is a masterpiece, very well respect

I find Beevor's a bit lightweight, if I'm honest.

>not reading stuff by either Richard Evans or Ian Kershaw

Ouch. That don't sound good.

Kek

Any recommendation on the Ottoman Empire history?

I'm happy I recognized this

If you want to learn about a given subject in history, best approach is to google up some reading lists from courses at good universities. Although that doesn't guarantee a fun read, of course.

this is both true and not, the reading lists at my uni (Oxford) are exhaustive to the point of being ridiculous, i would recommend picking maybe the 3 most general books from a good uni reading list and from there just finding articles on Jstor or something (if you have access) in areas that interest you

Halil Inalcik: Ottoman Empire, The Classical Age
Hanioglu: Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire

All you need desu. Both short.

Add
Colin Imber: Ottoman Empire
Some chick whose name I forget: Osman's Dream
if you want

Any recommendations on the Soviet Union? Particularly the pre Cold War period

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Oh yeah, I don't mean read the whole reading list. That would be nutso.

History book recommendations are tricky here. Serious historians would always want the best scholarship, and usually the most recent stuff, but other people here seem more interested in a good read and aren't bothered by things being wrong or out of date.

Thanks anons

300 pages covering a thousand years. What could go wrong?

The problem with popular histories is that they are also often narrative histories, and since history does not have a narrative this inevitably means there has to be ahistorical editorializing and artistic licensing.

I ask myself what the point is in trying to become an omnipotent, rational historiographer. At that point you've completely divorced yourself from the humanity of history, the fact that no man ever had access to all the relevant facts at the same time they were making those decisions and following courses of action that would define the future of their societies

Amazon says it's 672 pages

what do you mean? You just tell the story of what happened in the past, you get a story, a narrative. That word, "narrative" is used like it's some boogeyman, it just means telling something like a story. I don't get what's wrong with that.

Excellent writing

history DOES have a narrative, it's just that this is only a small part of studying history
for my history papers we always started with what our tutors called 'the narrative' and then moved onto thematic study, it's a valid way of studying history
as you say, though, the narrative is not enough to understand history

Calling someone out 'as /pol/' doesn't mean they are actually 'from /pol/', but rather that they belong 'in /pol/' because, as we all know, /pol/ was created as a containment board for unadulterated faggotry.

also also
youtube.com/watch?v=mYo8SEvnsrM

>implying those don't also happen in even the most rigorous academic histories

The actual problem is that doing that is completely impossible. But it seems a bit weird to suggest that historians shouldn't -try- to understand all relevant evidence.

>since history does not have a narrative this inevitably means there has to be ahistorical editorializing

The very basis of history, in Thucydides and Herodotus and later Livy, as well as stuff like The Tale of the Heike, the Eddas, the biographies and even historical listings in the Records of the Grand Historian and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Bible in Chronicles, Kings.... these are narratives. Stating that history as narrative is inherently ahistorical is a questionable position

I think user means that the past has no narrative (of course history, being the stories people tell about the past, has narrative).

Even that's a questionable claim- people can see their lives in narrative terms, and possibly more so when they look at political events. I'd say the past is full of narratives. But it is true that the past is far messier, more complex and unknowable than any history can suggest, and the more general and 'popular' the history the more likely it is to mislead about that.

Academic historians aren't necessarily reflexive and honest about their work, of course, but the structure of citations and discussion of sources at least hints at how much construction is going on to produce a history.

Not a huge fan of Dan Carlin's podcast. Feels like he's just reading wikipedia articles with his rarely interesting musings layered over top. Not very insightful

This is quite true, but does not negate the excellence of Tuchman. Reading A Distant Mirror right now, its great

Absolutely. Distant Mirror is next to read on my list

Has anyone read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon? I was thinking of picking up the abridged edition...still 900 pages

Any good recommendations on Portuguese and Spanish Empires history?

Holy shit Veeky Forums is significantly more intelligent than most boards, yet I stopped coming here

why? we missed you

I believe the Holy Roman Empire is what we today call France, so that would not be what user is referring too the ancient Roman Empire, but I would like to read a general history on Europe. Norman Davies I will remember that.

It's the kind of book you don't stop reading.

Germany. The Holy Roman Empire is today's Germany.

Anything by Andrew Roberts