At some point the American West became Disneyfied and I presume it began with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. I'm looking specifically for books about Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and generally about similar phenomena in that time period: commercialization, showmanship, Disneyfication.

I ask this question because I think there is something poignantly sad about Sitting Bull selling out by joining the Wild West Show. As if that was a sort of end to the raw America and the beginning of something less authentic. I wonder if that phenomenon has been recognized and written about by historians, either specifically in the context of the Wild West Show or other subjects, or more generally about the nation as a whole. My whole conception is half-baked and therefore probably inaccurate, do you know of any history books that will illuminate, validate, clarify, explain, or refine my vague notion?

Specifically interested in the difference between the people of Carthage and of Rome, before the punic wars were over

Been studying quite a bit of Plato's philosophy for a while at university, and recently though about his influence on later Christian thought and theology.

Were aspects of Plato's thought about good and evil, the soul being split up into three etc strong influences over Christian ideas in areas such as theodicy and the Trinity?

Sorry if its a bad question - but who was the first recorded leader who took the title of King or equivalent, rather than just tribal chief?

I get the main ideas, that he used people against each other and built up his power, but I'm particularly interested in how he built up power within the party and used disputes with Trotsky to further his cause. For example, I found a site which cited Trotsky's criticism of bureaucratisation as a cause, but it didn't really explain why.

I feel like kids getting hit was common until recently. Were there any people that were against it in past time periods?

I've always seen the use of flamethrowers in the two world wars, with particular prominence in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War. However, I haven't really seen any specific details of the doctrine behind using them.

I'd like to know how their use was dictated in the various fronts of both wars, like when during the battle they would be unleashed (in an offensive, mopping up etc.) and how this varied due to the difference in conditions between, say, the Pacific and the Eastern Front.

A little follow-up if possible:
Is there any evidence to suggest that soldiers using flamethrowers had a significant difference in casualty rate than the standard infantryman?

Were they cordial, strained or something else? I imagine they at least acknowledged each other.

The recent questions about Nuclear tests and bombs made me curious.

Was it pure numbers? Disregard for life? Supplies? I always thought the Germans had the majority of their military on the Eastern front due to the Russians fierce fighting.

Additional information on the political landscape of Barre's scientific socialist government is appreciated. Did his policies directly contribute to the economic downfall of the nation?

Also, were there any other cases of two communist nations going to war with each other?

So, it's an awful lot of fun to research in written primary sources and reconstruct events and create a narrative. Understanding those events reaches a whole new level when you can stand on an old battlefield, a busy city block, an empty field, a ghost town, etc. etc. and translate those events to where they actually took place!

My question is: how have you learned (either in general or during the course of solving a specific research question) to translate primary sources to a physical landscape? And likewise, what physical clues typically remain in a landscape that can be used as evidence in a historical narrative? What resources would you recommend in learning more about this method of research and using what's left in a physical landscape as historical evidence?

To give a long-winded for instance, the other day I was looking at sources that described the known physical features of a particular farm in the 19th century--dimensions of the property, number of outbuildings, etc. One of the older historians I occasionally work with had noted that the property probably had an orchard on it. Orchards were a common feature for surrounding farms, but I didn't really see anything in the existing written evidence that supported that an orchard was on this particular farm. So I went and asked him about it. He pointed to a blown-up print out hanging on his wall of a glass-plate photo landscape taken of the area about 70-80 years after the time period we were concerned about. He pointed to a corner and said, see, there's an old orchard on the property and it looks old enough that it's plausible that it was there 70 years ago! (Apparently, apple trees can live to be well over 100 years old--whodathunk?) To my eyes, the entire landscape was full of trees and the little black-and-white glob of orchard looked no different than any of the other wild non-orchard type trees. And to me, without someone pointing it out, I would have no idea how to determine that the photo even included that particular piece of property we were researching.

I try to ask a lot of questions of knowledgeable historians, but I want to know what further research or education I can do on my own so I can learn how to interpret a physical landscape. I mean, unless someone points it out to me directly, I can't even identify reeeeeally obvious man-made marks on a landscape like old mine dumps/tailings on a mountainside, or an old raised railroad bed in a desert, or old trenches dug out on a battlefield. I don't even know how I'd translate an old city plat or map against actual terrain!

*edit to maybe clarify a bit (or maybe I'm just complicating it). So, if I were restoring a house, there are innumerable books and websites giving me information on how to date old building renovations and such by looking at things like handmade nails, or the marks of certain kinds of saws on wood beams, or even when types of linoleum were invented--they're all physical clues that could be used to understand how the building changed over time. Knowing those changes can inform a narrative (in some small way) about the house's former inhabitants.

Similarly, there are innumerable resources about kinds of paper, printing techniques, and handwritings that help a historian analyze a physical manuscript or old book. Those clues can help a historian figure if a manuscript is original or an early copy or even a forgery.

But I'm not seeing the same kinds of resources for anything related to a physical landscape. I know I'm not going to find a one-stop, book-of-all-knowledge. I guess I'm having trouble figuring the right search terms to even begin. I'm asking about an interdisciplinary approach that's similar to studies in material culture. But I want to know about physical places, and not things and objects or necessarily buildings. Are there examples of an historian who has consciously taken this interdisciplinary approach? I suppose the best place to start is to find examples and look for techniques that I study more on and emulate in my own research, but I'm having trouble finding good examples.

I can't find the quote I wanted, but it seems this was indeed a trend that my book (Becoming America by David Henkin) talks about. Example:

"Delegates from Virginia, where slave populations reproduced themselves naturally and slave- holders were no longer importing human beings from Africa or the West Indies, were willing to join New Englanders in criticizing the international slave trade, and Northerners from small states proved amenable to allying with small slaveholding states on that issue to thwart parts of the Virginia Plan."

What made Virginia different, for example, from the British West Indies or any other nation? How were slaves able to reproduce to such a degree, if they could?

I.E. the homophobic rhetoric, justification of slavery, inbreeding and misogyny and so on that can be found in the Bible? (DISCLAIMER: I do not mean to offend and am not stipulating anything about any religion. Just inquiring on with purely fact-seeking motivation. This is not a matter of "interpretations" of the text but rather how it literally reads. Thanks!)

Watching "The Two Towers", specifically the battle of Helms Deep, made me think of this. I would imagine that water would be horrible for the bows (the strings and bindings and wood) and the arrows. Was it not a problem? If it was, how did they deal with it? Were there precautions they took? Would some sort of fat/oil prevent all water damage?

No puns on this one, guys. I'm sure you're missing them already.

I've been reading through the FAQ on, you guessed it, the Holocaust and WWII, when this question occurred to me. I know very little about active Judaism, but I do know that it was a quite separate culture that often existed parallel to other cultures. There would surely have been liberals and progressive thinkers targeted by the NSDAP during its rise to power (and the time it was in power, too), and while it's dangerously close to alternate history I do wonder just what they would have produced had the Nazi Party not been around.

I guess another way to phrase this question is: how much cultural capital was lost to the Holocaust? WWII was a horrific waste of material resources, but what did we lose in terms of art and culture?