Because I tend to quickly forget the main arguments of many of the books I read, I've started making annotations/reviews of them in case I ever need a refresher in the future. I figured these reading threads would also be a good place to put them in case anyone might be interested in or want to discuss the books I've recently read. With that, here's two books I finished in the last few days:

Jarausch, Konrad. Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2015.

In nearly 800 pages of text, Jarausch attempts to provide a comprehensive account of European politics, society, economics, and culture during the 20th century. The author argues that 20th century European history should be seen primarily as a contestation between competing forms of modernity and modernization—in particular, liberalism, communism, and, in the century’s first half, fascism. Jarausch further claims that historians should recognize the “ambivalence of modernization” throughout the century. As he clearly demonstrates, the same forces that promoted cultural dynamism, greater political participation, and economic vitality in Europe also led to two devastating world wars, genocide, and oppression within the European colonies and Eastern Europe.

The book’s narrative trajectory is one of downfall followed by rebirth. Europe went into the century as the unrivaled global power due to the economic benefits of empire and industrialization and the emergence of a distinctive political culture centered on mass political participation and nationalism. These same forces, however, brought about the continent’s downfall beginning with World War I and, after a brief period of cultural and economic dynamism in the early 1920s, the onset of the Great Depression and World War II. With fascism’s defeat, the modernizing projects of liberalism and communism vied for supremacy in Europe in the century’s latter half. In Western Europe the creation of welfare states ensured domestic stability, protected against political extremism, and led to economic vitality. Jarausch gives particular attention to the benefits of European economic integration, although he refutes the claims by many commentators that we should see the European Union as an unblemished success. The success of Western Europe is contrasted with the repression and economic stagnation of Eastern Europe. Despite the initial successes of communism to provide basic goods and food immediately after the war, Eastern European states eventually foundered due to the suppression of civil society and the rigidity of their economic systems. These problems in Eastern European governance—inherent to communist ideology—eventually led to the collapse of communism in the 1980s. Jarausch concludes by arguing that from the 1990s to today, as European integration has expanded in both breadth and depth, Europe has come to offer a rival form of modernity to both American liberalism and China’s policy of rapid economic development.

Despite the title’s claim that this book represents a “new” history of Europe, readers will encounter a fairly conventional narrative. Moreover, in some sections, as on the origins of WWI or the end of the Cold War, the author’s overriding focus on modernization and modernity leads him to oversimplify complex processes and actions. The prose is concise and coherent, although not graceful. This book is a history of large-scale processes, and the author rarely brings in the kinds of anecdotes that makes for a more lively narrative Readers looking for a more engaging text might want to check out Tony Judt’s Postwar or Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes. The book also suffers from an at times confusing structure. Chapters on economic integration and decolonization cover periods from the immediate post-WWII years all the way to the present day, despite being written in the book’s middle section that deals with Europe’s recovery from 1945-1973.

Although hampered by these problems, Out of Ashes succeeds in its objective of providing a unifying framework for understanding the entirety of 20th century European history. The author ensures that his argument is always clearly present, which is an admirable accomplishment for a book that covers such a wide variety of experiences and events. While the fairly uninspired prose may put off those looking for an introduction to the subject, the book’s arguments about competing modernities and “the ambivalence of modernization” warrant attention by scholars and enthusiasts.

Brands, H.W. Reagan: The Life. New York: Doubleday, 2015.

Within the last decade H.W. Brands has entered into the top echelon of popular biographers of famous American figures alongside David McCullough, Douglas Brinkley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Stephen Ambrose. Together these historians, and several others, have successfully created a niche genre of popular American history that is the modern-day equivalent to the novels of Horatio Alger. The narratives and analyses are generally the same: an individual struggles through the initial hardship of childhood and adolescence (often due to poverty or an abusive father), but eventually overcomes these adversities to accomplish historic achievements due to his ingenuity, pluck, and moral conviction. What McCullough has done for John Adams and Truman, Goodwin for FDR and Lincoln, Brinkley for Walter Cronkite and Teddy Roosevelt, and Ambrose for Eisenhower, Brands has attempted to do for Reagan.

