Hi, I am in no way expert in anything in history or have ever taken a course in it, I greatly enjoy reading on wikipedia and this subreddit.

I was searching for books on ancient greece (I can't even be more specific since I barely know anything about it), when searching for books a lot of comments say that the book isn't for beginners.

What are some recommendations for a beginner? The main subjects I'm curious about are how cities were formed, daily life, diplomacy and war.

Thanks (if I violated something please let me know).

I know that the book which first exposed the public to both of the pirates, A General History of the Pyrates, supposedly based it's biographies of both women heavily off of the trial, but does the documentation still survive today? If it does, is there anywhere where one can read it or is it only available in archives?

And, presuming it does exist, does it generally correspond to the what A General History of the Pyrates says about them? Or there any interesting or contradictory facts which the book left out?

Historically was there any way to track voter turnout? Did more people vote or less?

And what could Buchanan have done to prevent it, if sectional tensions had been building for decades?

I once had a professor of Judaism (i.e. a religion professor) tell me that, when one looks at the way that the history of the Holocaust is told, the Nazis effectively won.

What he meant by that is that the history is written from the view of the Nazis. We teach our children about the society of the Nazis, not the societies of the people they murdered (honestly, how many of us have ever seen a picture of a shtetl?). When we do teach about the Holocaust, we teach only about death and destruction, camps and ghettos, murder and genocide, but we much less often teach about resistance, love and life and the survival of Jews, their religion and their culture. Even when we think about Jews during the Holocaust, the dominant image is that of the Muselmann, barely human at all, and certainly evoking the concept of the Untermensch. Those Jews we do teach about tend to be assimilated (like the Frank family or Victor Klemperer) instead of those living traditionally Jewish lives, differentiating even those victims we date to recognize from the majority about whom we pay little attention. So in the way we look at the Holocaust, in how we teach it and what we teach, we basically vindicate many of the views the Nazis themselves held, ergo, they won when it comes to how we tell the story.

I'm curious what the folks here think about this argument? And just to be clear, I'm talking about the way the history is taught to the public and at the undergraduate level. I know that these limitations will be surpassed in any graduate program worth its salt.

Thanks!

EDIT: words

Even though much of the fighting between Japan and China were in large urban areas, China was never able to get a Battle of Moscow or a Battle of Stalingrad to stop the Japanese advance. What enabled the Japanese to win over and over?

I am writing an article considering the effects of Roman rule, trying to contrast it with colonisation today and the ever lasting effects it has had on peoples. e.g. Asians, Blacks, how many people from such places consider lighter skin and branching away from their "barbaric" "uncivilised" cultures and traditions to entertain Western values.

I have been told by a few History Students that the Romans had a tendency to defame parts of previous cultures, and yesterday at the Victoria & Albert Museum I read a few notes on gathered pieces which suggested old Egyptian burial wear to be considered a poor garment choice under the Romans. Was wondering if there's any truth to this.

Just from memory: Appomattox Court house, Monmouth Court House, Spotsylvania Court House, Guilford Court House. Whats going on here? Why were towns names "Court House" so often.

On this subreddit and elsewhere, I have read extensive descriptions of how Roman roads were constructed (unfortunately, I do not have a link immediately at hand, a quick search didn't find a good one, and I don't have enough time to really hunt around for a good link -- so those who want to read more will have to find it themselves). Briefly, it sounds as if a great deal of excavation would have taken place along a defined path, and then the newly-formed trench would have been intricately filled with a variety of layers consisting of different materials (mostly rock and rubble of different types and sizes). This sounds -- though correctly me if I am wrong -- as if it was an extremely labor-intensive process.

The importance of roads to Rome's success seems to be so well known that it is almost an aphorism in our society. But when I really think about it, I wonder what benefits such elaborately-constructed finished roads really would have conferred over a simpler, more rudimentary road or path. For example, it seems to me like the major advantages of a road are ease of navigation and facilitating the rapid movement of people and goods. I would think that a simpler road or path (such as a well-trod dirt road) should definitely provide the same navigational benefits as a finished, paved road. And while I imagine that people, horses, and most importantly wheeled vehicles can probably move somewhat faster along a paved road than an unpaved road, I wonder how much of a difference this really would have made. Can an army really march or drag its wagon train materially faster over stone than over hard-compacted earth?

The only really major difference I can think of is that a stone road can be well-drained and will not turn into mud. How serious and frequent of a problem was bad weather hampering travel along less well-constructed routes in ancient times? Would all-weather roads have been a constant and persistent advantage over rougher roads, or would they have been something more akin to "road insurance" that meant no army would ever be preventing from moving by a storm at a critical moment? And if this is indeed the major benefit of finished Roman roads, did they really need to be so elaborately constructed (if I recall correctly it sounded like the various rocks and rubble went several meters deep) rather than just a half meter or so of gravel laid on top of a dirt trail (perhaps with some larger paving on top to facilitate the movement of wheeled vehicles)?

Are there other advantages to Roman roads that I am not considering? Would troops and goods have really had a materially easier time moving about in good weather as well as poor weather? And, as a bonus question, why didn't the Romans construct their roads out of concrete? It sounds like that would have been a simpler way to put them together than such a detailed and elaborate process of sequential stone-laying, though perhaps I am misunderstanding the difficulties of ancient concrete production.

After Rome conquered Sparta, the city seems to have disappeared. Even the otherwise through Wikipedia article doesn't say what happened to it. So, what happened to the city? What was the city like during the Roman and Medieval periods?

As an American, I've heard a fair bit about the incompetencies and shortcomings of the USSR. What did it succeed at during its history?

1. I read somewhere online an assertion that US infantry divisions had more tanks than German Panzer divisions. Is this true? If so, why was the US able and willing to equip them with so many tanks (e.g. doctrinal reasons)?

2. I also read somewhere an assertion that US infantry divisions had many more trucks than German infantry divisions. Did this make them more mobile than their German counterparts? If so, to what extent?

I read that they typically had three or four horses following them whenever they march so they can easily change--but wouldn't the horses, which are also riding with them albeit without a passenger--also be tired once the riders change their mounts?

Can anyone here provide information on likely travel routes from Jerusalem, or Antioch, to the Persian gulf, during the crusades? Links or maps would be greatly appreciated, if possible.

I am in the middle of King Leopold's Ghost, which I'm reading in part because it seems the Congo has become a yardstick for Europeans' inhumanity to Africans during the colonial period (as well as their ability to ignore and forget atrocities). Is it really an outlier, though? Didn't South Africa and Cuba both develop forerunners to "concentration camps" around this time under England and Spain, respectively? I'm sure there were other events that showed European excesses. Why is it that the Belgian Congo seems to get mentioned more? Was it really worse, or is it just a newly (re)discovered horror?