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!
Is there a book that's considered the 'definitive' history of post independence Peru? The wiki only has books about Colombia and Argentina.
EDIT: By that I mean that the books my parents read in primary and secondary school seemed to aggrandize certain parts of history so it would be nice to read a book that gives a more level narrative of it's history.
I'm reading Linda Nash's Inescapable Ecologies today, and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's an outstanding blend of environment and bodies, and a book I think I'll discuss quite a lot in one of my chapters.
I also read David Igler's Industrial Cowboys over the past few days, and I enjoyed that as well. I think his scope is a bit narrow; it alleges to be "Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West," and while it is a lot of Miller & Lux, the broader transformation of the Far West is a bit narrow. I'd like to see a lot more about enterprises that weren't stock raising: more intensive agriculture, mining, and forestry would have been good to hear about. Miller & Lux's methods of combining political and financial connections to amass property, transform landscapes, and marshall labor was fascinating, but was that a common strategy?
I'm about to start reading a translation of the Bansenshukai. Is there anything I should know before I start digging in?
I've read A Distant Mirror and The Proud Tower and am currently working through Guns of August and The Zimmerman Telegram. I know that Barbara Tuchman is sometimes maligned by academic historians, but if she wrote a phone book I would read it. Does anyone have suggestions for other popular history writers with similar styles? I tried London: A Biography and The Borgias after hearing good things about Peter Ackroyd but found both (at the risk of sounding like I belong in /r/iamverysmart) a little "light" in style and diction.
Since I'm very much a neophyte in this field I'm open to a wide variety of times, places, and subjects, but am most interested in European history and not terribly intrigued by the 20th century for some reason. Thanks for any and all suggestions!
What are some books to get a basic overview of the Ottoman Empire?