With this year closing out, there are tons of things to sit back and reflect on, and here at /r/AskHistorians one of our favorite things to chat about is books. This thread is the place to share your thoughts on all that reading you got through in 2015, and maybe what you are planning on tackling for the coming year as well!
Both new releases of the past year, as well as ancient tomes that you dusted off are fair game here, and while obviously we're of an historical mindset here, there is nothing wrong with gushing about that 'sword and sandal' thriller, or swooning about a bodice-ripper or two. We can't be reading paradigm shifting opuses all the time after all.
So, fellow Historians, what did you read last year!? What was the best!? What was the worst!? What are you putting on your shelf for the year to come!?
(Special thanks to /u/Cptbuck for suggesting this idea, as well as /u/TheGreenReaper7's whose post last week provided some additional inspiration)
/u/Reedstilt first suggested Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America to me, and now I heartily recommend it here. The book was published earlier this year and is a great compilation of essays examining Native American population dynamics in the years following contact. The essays discuss the role of the Indian slave trade, identity erasure, warfare, and widespread structural violence, in addition to the well known impact of introduced infectious organisms.
Simply put, this will be the go to book on Native North American population dynamics after contact for the foreseeable future.
I'm just going to include the books that are wildly outside my subject area.
William Rowe, Crimson Rain: Easily one of the best history books I have ever read, a wonderfully engaging micro history of a single Chinese county through the past five hundred years and a terrifying glimpse into the possibilities of extreme mass violence.
Brian Fagan, Cro-Magnon: Fagan is a really wonderful author, I just cannot stress enough how much fun he is to read. A great book about Paleolithic Europe.
Charles Mann, 1491: I'm currently wrapping it up, and while I won't say it is never gives an uncharitable explanation I'm pretty shocked at how good it is for a journalist written history book. Absolutely should be the template for all such works.
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: Another journalist book, and just as good I think.
Elizabeth Pisani, Indonesia, Etc: Basically a modern social history of (some of) modern Indonesia in the guise of a travel book. It is a bit too personal and blithe to be perfect, but it is certainly fun to read.
Richard von Glahn, The Country of Streams and Grottoes: About Song period Sichuan, it works as a nice reminder that not everything in China was like the lower Yangtze at the time.
Patrick V Kirch, Lapita: A well written and detailed book about the Lapita, so if early colonization of the Pacific strikes your fancy, so will this book.
And while not technically a book, if you are looking for a documentary series, Michael Wood's The Story of England is quite wonderful.
Lets see... Goodreads tells me I read 110 books this year, so just to boil it down to the highlights...
Early in the year I finished the last volume of Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy", "The Guns at Last Light". Thought it was excellent. I've read a number of Atkinson's books, and have always loved his style, and this one didn't disappoint. Nothing groundbreaking about the research he did, but simply a very readable volume covering the American campaign in Western Europe during World War II. I recall hearing he was going to tackle the Pacific next, which I eagerly await.
Mainly though, this was the annus Nazibilis. Got through Kershaw's duology on Hitler. Found it to be a quite excellent treatment of the man. The other main goal I aimed to tackle was Richard Evan's Third Reich Trilogy, which I thought was equally engaging, and can't recommend highly enough. A few one-offs were in there as well, especially Christopher Browning's fantastic "Ordinary Men" and Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" which was quite fantastic as well, but also the mediocre "Fromms" by Götz Aly, which I admit I at least partly picked up because of the subtitle "How Julius Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis". It wasn't bad, just not easy to get into.
A few other non-fiction books I read worth mentioning would include "Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt" by Robert Forczyk, "Rifles" by Mark Urban, "You Gotta Have Wa" by Robert Whiting, and "Midnight in Peking" by Paul French, any of which I would recommend!
Least favorite non-fiction book would probably be "The Last Battle" by Stephen Harding. You all probably know it from the link that shows up on /r/todayilearned every other week about how the German soldiers and American soldiers joined forces to fight against some SS men. While an interesting enough story perhaps, I found the book to be significantly flawed, focusing most of its length on backstory of the various participants, and giving the actual payoff quite near the end, with an amount of coverage that felt underwhelming. An interesting side note, by sheer coincidence I read Jack Higgin's "Valhalla Exchange" just prior. A rather typical wartime thriller from Jack Higgins, it also revolves around a group of anti-Nazi Germans, Americans, and VIP POWs fighting off a formation of Waffen-SS intent on killing them as Nazi Germany goes up in flames, all tied in with a subplot about the possible escape of Martin Bormann from Berlin. Clearly it was inspired by the Castle Iter incident. It was a fun enough book (aside from Higgins' generally annoying love of "The good German"), and a much better (fictional) treatment of the battle than that recounted by Harding.
