Hi,

All the books I can find about “modern Slovakia” are in fact about the war eras. Does anyone know of some books or resources which would give me a good general grounding of knowledge about modern Slovakia and how it came to be the way it is?

Found nothing on the book list.

Thanks!

And how was political power balanced in the empire in general?

I've been fascinated with the events for a while now, as I've been on a bit of a WWII kick. While I've been able to find decent books on other aspects of the war, I'm having a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of decent literature. If anyone could point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it.

My primary area of interest is England, but anywhere in Europe will do. When a woman died in childbirth, was it customary back then [Primarily Tudor era and later, but plus really anything pre-1900 will do] to perform a Caesarean Section, when the mother was near death or dead? If so, what was the tipping point for when that was acceptable? Any examples? I assume the Church probably had an opinion, but I don’t know it. And the real root of what I guess I’m getting at..... once the mother was 100% dead, would they cut in for the child? How about if they thought the baby was dead too? This is inspired by my interest in how badly boys were wanted- would they cut into dead flesh even to just find out the gender? Thank you if you can answer!

I'm wanting to get a book for my brother about the life of Stalin. From his rise to power to the start of the cold war and was wondering if anybody had any suggestions.

Although Pericles says that Athen's wise forefathers created the custom of the funeral speech so it must be good, he also criticizes it because poor speakers might not do the war dead justice, and even stranger, that listeners might disbelieve tales of their heroism because the listeners are not as successful/noble as the dead, and so might suspect the dead are just as lacking as themselves, and so so were incapable of doing better.

It seems a strange way to begin a speech, and kind of a meandering way to get to the heart of the matter.

Would Athenians have found this strange? After all, the listeners, the non dead, seem to be the ones called into question here.

He was the type of guy who had lots of stories and interesting facts about all sorts of various topics.

One time he told a story about Vikings sailing up the Mississippi. I thought that was interesting but couldn't find anything when I googled it. I know that others had sailed to the Americas before Columbus but I couldn't find anything about going up the Mississippi.

Is there history that supports this or was it just a cool story?

Short of having actual memorabilia passed down, is there any way to know for sure? Were their records kept and potentially digitized at some point? Or does one have to rely on family legend and intuition alone?

Hi there,

I just finished reading Icebreaker by Viktor Suvorov and upon searching online for discussion I was very surprised to find that western historians consider the book entirely discredited and a "revisionist fabrication". What's even more surprising is that these discussions almost always devolve into ad hominem attacks on the author not being a proper historian and cherry-picking his facts.

After reading the book I find his arguments extremely compelling; here's a short list of the circumstantial evidence off the top of my head which I can't explain in any other way than supporting the Icebreaker thesis:

• Suvorov talks about the intense production of BT tanks (a single factory in Kharkiv producing more of these tanks in six months than Germany used in its assault) which could only be used on good roads and were unusable on the vast majority of Soviet territory (i.e. can't be used for defense);
• He states that in 1939 the USSR had a million trained paratroopers, 200 times more than all other countries combined, and of course paratroopers are useless in repelling invasion;
• He discusses how armies stationed near the very border in 1941 weren't building proper housing, but instead lived in tents, which definitely implies that they weren't intending to spend the winter there, since they would have frozen to death;
• He also discusses how the command posts of the border armies were located at the very border, literally within shooting range of the German border patrol, a very bad location for a defensive war but a necessary location for an offensive one;
• He points to June 13 1941 as the beginning of a massive movement of divisions located in the interior of the country towards the borders of Germany and Romania, then he quotes the memoirs of several prominent generals, all of who state that they were in trains travelling to the border when the war began.

I'm just very confused right now because I read 300-odd pages of completely reasonable and logical assertions based on a hundred sources and whenever I googled claims (like how many tanks did that factory produce or whether the Stalin line really was taken down before the Molotov line was built) and everything I searched for checked out. Then I go onto discussion boards and all I read is how this book has been thoroughly debunked and zero factual sentences discrediting what I just read. This is honestly a surreal feeling; I've always laughed at conspiracy theories about the flat Earth and 9/11, and yet here I am fully agreeing with a book the internet & historians claim is a conspiracy novel.

This question has a couple parts (1)So basically my family owns a ranch on the red river and we found 3 (expensive looking for the time) grave stones dated from the 1880s-1890s buried on a nice hill overlooking where the river bank use to be. They were all under 35 2 females one child. How can I find out who these people are and how they died I'd like to know the truth my family has ideas?(discussed later) (2) We contacted the local tax office but they said all their records from that time period were lost in a fire. My grandpa has created some crazy ideas about how they died, he tells people it was probably Indian raiders coming across the red river and raiding one of the men who lived on the river and who was a buffalo hunter that went out hunting, leaving his family behind and while he was out the local tribes probably robbed and killed the women and children, while he was away, twice.(did this actually happen on the red river between 1880-1890? It sounds unlikely it would happen to the same guy twice) (3)We would also like ideas on how to properly preserve the area, the letters are fading from the tombstones and we want to do something to preserve the area in case they have any surviving family who would want to see it... so anything helps

Ty again yall I know it's a lot but we really do just wanna learn about and preserve these people's memories

Edit*pretty sure I used the wrong from of family's in the title please dont not answer because of it

A while ago I bought a number of books in this series because of my love of history and because they were at a cheap antique story. However, due to their age and seemingly quite western viewpoint, I wanted to see if they still hold up and what the general opinion is on their veracity.

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