Ronald Reagan has been a notoriously difficult subject for biographers. Many have struggled with separating the man from the myth that has come to surround him within the last three decades. Unfortunately, Brands’ biography is likewise unable to offer any new or penetrating insights into Reagan and his presidency. Ultimately, this failure doesn’t emerge from the complexity of the book’s subject but from Brands’ unwillingness to critically engage with the few sources he uses. Secondary sources are almost non-existent, and the sections on Reagan’s pre-presidential life come almost exclusively from Reagan’s two autobiographies. After taking nearly 300 pages to get to Reagan’s presidency (shockingly, only 20 or so of those pages are given to Reagan’s time as governor), Brands does incorporate a wider variety of sources such as government documents, Reagan’s diary entries, and the memoirs of administration officials, but there is rarely any type of analytical engagement with them. Brands ultimately seems content with telling a good story rather than providing insight into his subject. Such a decision leads to a meandering and superficial account of the Reagan presidency, often with quotes that extend to a page or more.

The complete lack of analytical engagement with the subject makes Reagan: A Life a book that will hold little value for scholars or even those wanting a basic introduction to Reagan and his presidency. For those looking for a more thorough account on the subject, Lou Cannon’s Role of a Lifetime (1991) is still the most comprehensive.

I mentioned this yesterday in Friday Free-For-All, but I've been rereading William Cronon's Changes in the Land, about the changes in the ecology and landscape of New England as a result of differences in land-use patterns between the English and the Indians. I'm definitely getting different things out of it than I did when I read it years ago in undergrad, but I'm also most concerned now that it may not represent the very latest in "ecological histories".

Interested in similar case studies of ecological history, /u/agentdcf recommended both Richard Grove's Green Imperialism and John Richards's The Unending Frontier.

Unending Frontier is a comparative approach of the British and Japanese empires to resource management in the periphery and looks like it might be right up my alley.

Reading Cronon works though, I can't help but feel that there are similar ecological contact histories waiting to be written about other parts of the New World, especially in places Mexico and the American Southwest where there was a long period of contact and economic and cultural mixing between the native Indian societies and the Europeans.

Hey guys. I've been looking for books on a few specific topics that don't seem to get much love. I'm interested in a biography of Metternich and a biography of Bismarck. I'm also interested in a general history of Prussia and I've found The Iron Kingdom by Chris Clark, but I wanted to get some opinions on it from this subreddit first.

Would anyone here be kind enough to direct me toward good English language books on daily life in late 18th century Vienna? Especially the 1770s and 1780s, although anything post Seven Year's War and pre-Napoleon would be helpful. I've read several books such as Mozart and Vienna, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera along with some general histories of Austria, but these usually span several centuries, or focus on the city's musical life. I am hoping for something that goes into more detail about the cultural or political background for that era.

I've been working my way through a fantastic German book on the cities of the Hanseatic League called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Die Hanse (Hammel-Kiewsow, R, M. Puhle and S. Wittenburg, Die Hanse. Darmstadt: Theiss Publications, 2015.) It's probably not the most academically intensive book I've ever read - 'Thank God,' I say, because reading academic German is gruelling. Where it really shines is its use of illustrations and, particularly, maps. There are some absolutely fantastic maps, probably more than 30, displaying some absolutely fantastic information. If anyone can read German (or even better, if it's available in English), it's a fantastic overview for a layman who's looking to learn more about the League.

Are there any Russian civil war books that people would recommend? Preferably around the Anthony Beevor level of accessibility to detail compromise.

Just curious, but does anyone have any opinions on The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee? I read it a while back and thought it was great, but for some reason I thought of it today and was wondering if it's actually considered a good historical work.

I have two requests if people can assist! One is good English language books on the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the French War of Religions. I have many of the works of Barbara Diefendorf but I am looking to branch out.

I am also looking for recent English language books on Germany from 1918-1933, with a real focus on the earlier portion of that era.

Thanks!