I'm looking for a 'life and times' book on Louis XIII. Can anyone here recommend a fairly comprehensive book on him? Thank you.

And if not, why not? What was different?

EDIT: To clarify, my question isn't so much about the treatment of minorities, though that's fascinating too. I think what I'm interested in is more of a mental shift in the perception of life itself. As sort of an example of where this question is coming from, I've been watching disaster movies, which rely inherently on fear and the uncontrollable, unfathomable, and unstoppable. The pre- and post-9/11 disaster movies are very different beasts, with pre-9/11 looking at natural disasters and aliens and that sort of thing being the main threat to your average, everyday American. In the post-9/11 world, though, you see these movies looking at terrorists and the destruction of our safe suburbia by the other rather than by some act of God. That's more what I'm interested in, that cognitive shift in the idea of what is safe and sacred and what is not. Was there that sort of shift in mindset?

It looks like the Greek colonies along the northern shore of the Black Sea played an important role in intermediating the wheat trade to the Athenian empire during the Peloponesian war. Did something happen in later ages that this trade stopped? Did Pontic wheat become uneconomical or not available any longer to the classical world?

When i see a picture of the kingdom of Asturias in 790 i cant help but wonder how they drove back such a dominant force. Especially when i think about how small the christian kingdoms were in contrast to the muslim ones.

How many of the characters in the bible do we have enough evidence to show, at least in part, that they existed?

Such as, should I start with world history or American? What's a successful approach I should take? Thanks very much for any help.

I am only a fan of history, by no means an expert. When it comes to early Christianity (the state of Judaism preceding Christ's birth through the writing of the New Testament), the only source I have is Bart D. Ehrman. I have watched lectures and listened to his interviews.

As I understand it, Ehrman's basic analysis of early Christianity is:

• There were many apocalyptic and other radical preachers at the time of Christ's life, both within Judaism and the wider Roman world
• Christ's followers (the apostles) believed he was god because they had visions (the divine or hallucinatory nature of which Ehrman remains agnostic about), not because they witnessed a resurrection in a cave
• In the decades following Christ's death (before the writing of the Gospels), his life story was mixed in with all the common myths and interpretations of religion of the time
• By the time the New Testament was written, Christianity had little to do with the historical Jesus and was more about

All of these facts make sense to me, though that is probably partially because I am an atheist and it fits my worldview. Therefore I am skeptical simply because of confirmation bias.

So, are there any other historical analyses of early Christianity that I should know about? Or is everything I listed simply accepted as fact, much in the way biologists accept evolution by natural selection, and the academic debate is over other details?

I'm curious to know if any diplomacy was ever conducted between the Axis and Allied powers after war was declared. Was it just assumed that talks would start in the event of one side wanting to surrender or was there a constant dialogue during the period of conflict?

I'm not a particularly visually-spatially gifted individual. For example, whenever I think of poland i picture it as under germany kind of where austria is instead of east of it, and I have to sort of force a mental correction, and just staring at maps is not all that helpful. Mercifully, I have been able ameliorate the problem somewhat through numerous onlines quiz games, but I have only been able to find ones that deal with what is more or less the present day political map. Are there any such quiz games for other periods? I especially need work on the Balkan states in the run up to wwI. But would appreciate links to ones for any other time in history as well. The focus is mostly on europe here. Thanks!

Were any European forces actually considering siding with the confederacy?

Why did the reliance on King Cotton fail so badly?

In hunter gatherer tribes poor vision would limit your usefulness to the tribe. Did it diminish their worth or did they do other things for the tribe besides hunt?

When did eating utensils become a thing also why does China and other Asian countries use chopsticks while European countries use forks?

In the century BCE we see a lot of people named Gaius and have weird names like Pompey or Sulla (tho I guess one of those is name Lucius, which is a name you can either pronounce in a christian way or a roman way) but then 100 or so years later (some later than others obviously) we start seeing names like Luke and Matthew.

Were names like Luke and Matthew around during the Roman Republic? If not, why did they start appearing soon after the fall of the Republic?

Maybe this is a huge topic too, but how prevalent was Judaism amongst the people of the Roman Republic? Was the prevalance of Judaism related to the changing preference in names in the Roman Empire?