(Historical) Fiction wise, I discovered Boris Akunin's "Fandorin" series, which I enjoyed for the most part. The books follow a Russian detective in the late 19th century, but Akunin attempts to emulate a different style with each book, which unfortunately makes them quite hit or miss. "The Turkish Gambit", emulating a spy thriller, and "Murder on the Leviathan", an Agatha Christie style mystery, were definitely the best in my opinion. The last two I read though, "Special Assignments" and "The State Counsellor" I thought to be somewhat mediocre. Might pick up the next few this coming year, but I think only 2 or 3 more have been translated to English so far, even though the series has at least a dozen books in Russian so far.
I also slogged through WEB Griffen's "Brotherhood of War" series, and I do mean slogged. The first few books were really pretty good - four stars in Goodreads from me, and then about halfway through they just kept getting worse and worse. If I wasn't so obsessive, I probably would have stopped around book six... but I made it through all nine...
Things picked back up though with Philip Kerr's "Bernie Gunther" series, a 'hardboiled' detective series set mostly in Nazi-era Germany. Kerr does a great job emulating the style of Chandler or Hammett, and does a pretty good job, IMO, of dealing with a protaganist caught up in the politics and intrigues of the Nazi Party.
A few good "one offs" included Edward Rutherfurd's "New York", which I thoroughly enjoyed (aside from the last chapter). Rutherfurd loves to write these big, sprawling epics where the central character is the city itself, and I also read "Paris" this year, but thought that one fell kind of flat. Also "The Boys from Brazil" by Ira Levin which was pretty good. Not so much historical fiction as much as alt-history though, I guess.
Least favorite fiction I read was almost certainly "Exocet" by Jack Higgins. Set during the Falklands War, it was written and released pretty soon after the war ended, and reads just like the quick, cheap cash-in on current events that it obviously was intended to be.
Edit: Looking ahead to next year, sitting in my "to read" queue on my Kindle are:
There are some excellent books from this year and the last, my favourites are:
An extremely thought-provoking book and its thesis, that 'Byzantium' was a monarchical republic, is and will provoke a lot of intellectual debate within Byzantine studies, which is always a good thing. Along with Dimitris Krallis, whose '‘Democratic’ Action in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Michael Attaleiates’ ‘Republicanism’ in Context', Viator, 40.2 (2009) is very much along the same lines, Kaldellis is looking to bring some much-needed historiographical and interdisciplinary rigour into the sleepy world of Byzantinists. Another approach to this would be A. Cameron's Byzantine Matters (2014), which took issue with some of Kadellis' arguments (and which Kaldellis responded in a slightly catty review here) - taken together, it looks like Byzantine studies will never be the same again...
Arnold's book is incredibly ambitious, as he sought to explain why we should see Theoderic the Great, king of Ostrogothic Italy, as the emperor of a renewed western Roman empire. This is something a lot of people will quibble with, but I really enjoyed his take on how flexible Roman and 'barbarian' identities were in the fifth and sixth centuries. As I am someone who doesn't think that Rome ever fell in this period, this book is right up my alley and I am inclined to agree with Arnold's strong but still nuanced argument. For those who want to check out a free (but less polished) version of his argument, check out his PhD thesis here.
Palmer did an excellent job tracing the development of apocalyptic writings in this period, which is pretty big achievement as he dealt not only with more familiar western authors like Bede and Gregory the Great, but also sources from the east, such as the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. I really love attempts to link together these different worlds, so I particularly enjoyed this synthesis of all the different materials and how Palmer placed them not only into their respective local contexts, but also assessed them against the much larger intellectual milieu of the 'post-Roman' world.
