Lately, my historical curiosity has directed me to learn more about the history of sub-Saharan Africa. I am already aware of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond and "King Leopold's Ghost" intend to read them at some point in the future. What other good books are out there that go into sub-Saharan African history. Books that go into pre-colonial times would be even better.

Such as vikings or hunters who would go on adventures often. I roughly know from doing some research backpacks as we know them are a relatively modern item from around the 1900's. Before that from around 1700 onward they used packs with a single shoulder sling like a female purse is today. But what about from the 5th-10th century? Did they just not carry anything around with them on small expeditions?

He’s claiming Edmund Heines, and Ernst Röhm, among many other early leaders were homosexual. Is this all true or was this just “propaganda” after the fact of the war? It doesn’t seem to fit the Nazi’s stance on being unaccepting of the different. Or have I just not gotten far enough in the book?

Hello! I am looking for some recommendations for history books on Canada (as far back as they can go). I'd like them to be as unbiased and with as little opinion as possible. I'd also be happy with some world history books (although I have already picked up the Durant's "Lessons of History" and will probably work my way through their volumes as long as I find it to be decent). Thanks!

Would it have been feasible for them to control their borders, or would someone be able to simply walk in and out of countries unmolested?

In Medieval Armies sorry, left one word out of the title.

This is a thing I don't really understand. The Three Estates model is rather clear on the role of people: The First Estate, the church works on getting everyone else to Heaven, the Third Estate, the Peasents, work the land to feed the First Estate, ans the Second Estate, the nobles whose job it is to fight.

The entire Status quo was held up by this! Nobles got to be Lords and Masters of others because they supposedly fought for them, that was the reason (and convention, naturally) why people accepted their rule.

I always heard that gunpowder was important socially because it made it so that non-nobles now also fought in armies in large quantities, so they demanded more right on the basis of doing the job of te Second Estate.

But if peasents were soldiers, why did it take them hundreeds of years to question that model?

I really don't get this.

Last night at a party I met a French-German guy who told me that the holocaust wasn't taught until the 1960's.

For those of you who have studied Jewish history, what I'm wondering is if (and how) Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi communities kept in contact.

For one example, how did Passover melodies sung at the Seder which were invented in middle ages Europe (Adir Hu, Echad Mi Yodeah) reached the other Jews. Did this only happen in Israel later?

See: title. My dad owns all 11 volumes and I'm considering giving them a look, but idk how scholarly they actually are.

I know it was considered a sin and a shameful thing to do, but not much else.

I'm sure there were plenty British, and West African pirates, but what else existed? Were there German or Italian Pirates? French or Dutch? Spanish? Native American? North African? And about how many were there?

Was reading about the Taino people that met Columbus, and how the chiefs could have as many as thirty wives or husbands and how they were often carried on palanquins by four other men, and wondered this.

Was he Semitic or Sumerian ?

Putting his military victories and his skill as a general aside, what was his personality like? How did he treat the soldiers under his command? When they weren't fighting, how did he interact with enemy commanders?

I know the line between “technology demonstrator”, “prototype”, and “production model” is fairly subjective one, it from what I have read, all three “employed” devices, Gadget, Little Boy, Fat Man, seem far from what we would think of as “production types” today. Gadget was especially a lab model, but even LB and FM needed to be assembled in situ, by physicists like Luis Alvarez and Norman Ramsey, future Nobel laureates. Far from a weapon which could be sent from the factory to soldiers in the field. And even Gadget could have been jury rigged to be used in a pinch.

It’s like having an F-16 and needed a Lockheed team to assemble a place before every sortie.

Why did they go with that approach and when did weapons become usable without needing scientists to hold the military’s hand.

Did other nuclear powers follow the same path or they waited to have production models?

While learning about the second world war during middle school and high school, there was never a time where we actually defined the solid differences between the German military groups in terms of ideologies. So, I, as well as many of the people around me, have grown up always referring to the German military simply as Nazis, instead of the German army.

From what I have learned while doing some independent research on this topic, that it is misleading to call the Wehrmacht as such. If I am not mistaken, the Wehrmacht was not involved in the implementation of the Holocaust, and that not all of the soldiers agreed with Nazism, but that they were fighting on behalf of Germany itself as the armed forces of Nazi Germany (not to mention the fact that military service was compulsory, so a majority was forced to fight). While it was just the SS that were really "Nazi Soldiers", as they were responsible for the implementation of the Holocaust.