I am wanting to improve my history and wonder where is the best place to start.

I don't want to wholly rely on Wikipedia so looking for some resources

Hi, I'd like to know the proportion of immigrants living in a smallish town in New York using the 1910 and 1920 Census records. I use the modern Census tables a lot to look at immigrant populations and other facts, but I can't seem to find anything like that for past censuses. Is there anything like that or would I have to count it out myself?

It seems like Columbus's journey kicked off a tremendous European push to claim these new territories and their resources, so why didn't something like that happen hundreds of years earlier when the Vikings reached North America?

Is it that the Vikings lacked the kind of resources and organization needed to launch those kinds of expeditions and that word of the "discovery" didn't reach the rest of Europe for some reason?

Or was the state of naval technology just not ready for that kind of expedition until the late 1400s?

Or no country had the money to finance these journeys?

Or there were still plenty of resources in Europe, so no need to take the risks involved in getting more?

Or there was a degree of religious fervor in Columbus's time that wasn't around earlier?

(Mods: I know Columbus is discussed a LOT here, but I didn't see this specific question asked before when I searched)

(EDIT: And just to be clear, I see potential flaws in all of the theories above, I was just brainstorming)

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It's not hard to think of plausible political motives - the Pilgrims' search for religious freedom is more sympathetic than a commercial venture based on the labor of slaves and indentured servants, especially for political liberals. But in point of fact, do American schoolchildren learn about the Pilgrims because some person or institution with large influence over American education acted on some motive like this?

Nomadic societies have cropped up throughout history, and many seemed to have wielded metal weapons. Where did they get these weapons? I could see maybe a simple forge or even a smelter being somehow packed up and moved, but not a whole mine.

Did they have permanent settlements around ore deposits? Did they trade for their weapons, or force conquered people to give them weapons as a form of homage? Or even more likely, am I completely misunderstanding nomadic societies on a fundamental level?

I remember being taught back in school that workhouses (particularly Victorian ones) were effectively a way of enslaving the poorest people of society. Images of child labour and decrepit old people working on massive dangerous machinery were used as a way of illustrating the abhorrent conditions.

But how common were these experiences? Did the experiences vary from place to place? And how free were people to leave? Were the conditions worth living through, compared to living on the street?

Hi there! I understand the title question might seem a little generic at first, but I'm really struggling with this.

The main reason why is that I can only find good history books that focus on one side of American history or on one perspective on it; what I' m looking for would be a generic US history such as those which I am assuming they use as textbooks in the US, but more in-depth and of course with a high reputation. Do you have any such book to recommend?

My understanding of US history when it comes to Native American tribes/nations/groups is that it generally followed the pattern of

1. Treaty is signed between the US and a tribe or nation setting a border or proclaiming that each side had a right to certain parts of the land.

2. White settlers/colonizers ignore the treaty and start taking Native American land and harassing/killing of any Native Americans who objected or kept living in the area.

3. Native Americans respond to protect themselves and their land by fighting back.

4. Due to Native American "aggression" the US Military comes in and expels/kills the members of the nation/tribe and any others Native Americans in the area.

(For reservations, my understanding is that it was a toss up over whether goods and payments would actually make it to the intended Native Americans or be pocketed by the agent at the scene, having that the treaty would have been violated during the tenure of the dishonest agents.)

Is this the general pattern? Were there any times when treaties were ended because both sides wanted to? Are there any treaties with Native American groups/tribes/nations left that the US has not violated at some point in the past?

As stated in the question, I am interested in learning when the Cold War was 'effectively' won. Did either or both parties recognize that the war had been won / lost?
What were the events major turning points that signaled that the US had won?

Aside from the romantic view given in novels written at the time. How aware of “the facts of life” were young people, especially girls in Victorian society?

The impression seems that they were kept in total ignorance with comical stories about wedding nights. Is this a a comedic idea or quite accurate?

I know that there will be a library worth of books i need to get, but I'm trying to find recommendations for books detailing the history of Europe. Specifically the first Europeans, the rise of Greece, the Gauls, the Goths, the rise and fall of Rome, the Proto- Germanic tribes, details about beginning of the Scandinavians, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Up to the 9th century. I know this is very broad, but any and all recommendations for any part of this request are sincerely appreciated.

The Wikipedia article (referencing Shillony 1973) mentions only the brother-in-law, a Colonel Matsuo Denzo. Brett Walker’s Concise History of Japan mentions the wife, but there wasn’t a reference.

By this I mean, through for example, some sort of betrayal from the side of the defenders, a false parley or some other kind of trick?

I think sieges most often ended through starvation or simply storming the fort with siege engines and manpower. But I'm curious if there are known examples of less traditional victories.

I picked up a book a long time ago titled "Peace and Prisoners of War: A Sad Memoir of Vietnam War and Prisoner Exchange" and noticed that it was published by Kháng Chiến Publisher. Other works listed inside the book by the publisher seems to be Vietnamese literature, published after the Fall of Saigon, regarding Vietnamese culture or anti-communist literature , mostly in the 1980s in both English and Vietnamese.

Trying to search up the Publisher name on the internet gives me no good leads, neither does its address (P.O. Box 7826 San Jose, CA 95150-7826, USA). I'm guessing they went defunct?

What's the deal with this publisher? Are they publishing real stories from Vietnam about an underlying anti-communist movement or fake propaganda pieces? The memoir I have seems to have a new modern publisher in the US Naval Institute, so it appears to be credible as an authentic story, but I'm still curious about the publisher as a whole.

Also, follow up:

How is the Antikythera mechanism an "ancient computer," but not a clock or other mechanisms used back then? Surely somebody didn't"invent the computer" in ancient Greece and then humanity just forgot it for a thousand or two years and never made anything similar.

I feel like I'm missing one of three things: either a "computer" is much simpler thing than I thought, or the Antikythera mechanism is more complicated than I think, or it's just hyped up pop history fun facts