I'm about to crack into Timothy Mitchell's "Colonising Egypt" which is infamously dense and difficult with lots of theory and Foucault and all that jazz.

Lots of lines like this: "Orientalism, however, like all nineteenth-century science of man, had its limitations. It enabled colonial administrators to talk of the 'Oriental mind' and to conceive its 'backwardness'. But because its theory of language considered individual words to be plenitudes of meaning in themselves, Oriental Studies tended to remain caught up in the detailed analysis of texts....What was needed was for words themselves to be considered insubstantial objects, mere tokens, and for the Oriental mind to become a fuller, more substantial structure...."

Wish me luck.

I just watched an interesting documentary on the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood movies (called Reel Injun if you're interested) and it once again reminded me that my knowledge of the colonizing of the West is really quite poor. Can anyone recommend any good books on the settling of the west and the Indian Wars? General history or biography of major characters are both fine.

Kelton's Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 arrived in the mail yesterday.

The book explores how the English colonial enterprises, specifically the Indian slave trade, in Virgina and Carolina created the optimal conditions for epidemic disease spread. Instead of just focusing on contact=epidemics, Kelton's premise is that by linking the greater U.S. southeast (from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River) in a vast colonial trade network, while simultaneously creating vast refugee populations crowded together in Indian towns, the Indian slave trade created the perfect conditions for the spread of decimating infectious diseases.

I can't wait to dive in.

Looking for books or articles! I'm looking for good examples of historians taking an interdisciplinary approach similar to studies in material culture, but applied to physical landscapes and not necessarily objects or buildings.

For instance, maybe someone trying to reconstruct the events of a battle and using the existing landscape for evidence in their narrative, or maybe someone figuring the exact route of an emigrating party of pioneers or explorers and using written records to match against a landscape that has probably changed significantly over time, or maybe someone trying to map out an old trade route or old road against a modern map?

At this point, I'm more interested in learning a variety of methods rather than content--trying to figure "best practices," I guess--but I suppose if content matters, I'm interested in US history.

I'll be moving to China in August. It has helped piqued my interest in Chinese history. Does anyone have any good sources of Chinese social history? Chinese foreign policy? Academic/ intellectual history?

So, finished my BA in history last week (only took me nineteen years: four of being young and dumb, twelve of hiatus, and the last three with a wife who said "go back and finish I'll pay the bills while you do it - Yay her!) and I'm excited to have a bit more time to read on my own again.

During my senior year I got a bit obsessed with the Haitian Revolution and I've been thinking of what other topics would I like to learn about that my education either just glossed over or skipped altogether. The answer is South/Latin America. I'm interested in Bolivar and the independence movements on the South American continent, my knowledge is Wikipedia level at best (and likely less than that), does anyone have a volume they'd recommend whether it be a biography of Bolivar or a nice narrative overview?

This week, largely prompted by this subreddit, I've been brushing up and reading a broad selection of books focused on Hebrew Bible, comparative ANE literature, discussion of Israelite religion, monotheism, etc.. It's been quite refreshing and allows me to put off starting my summer research focus on my doctorate until next week.

Here is a good article I was directed to by /u/Timmyc62 on another subreddit, giving an easily readable and accessible overview and history of the evolution of modern United States Navy surface combatants. While not a proper book or academic article, I still found it to be a good introduction and source for those interested in the development of the post-World War II USN surface arm and how they got to where they are in the present day.

What are the best biographies of Jane Austen? I've already read Claire Tomalin's, but I hear that it has problems. Her relative Edward's biography was more interesting in what it said about him and his Victorian mores.

I just finished Graham Robb's The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War and found it absolutely enthralling. It treads the ground between popular history and academic history in a way that few books I've read have managed to achieve. It basically deals with how divorced the different parts of rural France were from Paris and from each other, how perceptions of regional traits and identities were accurate or inaccurate, and how slow and complicated the process of modernization really was in much of the country (compared with its general portrayal). It's filled with marvelous anecdotes: one that springs to mind is a late eighteenth-century rural priest declaiming from the pulpit, "Sorcerers and sorceresses, wizards and witches, all get up and leave the church," at which point a number of people got up and left the church.

Have any of you encountered this book, or other good ones that deal with the process of the formation and propagation of French national identity in the 18th and 19th centuries?

I'm reading Caro's Life of LBJ series and while fascinating it is deeply flawed especially after the first book. I'm wandering if there are recommendations for books about LBJ before his presidency people here might suggest?

I'm reading Plutarch's Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, which brought me here to ask a question, which I'll do as soon as I can.

Also, Mommsen's History of Rome, and a biography of James Joyce, which has quite a bit of history in it.

I'm currently reading Achtung–Panzer! and was wondering, what's next?

If Achtung–Panzer! laid the groundwork of modern tank-doctrine there must surely have been developments in the area and there must be historical events (wars, the wall going down etc) that have changed the theory of tanks and their use on the battlefield.

I was thinking that the wars in the middle east where the Sagger was featured heavily (Yom Kippur?) must have changed the theories on tank warfare quite a lot.

Is there any slightly more modern books that I can read after finishing Achtung–Panzer? Any pointers and recommendations would be awesome.