I haven't fully digested this yet, but Penn's book does a wonderful job of examining the vast corpus of Syriac sources during the early Islamic period, for which most historians still sadly don't use very much. Personally, I think anyone interested in early Islamic history should have a solid understanding of what the Syriac Christians wrote, as these people lived through the turmoil of the seventh century and their often contradictory, but still contemporary, voices must be taken into account of. Along with Penn's earlier collection of translations and commentaries on the Syriac sources, When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (2015), it is now easier than ever for historians and laymen alike to explore this fascinating period!
It is difficult to assess Patricia Crone's influence on the field of Islamic studies, but it is safe to say that although not many people agree with her ideas, her critical methodology has been influential and students of this period cannot help but engage with her ideas when doing research. This collection of essays is a fascinating example of how her ideas shaped others' viewpoints. There are essays by her students, such as Robert Hoyland, essays by her friends, like the Byzantinist Judith Herrin, as well excellent chapters summarizing the latest research on Jewish Christianity by Guy Stroumsa and historiographical developments within Islamic studies by Chase Robinson. Like her or hate her, this volume is testament to the impact made by Crone with her more controversial books at the start of her career and her more mature, but still debatable, research in recent years.
I don't think I would be exaggerating when I say that this book will be essential for anyone studying Arabia in late antiquity. This volume provides a huge number of extracts from primary sources and they are accompanied with essays by relevant specialists to explain their context and why they are important. This book is especially good for the archaeological evidence, which is often quite difficult for outsiders (or even historians) to understand or to use properly. This book is sadly stupidly pricey, but it's well worth the read if you can access it from a library.
I still haven't finished the book yet, but this popular history of the role Central Asia played over the course of world history is a thrilling read. Rather than focusing on western Europe, it instead argued that the movers and shakers of the past were far more interested in Central Asia and that events there are crucial to our understanding of the world even today. Some of it is a bit iffy, but I think it is absolutely important to re-calibrate the way we examine history and to look at the much larger context.
Here are the history books I've read in the past year or so:
With the exception of The Cult of the Saints those are all pretty accessible to a general audience. Agents of Empire was probably my favorite, though I read that most recently so I may be a bit biased. The Cult of the Saints was definitely the most challenging, but certainly interesting.
I've read far too many in-field books to list over the last year, but here's a non-exhaustive list of those I've tackled just for pleasure's sake.
Probably more, but it's too easy to lose track :/
Goodreads says I have read 253 books this year, filtering out the bread machine cookbooks and gay romance novels, I'll give you my ***** FIVE STAR ***** (I am very miserly with my Goodreads stars, I warn you) history reads for 2015:
#A Lady's Man: The Cicisbei, Private Morals and National Identity in Italy
Came out in Dec 2014. Of the new historical releases I read this year, this was far and away the best. This book is flawless scholarship on a topic that's very rarely covered, and never before covered in monograph in English. Fascinating family case studies. How often is it that the first English monograph on a subject happens to be also perfect? Like never. Let's all just marvel at it for that.
#Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth Century Venice
Came out in 2007. What it says on the tin. Glorious dirty nitty gritty of making opera, with information on like how much you paid the man who makes the hats and stuff like that.
Lol I lied about filtering out the gay romance novels, this one gets a pass because it's from 1980 and that makes it literature. Okay, Gaywick was the one piece of classic gay literature I had been putting off for ages because I hate Gothic novels, and the cover was cheesy, and the plot is cracked out, and it's only a classic because it is the grandpa of all gay historical novels and it couldn't possibly be any good, and meh. I'd checked it out from the library a couple of times and returned it even, because I just couldn't bring myself to open it.
But it is available in the Amazon Prime Kindle Owner's Lending Library, and I always forget about that little ebook perk, so I checked it out and was ready to just dog through it just to get the thing off my to-do list. So imagine my surprise when I just loved this book. The plot still cheesy, the whole thing's still a bit overwrought, but it's just... gay Jane Eyre. It is what it is. And I love it anyway.
The Kindle edition also has a recent postscript from the author with his reflections on this book's place in history, fan letters from Japanese girls, how he got a phone call from suicidal teen boy wanting to know if it was true that two men could fall and love and live together like that (now of course I can't imagine just looking an author's number up in the phone book), and how the book unwittingly captured a very brief but hopeful time in gay American history, after Stonewall but before the AIDS crisis. You could read the book just for that postscript honestly.
