Today:
Saturday Reading and Research will focus on exactly that: the history you have been reading this week and the research you've been working on. It's also the prime thread for requesting books on a particular subject. As with all our weekly features, this thread will be lightly moderated.
So, encountered a recent biography of Stalin that revealed all about his addiction to ragtime piano? Delved into a horrendous piece of presentist and sexist psycho-evolutionary mumbo-jumbo and want to tell us about how bad it was? Need help finding the right book to give the historian in your family? Then this is the thread for you!
I just made a self-post asking for book recommendations and lazy as I am, must have passed by this thread so I will repost the gist of it here.
Let me first provide some background. I am currently serving as a SCA/National Park Service intern at Prince William Forest Park in northeast Virginia, where I am learning to manage and preserve the parks substantial museum collections. Many of these collections date back to the late 1930s, when the park was developed as a recreation area by the CCC, so I thought that it might be a good idea to complement my experience here by brushing up on the history of the New Deal, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression in general. That and the park service housing doesn't have cable. So if you have any suggestions regarding general history works on these topics, or even some works on more obscure events or people within this scope, I would love to hear them.
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good account of the history of the Arab people from the advent of Islam to the dissolution if the Ottomans?
Could someone suggest sources detailing the growth of a western medieval city? (preferably online) Towns/cities at that time really developed haphazardly and sporadically, so I'm curious as to what the layout of a high middle ages city would be like.
And to be more specific I'm curious as to where various businesses would be located in a city. Where would markets generally be located? What kinds of buildings would be along the major thoroughfares?
I finished reading Ukraine: A History (Fourth Edition, 2009; originally published, 1988) by Orest Subtelny.
This is probably the best English-language survey on Ukrainian history in existence, and was a factor in my applying to York University for grad school, just to be able to work with Subtelny (I was ultimately not offered admission). At nearly 700 pages of text it is comprehensive yet easy to read, starting from pre-historic times until the post-Orange Revolution era (c. 2004).
Though this is the fourth edition of the book, Subtelny simply added chapters and a new introduction, while leaving the body of the previous work intact; thus a nice touch of historiography, as writing about Ukraine in 1988 is a lot different than 2009 for a multitude of reasons. It also notes, especially in regards to earlier eras, the Soviet view of events and details, again providing a nice addition to the historiography of Ukrainian history.
Subtelny writes in the introduction that he has two main themes for his book: the search for a Ukrainian identity and modernisation. Both of these remain at the forefront for the entire book, and he argues have driven Ukrainians for most of their history.
It is also quite relevant to the issues of today. There is extensive mentions of the issues regarding Crimea, and the division in Ukraine between (what he terms) Russophones and Ukrainophones; of particular note he mentions Donetsk and Luhansk as being very pro-Russian, and talks about both their and the Crimeans reluctance to join an independent Ukraine. It is so appropriate to the current crisis in Ukraine that Subtelny could have written that word-for-word for a contemporary audience and it would still be relevant.
I am also thrilled at his bibliography. It is extensive, naturally, but also organised into various topics of note, allowing for easy searching of more references. For someone who is likely to base their masters work on Ukraine, this is definitely a nice thing to have.
One thing I did notice though is the lack of attention he gives to Stepan Bandera and UPA as a whole. For those unaware, Bandera led a faction of UPA (Ukrainian Populists Army is a common translation), a Ukrainian nationalist group based out of Lviv/Lvov during the Second World War. They are quite controversial due to the fact that they tended to be pro-Nazi and anti-Jew and anti-Pole, in their quest to drive out the Soviets. However Bandera himself is given only a couple lines in the book, while UPA itself is only mentioned for its factionalism and resistance to the Red Army. I would have thought that it would get more attention, but am going to put that down to the difficulties of writing about it in the 1980s.