I have studied his life, and death, as a hobby for many years. Even shelved a True Crime book analysing it due to a lack of concrete evidence and overabundance of conjecture.

However, the legends (myths) of his demise are quite prevalent, especially on this site. It would a great service to be able to link to a single, or series, of discussions, books, comments, and commentaries disputing his death.

As to my understanding: He was invited to a dinner (a gathering, really), where he was offered poisoned wine. After refusing the wine, due to a history of intestinal/gastric distress, he was shot multiple times. After possibly being beaten post mortem, his corpse was thrown from a bridge, inflicting post mortem damage. His "autopsy", heavily debated over the rigor in which it was inspected, didn't have any signs of drowning.

The conspirators of his murder later embellished the lengths of which they went to kill him, to further justify the act.

Of course, this description is over simplified in the quest for brevity.

So what is the current consensus over the sequence of events, especially pertaining to published analysis and not just popular opinion?

In reading about leaders who have seized power and ruled as autocrats, particularly Lenin and Hitler, I get the distinct impression that they were more motivated by the belief that they were doing what was best for "the people" than a personal desire for power. This has led me to two questions:

1.) How do historians go about deciphering the motivations of historical actors, particularly in states where accounts are heavily clouded by propaganda and cults of personality?

2.) Are despots more often guided by a sense of ideology and "the greater good" or personal ambition, and is the former concept tied to specific societal factors? The only other "greater good" dictators that come immediately to mind are Sulla and Julius Caesar, both of whom operated in a political context much closer to that of modern dictators than other rulers that come to mind, and I can see how a world in which public opinion matters could be a major factor in how leaders se themselves.

I am looking for books to read regarding the rise of the Nazi party and Adolph Hitler as well as the environment in which the Nazi party was allowed to flourish.

A cursory search recommended The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shriner but a lot of the criticism says that since so much time has passed since Shriner wrote his book, a lot of his commentary has been disproven and/or is misleading.

Thank you.

In general 'x" is pronounced as 'sh' in Nahuatl (e.g. Xipe Totec) is this the same in this case?

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As the question states, I'm looking for some input from historians regarding historical philosophers. What piqued my interest in this topic is my reading of Oswald Spengler's work, Decline of the West. I've come to understand that this work isn't academically respected as an intellectual work for a number of reasons, but its scope in its treatment of historical trends has made me interested in this kind of approach to history. Are there any academically respected historians who take similar approaches?

I understand this may be a tall order, since the authors most inclined to write on the subject would either be Protestant or Catholic and thus have an inherent biases. However, I am trying to find as objective a historical source as possible on Martin Luther and the Reformation. Any good recommendations?

In my own research, I have been going through a lot of professional archive correspondence among American medical and life science professionals, 1880--1930. One thing I see as a regular feature of scholarly business is the ordering of reprints of journal articles by the article writers themselves. For example, I see in 189x, T. Mitchell Prudden ordering a hundred or so prints of something he's authored. Or C.-E. A. Winslow ordering 500 copies of article he wrote while at City College and the AMNH in 1916... etc etc etc.

I guess my kinda vague question is what precisely is going on here? Of course both these men were health professionals---Prudden a medical professor at Columbia and Winslow a public health leader in New York City. But what process does ordering article reprints enter into for these kinds of scholars? Of course this is before the era of photo-copiers and PDFs, so if one wanted to share papers with peers, they'd (or the professional staff at their institution) ether have to make multiple typed copies or they'd have to get it printed/reprinted from the journal or publishing house.

This question, in part, struck me when I was reading James A. Secord's analysis of the technical and social aspects of early nineteenth century English print culture in Victorian Sensation. He talked about the economy of labor involved in printing and reprinting texts, the interests of publishers, printers, and writers in negotiation, etc. But I wonder if there is a similar investigation of American print culture that surveyed the rise of technical and academic publications and the market of interests there? And being a historian of science, I am particularly interested in the interface between scholarly knowledge-making enterprises and American print culture.

I'm searching through the wikipedia page but i cannot find the reason for it, the text on Go-Daigo's page reads like I should already know why Takauji was against him.

I am Reading Lévis Strauss' Tristes Tropiques (1955) and it suggests that the Inca empire had no written language of any kind, I was quite surprised by this and my quick Wikipedia search was not conclusive.
Can anybody confirm this?

Edit: spelling

The telegraph wasn't invented until 1830, and by that point the United States had already stretched down through Florida and over to Louisiana and Michigan. How were they able to collect votes in order to have a democracy?

I'm led to believe that the bombing of North Vietnam, and the bombings of Laos and Cambodia were so sensitive that theyes had to be hidden from the American public (Pentagon Papers, Nixon tapes).

I'm confused as to why. If the US was fighting an enemy with forces in NV (and Laos and Cambodia) why would it have been so extremely sensitive to hide these facts? As a modern day example, we've bombed and drone struck targets in Pakistan and Syria almost without serious critique.

As in the title; would a pilum, or gladius, from 300BC look different to similar examples in 30AD or 300AD? Did weapon development stagnate during the Pax Romana?

For example, Elizabeth II, of the House of Windsor, does not have 'Windsor' in her name.