Im doing a project comparing the novel 1984 to Maoist China and I cannot find any info of how Mao used language (like newspeak in 1984) to control people. Thanks for any help!

Hi there,

Fairly new to this subreddit but I urgently need some help. I'm currently doing a paper on the history of navigation, what the beginnings on navigation and cartography were and how causes and reactions to changes in navigational techniques and ideologies have influenced our current world in which we use maps, sattelite and GPS etc.

The only problem i am having is finding useful links and scholarly articles to reference and use as research and as a somewhat depsperate measure was wondering someone here would know of any useful journals, books, ebooks anything that could help me.

Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Very interested in this region and its ancient history of this but having trouble finding any good materials. Not too interested in things focused specifically on the Vietnam war, Cambodian genocide, or other modern stuff. I like long histories.

A quote from the tv show "Halt and Catch Fire"

"In the Scottish Isles, they hold a festival on the coldest day of the year. The townspeople dress up in Viking costumes and compete in squads, drinking and singing and dancing. Finally at midnight, they march up to a huge wooden ship in the town square. Then what? Then the winners burn it to the ground."

Was this completely made up or was there ever a festival where people competed in games and the losers were set fire in a burning ship?

As Russia expanded into Siberia, when did they first run into the outskirts of Qing China? (Or did the Chinese first run into the Russians?) What was this initial contact like, and was Russia ever at an advantage compared to the rest of Europe for getting access to Chinese goods and markets? Additionally, before the decline of the Qing starting with the Opium wars, was this relationship considered beneficial amongst equally powerful nations or did one have an "upper hand"? Many thanks!

I'm looking for any books that discuss the general/social history of religion in Britain and Ireland, particularly among the laypeople in the late seventeenth century. Thanks!

Edit: Thanks for the help, guys!

From what I understand, capitalism gives power to "commoners" who are able to manipulate capital, in ways impossible in economies dominated hereditary rulers. I've heard that many "old money" aristocrats disproved of "up-jumped" people who became very wealthy in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Zoe Oldenbourg's The Crusades, she mentions that a medieval baby's chances of surviving into adulthood were 1 in 4. And this was an accepted fact of life that spanned across feudal classes.

Is this true? I mean, with infant diseases, the ravage of annual plagues, and general accidents, this seems feasible. But are there additional sources confirming this?

From what I've read about them they were not at all good at their job and the only success in their legacy is dealing with the logistics of annexing neighbouring states.

I need to find some good sources or historians commenting on this era. Anything related to arts (most specifically jazz). I can't seem to find any, I've found some stuff by Howard Zinn and a song by Louis Armstrong, but I'd like more than just songs. Anybody already know of anything related to this topic regarding sources? Thanks!

To be clear, I know what the results of the Battle of France were. My interest is in how the wargames conducted by the Germans played out. Maiolo paints the operation as a gamble that was improved by ironing out potential issues via the games, and I would like to know more.

I realize the pre-existing German autobahn provided evidence that people could handle such a system, but was there any question of whether the system could successfully transfer to another culture?

In general, I guess I'm asking if "magic weapons" from fantasy literature is based off actual things people believed?

EDIT: Thank you all so much for your responses, this was a question I've pondered for years.

EDIT 2: "were certain weapons be" was a glaring error on my part.

All of the photos of Omaha beach seem to be after the attack facing seaward or don't show much of what the troops actually saw as they stormed the beach. I feel like a lot of media and film, especially saving private ryan (as accurate as it is acclaimed to be), have skewed my vision of what it actually looked like.

Present day photographs leave it very hard for me to envision what it would look like at the time.