I would love to learn something about Ancient Egypt in a light way. However, I don't want to read historical novels that are not well researched, because I don't want to learn the wrong things.

Do you know any authors/books?

[deleted]

I've been playing "We. The Revolution" (which is a very nice game as well as a very ahistorical one), a game in which the player judges cases as a judge of revolutionary tribunal. One case in particular caught my attention. It was an accusation of producing propaganda, made against a chess maker, on account on him producing game where protecting the King is the highest goal, Queen is the strongest figure, and Towers are modelled after Bastille. At first it struck me as funny, but improbable, but I began to wonder - was there ever such a case, or another, yet similar one, made during the Revolution, or is it simply a fantasy of the game developer? It's a well-known fact, that revolutionaries went against much less "monarchist" instances of Ancient Regime relics, such as the calendar, but were they ever concerned with chess or any other game that had seemingly counterrevolutionary elements? And if so, did they ever create some explicitly pro-revolutionary games or game variants?

Specifically in Feudal Ireland, how would a merchant go about collecting money from someone in a position of power? Were they out of luck if the local Baron didn't pay or was there some system in place to file grievances?

By this I don't just mean Marx and Engels, I also mean the theorists that came after him as well (Gramsci for example)

i heard they can be birthed naturally, how were they viewed thruout history?

Never really explained why Stalin didn’t try to annex much more land or do more to it than just taking the little bit of land it did

[deleted]

Buster Keaton was one of the great actors and directors of the silent era of Hollywood. His 1926 "The General" is considered one of his masterpieces and tells the true story of the Great Locomotive Chase when Union soldiers during the American Civil War hijacked a train on the Atlanta to Chattanooga line behind enemy lines and did a huge amount of damage to Confederate supply chains.

In the biography of Keaton "Cut to Chase" they mention that the history text Keaton went to for facts to base his script on on was told from the Union perspective but Keaton changed it so the Union were the villains kidnapping the Georgian protagonist's lover and the Confederates are the heroes. The book states that Keaton made this change because movie audiences would not accept Confederate villains and Union heroes, it would be necessary to reverse this to win their audiences. Keaton himself wasn't a Southerner (he was born in Kansas and traveled a lot as a child but spent his summers in Michigan) so it can't have been personal.

Why would this be necessary? More Americans lived in formerly Union states than formerly Confederate states so why would the American film audience of 1926 want Confederate heroes and Union villains?

Just while getting a drink of water, I remembered some old story about Thor drinking from some horn that was somehow connected to the ocean, and he drank a surprisingly large amount of water. Anyway, I've long felt Norse mythology had lots of weird, hodgepodge stories that don't seem didactic or historical. Yet these stories also seemed "religious" in that they claimed answers as to, say, the beginning of the world, the eventual end, etc. I've seen some funky stuff in Greek and Native American mythology, but Norse mythology really seems to be the most off the wall. Why is this?

Rondels,tsuba and similar guards appeared on daggers polearms and eastern swords, so why did they not utilize this technology in European swords.

Title says it all. The main argument I've seen is that they didn't know about genetic disorders, but frankly that's a weak argument as most people don't have qualms about allowing people to pass on genes in normal relationships. It just seems to me that wanting to marry your child or sibling would be universally disgusting, but maybe that's just my modern bias.

I'm currently reading Don Quixote, and the lyrics of his songs don't rhyme at all, but that's understandable since it was translated from Spanish, but it made start thinking about how older books sometimes have song lyrics, and that those songs usually don't rhyme (and there also always seems to be a tale involved in the lyrics).

The other best example to go with my question (off the top of my head), is Piers Plowman, which, written anywhere between 1130 and 1400, features songs that, if described as poetry instead of music, would be believable to me. The words don't rhyme, and it appears to tell a story.

So, again, my question is, what was the method of writing songs back in the middle ages and then into the Renaissance era? Was it just to tell a story, or are there more complexities that my dim mind is missing. I've tried looking for answers online but can't seem to garner any articles other than click bait when it comes to older styles of songwriting.

*Dessert

Also the question is about savory pies vs. sweet pies not exclusively chicken pot pies. I get that it wasn't the best example since it is popular across the US but that doesn't mean savory pies as a whole are when compared with their sweet counterparts.

As u/ThomasTTEngin pointed out, a potential addition to this question could be

"the fact that meat pies transferred extremely well to Australia, another British colony, and fruit pies far less so."

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but it seems like a good place to have this question answered...

I recently finished "A Short History of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich and greatly enjoyed it. I am interested in reading his larger, three volume work on the same subject, as well as his books on Venice and the Italo-Normans.

I am wondering what Norwich's scholastic reputation is. Are his works respected and reliable? As I said, I greatly enjoyed the book I read, and I attribute that largely to Norwich's writing style, but I want to make sure I am getting good information.

Thanks in advance, anyone who replies!

Edit: spelling error/style

Like are there any cases where a Roman just decided that he wanted a daughter to be named something else for some reason?

As for Major and Minor I mean like would a parent shout "Pomponia Minor come in I want to talk to you" if both girls were outside in the garden? Or would they just say "Minor/Minora"?