I am currently working on a series of books about the history of the Sistine Chapel. Sounds cool right? Well sadly only 3 of them have been published. This is fine, books take time. Unfortunately for those who prefer a conventional chronology to their history, they have published them out of order, so the only volumes available are Vol. 4, 6, and 7, covering the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Well, okay. It happens I guess. However... Vol. 6 makes repeated entreaties that I reference Vol. 5 for more information on topics, even giving it a loose [Author, Title] citation. Citations to a book WHICH DOESN'T EXIST, has continued not to exist in all of the 17 years since Vol 6 was published, and lo, very well may never exist.

WHYYYY.

It's a bit political, but I'm going to throw this out there. This week, with the Syrian refugee issue getting a lot of attention, I wrote this opinion piece to put it into context for folks.

Hi! Once more, I'm advertising /r/JewishHistory. I've also got a cough loud enough to wake the dead. Joy.

So we always hear about the various kings that went out and did huge things, conquered countries, sent out their ships, changed religions, stuff like that. I was thinking about it, at a certain point of wealth and high living I don't understand the point of doing this stuff. If I'm a king of a country and have access to all that my heart desires in terms of personal luxury, and my family is all set, whats the point of engaging in these grand history making activities? It seems like the only incentive is prestige, or a desire to improve my kingdom, which I would say isn't intrinsic. Where there a large number of kings or dictators that history doesn't mention much because didn't do very much besides live in the lap of luxury?

I recently finished The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. It's an interesting introduction to the whole period between 1945 and 1991, but I'm a little annoyed with how overly American the perspective is (which is funny since actually I am American).

What are some other books about the Cold War that aren't necessarily capitalistic or American in their perspective? Who disagrees with Gaddis? What were French people thinking; what about the Chinese? Thank you in advance for any recommendations.

Side note: Gaddis's short historiography book, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, is a fun read.

EDIT: Thank you everybody so much for the recommendations! So many books; so little time.

I've been working on accessioning a huge group of family photos, and it's just amazing to me to be able to see these sisters at all stages of their lives. Somewhat depressing (candid photos of daily life put me into a CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS WAS A TIME THAT ACTUALLY EXISTED, AND WE CAN NEVER EXPERIENCE IT OR FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO LIVE IN IT?? mood), but amazing.

I've been at an archaeology conference this weekend. And by "been at" I mean dropped by in my spare time because it's in my city and I'm off work since every one's at the conference. It's on the southeastern US, which is not my thing, so I feel out of place critiquing people... but my goodness Andeanists are so much better at making conference posters. (No comment on our ability to stop talking about theory long enough to actually discuss our posters.) Some important reminders for when you're making ones:

• Every map needs context a couple of dots in a rectangle indicating the sites within a county is meaningless if you don't at least show me where that county is in the state. We don't all have Georgia's counties memorized.

• PHOTO SCALES. Seriously, you throw us all off if your cannonball and musketball pics are the same size.

• Going off of that, do use photos too. A poster with literally no words beyond short captions is more informative than one with too few pics.

• Dates are good. Put them somewhere please. Writing "(1200-1500 AD )" takes 0.5 cents of ink.

• Write a conclusion. That tells us why you're doing this on the first place. There's three bones here instead of four? Thanks... now what's even a guess at what that means.

Okay that's all my pent up anger at feeling dumb for asking the same stupid questions over and over.

That feeling when you are in the archive thinking you just found stuff nobody else has used before and then the same day you find a dissertation from Eastern Berlin in 1968, which has already used these sources...

I'm having a hard time finding information on expat communities that would be in the Montmartre area of Paris in the late 19th/early 20th century. Any ideas on where I should look?

Currently taking a course on 20th century social movements in the US (so the labor movement, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, etc etc). I've been wondering about how those things played out in other countries; does anyone have resources you'd recommend?

My Ancient History teacher has given to me and some of my fellow classmates invitations for a colloquium is holding next week on the theme of Religion under control in Rome. There will be several other teachers and specialists from different European countries.

I guess its pretty nice since we only are first years.

I would welcome any recommendations for engaging but high quality history books for extremely bright older children/preteens - he is 11 years old, an excellent reader with a large vocabulary and a decent basic grounding in the broad outlines of history and science. His school is failing him in this regard and it's up to us, his parents, to provide extension work.

Any topic, era, part of the world - my goal is to provide him a very large list of choices and simply insist that he read and report on a series of them. I feel that extremely narrow-focus books may be of less interest to him but I'm open to anything that would be approachable at his age but meets the AskHistorian standards of rigor. EDIT: I'll prescreen everything so by all means make suggestions that may be at the upper limit of what he might be able to approach.

I've looked through the Books and Resources list and done some basic searches of the subreddit without finding anything so I thought I should take advantage of the open thread. Any input you have for me would be greatly appreciated. I refuse to raise a child that doesn't understand the world he was born into, and his school isn't getting it done.

Can anyone point me toward a book about the Algerian War, especially the terrorism during the Algerian War?

Urbanism seems to be getting pretty popular on this subreddit- it might be time to start a book list for it.

It's snowing! I'm happy. The dog is not so happy because she's a wimp who hates rain, hail, snow or anything but perfect blue skies.

You know, did you ever think how different the world would be without WWII? Would we have put a man on the moon? Would we have developed nuclear power? As devastating as the war was, we developed so many modern inventions because of it that have revolutionized life as we know it. How strange to think space travel today is possible because a Congress in 1919 voted no, but how incredible at the same time. Even geopolitical boundaries. Would Africa and the Middle East still be colonies? Would China be communist? Would Japan instead have been the main power in the East today?