I just finished Bible and Sword by Tuchman and Iron Wall by Shlaim is on its way

But I'm looking for any other books that cover the time between the Palestine Mandate up through the 1970s.

I'm wondering why the US navy even after breaking the japanese "purple code" a year before ww2 still moored 130 ships in a far away territory mainly for sugar cane and whaling...

I realise that this has the ring of "Actually..." nonsense, but I was listening to a Great Courses audiobook and the lecturer asserted that the image of Santa Claus comes from Odin. I can certainly see similarities, but she went on to assert that in Norse folklore Odin would bring gifts and leave them for children.

I can't find any sources or references, and looking for it online I find more or less the same story repeated without any reference at all. Is there something to this or is it the classic spurious historical fact?

This is bothering me - so, the historicity of Christ is accepted, but the records we have are relatively vague/indirect. We know that the Romans did keep records and did write things down - was there any effort made by the Roman Empire to preserve and recover these records, or to hunt down more information about Christ?

Bonus Question: I understand that the Romans held religious (or pseudo-religious) beliefs, but it seems as though (to a layman's perspective), they made no special effort to spread their beliefs or enforce their worship in the places that they conquered. The Roman religion seemed to entirely die with the Empire. How convicted were the average Romans in their religious beliefs, and why did Christianity spread so quickly throughout the Empire?

Suppose a member of the Peerage has two sons. The elder son only has daughters, while the younger son has no children at all. If the elder son predeceases his father, who inherits? The granddaughters or their uncle? I'm sorry if this question seems trivial; a work of fiction I recently consumed just left me wondering about the eventual fates of the characters.

It seems a little overwhelming with the different eras and names. I'm interested in a very general overview.

Europe has an incredibly large amount of banking families in its history. America has a fair amount of large financier families also. Where are the banking families from Asia back in ancient centuries? Or Russian banking families or Latin American banking families? The European ones get all the attention (which makes sense) and I have struggled to come across any information regarding non Western banking families.

I was watching an anime called Vinland Saga with some friends and we started asking ourselves if they were really this muscular or rather fat?

I recently saw a Rare Earth video on how Albania got into a civil war and experienced economic collapse due to Ponzi and Pyramid schemes. Unfortunately, the video is quite short in detail in how that event actually happened and Wikipedia seems to be of little help too.

Any historians out there, can you please explain to me what events lead to this whole shenanigan?

Since the movie Dune is coming out and in the movie they changed the original term "Jihad" to "Crusade". Are the terms interchangeable? What are the major philosophical, factual, or historical differences behind both terms?

A lot has been discussed on what German plans for the first half of the war of the war was, and stuff like Generalplan OST, but what about for the later half of the war, when they started loosing? Stuff like the volkstrumm and the battle of the bulge seem like they were trying to buy time, but buy time for what? Were there any crazy plans thought up on how they’d be able to turn the tide again?

I am solely interested in the route and conduct of the Scottish army - I’m assuming standard rape and pillage but where would I find information about what happened in Derbyshire?

I had to read mein kampf recently and I’ve been learning about nazism in general and to me it’s just shocking how so little of it makes any sense. It reminds me of QAnon (obviously QAnon borrows a lot from Nazism and is in many ways just a rebranding of it) just in that you look at it and you just can’t even really wrap your head around how someone could even believe this stuff. So were there any academic or other more educated Nazis who tried to fit National Socialism into a larger framework and actually justify it as a legitimate philosophy? Or was it really more of a fringe conspiracy that just took over?

First off, I'm working on the assumption that some people really believed these stories. They seem very silly to us today but at least some people really believed in these stories, right?

Second, these stories are often full of advice on how to avoid your baby or even yourself from being kidnaped by the fairies, like having iron scissors, but what if a person believed their baby was indeed stolen by the fairies and they left a changeling in its place?, how would you even know if your baby was a changeling or not?

I have a very morbid idea about all this, and I hope I'm wrong, but I think this superstitions could be used as a pretext for infanticide when poor people couldn't take care of their children for some reason

Like, if your baby was born with a disability yo could argue your real baby was stolen by the fae and kill the changeling, no one would blame you

There are also many stories of adults being stolen by the fae, particularly old people, which could be the explanation they had for senile dementia. Like if a person got Alzheimer and didn't remember their friends and family it could be they were a changeling who just took the form of that person

However I have not found mentions to killing changelings so hopefully I'm wrong, but I imagine there had to be some kind of superstition about what to do with changelings, even if the stories associated with that superstition weren't as popular

As I understand it, The Æsir-Vanir War was a primordial conflict between two god races (The Æsir and Vanir) that ended with the two races becoming a unified pantheon.

I have recently learned that Norse Mythology is an example of Indo-European mythology and that the critical elements of the main stories can be refound all across the Indo-European religious landscape. My main takeaway from this knowledge is how ancient the roots of Norse Mythology are.

I have also recently learned of the Yamnaya culture and their migrations (invasions?) into the territories of the Funnelbeaker culture. The pastoralist Yamnaya and agricultural Funnelbeaker cultures merged into the Corded ware culture. DNA analysis of Corded ware DNA suggests marriages between Yamnaya men and Funnelbeaker women. Interestingly, only very little DNA from Funnelbeaker men made it into the Corded ware populations – indicating conflict or war.

Such a conflict and subsequent cultural merge must have left a vast impact on the people who experienced it, although the events are likely to have taken place over a long time. I imagine this impact would be reflected in the stories of the Corded ware people.

Given how old the roots of Norse mythology are, I feel it is natural to ask if the echoes of the Yamnaya/Funnelbeaker cultural clash or kiss are reflected in the stories of the Æsir-Vanir War. I find it particularly interesting that the Vanir gods who become Æsir are: Frigg, Freya, Frej, and Njord. Importing Freya into the Æsir pantheon could reflect the actual marriages between Yamnaya men and Funnelbeaker women, and Frigg is the wife of Odin. The Yamnaya were pastoralists from a steppe region, so I imagine they didn’t have gods for a good harvest (Frej) or the sea (Njord), so it seems likely they would have to import these from the other cultures when settling in an area where agriculture and the sea played a major role.

So my questions are:

1. Is it possible that the Æsir–Vanir War in Norse Mythology reflects the actual intrusions of Yamnaya people into the Funnelbeaker culture?
2. If yes, is it likely, and how can we falsify it?

After Ptolemy took control of Egypt I know that the dynasty stayed very Greek and several Greek style cults were formed but would the average ethnically Egyptian brick-layer have worshipped the Egyptian gods or the Greek gods? Neither? Both?

As well as being the age when people can vote, be tried as an adult etc It’s often used for things like legal consumption of alcohol and the end of secondary education. Why was 18 used (instead of another age like 20) and did this practice vary in different areas?