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'm reading about labor organization in the past along with architectural energetics for a paper for class (that I've been putting off all semester, like you do). I'm just doing an overview of how different approaches in archaeology viewed labor organization in the past. Some think it was through coercion, others through payment or feasting, some believe it can even be volunteer work if the people are emotionally attached to what they are constructing such as a religious monument. I can provide my preliminary biblio if anyone is interested.
I recently read an incredibly interesting book about a Swedish Foreign Legionnaire who fought in Indochina between 1887 and 1888 before entering French colonial service as an officer for a Vietnamese brigade. The book was based on his unpublished memoirs, letters to family and friends, French archival sources as well as other memoirs and written works on the topic.
There's only one problem: the writer is not a historian and likes to write certain sections of the book as a narrative novel and to compile complete sections from letters, memoirs etc. into one narrative section without footnotes pointing out where exactly he had gotten that information from. This really dragged down the book's worth as a good secondary source for me, even though the rare moments where he publishes extracts from the memoir and letters in full are absolutely fantastic.
Looking for book recommendations on monasteries in the High and Late Middle Ages in England and France. What was it like living in them? What sort of people ended up living in them? How did the monasteries interact with nobility, monarchs, one another, the commoners, etc.?
Been reading lots and lots on Occupied Korea and the policies enacted therein. I picked up about 15 books this past week (though not all on Korea) and I've been working my way through them.
I just wondered if anyone could recommend me some good books on the history of the Nordics (Anything on Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greenland & Denmark, Faroe Islands), specifically Iceland, Danish rule of Iceland.
Could anyone possibly also give me book recommendations on The Holodomor & views on why it happened. Thanks