This was my biggest-surprise book for the year though. A reminder to us all not to literally judge books by their cover, even when it's this.
Here my list of books that I have either read this year or am literally about to start today.
A really interesting book that puts a unique spin on history. I kept looking at my phone while reading this because I needed to be sure that the events he talked about in the book were actually true! You really do learn a lot about how this little mineral that we take for granted today has been so influential on world history.
More recent history as it goes even into the Obama administration and get right up to the moment before the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. I found it really interesting to see how the U.S. has kinda been constantly screwing over Cuba for the past 50 years and how Cuba has taken it standing up. Really good read especially since there is movement on the diplomatic front of recent.
One of the classic World War II novels for a reason. I can't say much other than I loved it! I constantly felt the ups and down that the paratroopers in the Netherlands were experiencing over 70 years ago. It revealed the rarely talked about failures of the Allies and how plans need time to be made, not just thrown together. A classic for a reason and I loved it!
Not normal history but a historical fiction, put it here because it did an excellent job in displaying the chaos of the time - post conquest of William the Bastard England. Half written in Angalish it was very hard to read at times, but it was extremely rewarding to do so. It reveals not only the mindset of an insurgent, which is very important for the modern world, but also the terror and chaos that existed in the Anglo-Saxon population after William the Bastard invaded. It may be historical fiction but it's one of the best historical fictions I have ever read.
The first of the many Roger Crowley books I read this year. I as someone who didn't know a lot about Venice or its' rise to power, but was extremely curious this is the book to read. It perfectly tells the story of Venice from its ascendance during the Fourth Crusade to its fall from grace at the hands of the Ottomans. I can't say much other than it is amazing and everyone should read it!
I read this in an afternoon, not even 250 pages it is the whole story of the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire, from the split with the west to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. As someone who listened to Brownworth's podcast 12 Byzantine Rulers it was a perfect addition to the material presented. I wholly recommend this book with even a passing intreast in history to read this and learn about how Rome didn't fall until the 15th century.
Crowley doesn't right like a normal historian, he rights for the layman to understand these fascinating moments in history. I felt throughout the book like I was there in the battle he was describing, whether the chaos of Lepanto or the desperation of Malta, I felt personally involved in these stories. Again I recommend this to anyone who wishes to learn about awesome moments in history.
MORE CROWLEY! I read this to do some research on the Fall of Constantinople and I have been using this as my primary resource. It so perfectly tells to the story of 1453 and gives such detail that you would think that the events are unfolding live. He has put so much research into the book and it shows. Though not as good as his other books but still worth a read!
Let this begin with this statement, the Crimean War was a glorious fuck up for the British Army, it showed the disaster that can come from having your officers pay for their positions and not earn it. The whole book felt like Pontig was being very condescending and was enjoying it, but he did reveal some of the myths that have been told about the Crimean War.
Just finished this earlier today so I haven't had a proper opportunity to internalize this one yet, but it was wonderful. I was already ideologically similar to Zinn before reading this book so a lot of what it did was reinforce my own viewpoints but it was still a worth while read. I don't have much to say as I just read it but I love it and I understand why it is a classic!
I just started West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saunt and should be finished by New Years, it's only 200 pages!
As far as history books this year, I'm about halfway through James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, which I had somehow never read. It's fantastic, and has done a lot to re-shape my thinking on the American Civil War.
Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific January 1942-April 1943 by Bruce Gamble. Not the best written book, but the name Rabaul looms large over the early years of the Pacific war, and now I have a picture of Rabaul's strategic and tactical importance and how the Japanese used it and how the Allies attacked it.
Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich by Robert Gerwarth. Much a s I have studied the Nazi era, biographies are something that I hadn't really delved into. This was a good read that really gave a portrait of a man that is somewhat mysterious to us--he was killed long before the war ended and his name simply isn't as well known as others. I have biographies of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels on my shelf for hopefully sometime in 2016 or 2017.
War in the Ruins by Edward Longacre is about the American 100th (Century) Infantry Division during World War II. They landed in southern France in late 1944 and fought their way through the Maginot Line and into southern Germany. I picked this up because one of my grandmother's brothers was in the 100th and died overseas, so I wanted an idea of what his war looked like. A really good story about a front that doesn't get much attention from American histories.
Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany by Rudolph Herzog. This book really put the myth of the humorless Nazi society to the test, as well as the myth that telling an anti-Nazi joke was a likely death sentence. There were a few really good, really dark jokes in this book, but I was surprised by how tame many of them were.
The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation by BTN studio host Dave Revsine. Focusing chiefly on the Big Ten in the late 1890s, the book examines college football in its adolescence, and draws a number of striking comparisons to the problems of the game we see today.
Carlisle vs. Army by Lars Anderson. The story of Army and Carlisle football framed around the 1912 game between the two that featured Jim Thorpe for Carlisle and Dwight Eisenhower for Army (Omar Bradley was also on the Army team but was a backup). One can imagine the drama implicit in a game between American Indian kids and the school that had produced many of the officers who fought them in the west. I was a little disappointed in the prose of this book, but the material was sound.
So, Anyway by John Cleese, a memoir of his early life that ends with the first day of shooting of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Really introspective, very candid, very well written.
Easy Street: The Hard Way by Ron Perlman. The actor's memoir, really funny, really captivating. I did this one via audiobook because how could I not listen to Ron Perlman's awesome voice talk about hanging out with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr?
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright. I thought this book was going to be a chore to get through. It was not. The HBO documentary based on it is quite good, but the book is always better. Wright's history of Al-Qaeda The Looming Tower is my next read.
Outside of nonfiction, I read the entire Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester, which is probably going to send me on an Age of Fighting Sail kick. I have Six Frigates by Ian Toll on my shelf ready to go already.
In no particular order:
Conflict in the Caucasus: Georgia, Abkhazia and the Russian Shadow by Svetlana Chervonnaya (1994). A heavily biased account of background of the Georgian-Abkhaz War in the early 1990s, written by a Russian who arrived in Abkhazia literally the day before the conflict began. She is quite critical of the Russians and Abkhaz, and makes no attempt to hide this. However it is nice to get this viewpoint, and it is one of the few full accounts that looks at the history and build-up to the conflict in Abkhazia.
Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among The Defiant People Of The Caucasus by Oliver Bullough (2011). This looked at several different ethnic group in the North Caucasus: Circassians, Mountain Turks (Balkars), and Chechens. Bullough, who worked as a journalist in Russia for a while, traces their history under Russian/Soviet rule and what happened to them. He has a lot of interviews with the local people, which adds a tragic element (or I guess amplifies, as the story is tragic as is) and doesn't let the Russians get off easily in his writing. An interesting, non-academic, look at the region.
Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh and the Legacy of Soviet Nationalities Policy by Ohannes Geukjian (2012). A heavily academic look at the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and how Soviet policy led to it. Geukjian starts at the ancient past and spends considerable detail looking at what the Soviets did that ultimately led to the conflict. While not as engaging as de Waal's Black Garden, it is a lot more formal and historic. However I will note that the author is Armenian, so he does have a focus on that side, and he doesn't utilise many, if any, primary sources; even when he notes something like censuses it comes from a secondary source, which I found a little odd.
The Making of Modern Georgia, 1918-2012: The First Georgian Republic and Its Successors edited by Stephen F. Jones (2012). This is the result of a conference held a few years back on the First Georgian Republic, and the essays were mostly presented there and now collected in this volume. Despite what the title says it is not entirely focused on the 1918-21 republic (which I had hoped for), but instead has a lot of articles on the current Georgia, with some nods to the past. I would have liked a lot more on the history side, as several articles in the book even note that it is underwritten about, especially in English. But it does contain a couple articles I found really great on that era, but considering the cost of this book ($200+), I would have been better off not purchasing it.
A Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia and the Future of the West by Ronald D. Asmus (2010). To say I've only read this book now is slightly inaccurate, as over the past few years I've read (and referenced) probably 80% of it; it's just I finally got around to properly reading it now. Asmus, who worked in the Clinton Administration and was a proponent of NATO expansion, looks at the immediate causes of the 2008 war, and doesn't look at the conflict itself. As he personally knew most of the figures involved (on the Georgian side at least), and had a part to play in Georgia trying to join NATO (a factor both he and I agree led to the war), it is heavily biased. But it is one of the few treatments on the war out there, and thus has shaped the narrative of the war, though I personally would place more blame on Saakashvili than Asmus does here.
Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever by Bruce Dowbiggan (2014). Dowbiggan is a fairly prominent hockey journalist in Canada, and has written a few books on the sport. This originally was started as a look at the way the team's former general manager, Mike Gillis, implemented new strategies on running an NHL team, but as the 2013-14 Canucks fell apart and he was fired, it was quickly changed to reflect that. Unfortunately it was a mistake on Dowbiggan, or his editor, to make this shift, as it shows, and reads like two different books. It comes across rather sloppy in the end, really rushed as care is not given to place context on the more recent events as had happened earlier. He also has a chapter on the 2012 NHL lockout that is an unabashed attack on the NHL's Commissioner, Gary Bettman, holding him solely accountable for the lockout; while he certainly does deserve some blame, the way Dowbiggan wrote it came across as really unprofessional and effectively sounded like an attack on Bettman, while failing to note that the NHLPA, the player's union, was equally to blame for the lockout.
The Caucasus: An Introduction by Thomas de Waal (2010). De Waal does a really good job of summarizing the Caucasus in about 200-odd pages. It's able to make a very confusing region easily accessible for those who know nothing about the place, while largely staying clear of any real bias, and for a place like the Caucasus, that is no easy feat.
I've read most of these, but some I'm still working on
Altman does a fantastic job of not only covering the Mixton War, but painting a picture of what West Mexico was like at the time of Contact, the abuses, crimes, and events leading up to the War, and the resulting fallout and changes to the West after the War. My only regret is that there are not more sources in which Altman could have drawn from in order to better flesh out the region and its early contact history.
This is a collection of papers and chapters from a variety of scholars on different aspects of West Mexican archaeology. Weigand's chapter is perhaps his most complete and comprehensive chapter about the guachimontones found in and around the Tequila Valleys of Mexico and it includes multiple site plans. Other notable chapters include Carolyn Baus Czitrom's chapter on the Tecuexes, one of the ethnic groups at the time of contact. Not only does it appear that the Tecuexes are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the region, but their interaction with the Caxcanes is particularly illuminating. Not much is known about West Mexican deities, but apparently Huitzilopotchli was worshiped by the Caxcanes and had ordered them to wage war against the Tecuexes. I'm still working on this book.
This is an updated and later version of the previous book with new work that had been conducted since 1985. I'm still working on this one, as well.
I've been rereading this for my thesis more than I've been reading it for pleasure. Abrams takes the thrust of his dissertation and previous published work and condenses it into a handy little volume. He also corrects past mistakes he made when calculating volumes and rates of work for his energetics study of Structure 10L-22 at Copan.
I really like this book. I think it was just the way Meighan and Foote wrote about their excavations more than the actual findings. Tizapan is nothing more than a few mounds near the shores of Lake Chapala, but what Meighan and Foote found really help to cement the Early and Late Postclassic ceramic chronology. During their excavations they found a number of burials, one of which has a "butthead" as well as a Tlaloc incense burner. Tlaloc imagery prior to the Postclassic is nonexistent and finding Tlaloc imagery really cements the hypothesis that outsiders migrated into the region.
This is another book I am working on, but the thrust of Angelica's book is about the mix of indigenous and European art styles used in the Relacion to illustrate their history despite the Relacion being produced mere decades after the Conquest of Tenochtitlan. I hope to finish this book this spring.
I've read this before, but I've been rereading it. It is in sore need of an update as a result of all the work that has been done in the last 20 years and the expanded use of flotation and residue analysis to help reconstruct the diets of pre-Columbian people. Still, it is an excellent book and I had added it to our book list awhile ago.
I know I read this, but I can't remember many of the details. Cojumatlan is near Lake Chapala, though, and helps to cement the ceramic chronology like Tizapan did.
This was just a nifty little read which summarized what scholars knew about West Mexico at the time. There is a heavy emphasis on Toltec colonization which we now know isn't the case. What they saw as one following the other is in reality contemporaneous development indicating that West Mexico and the Toltecs were derived from a shared origin population. Beekman and Christensen have two articles about migration and the Toltecs and Beekman has one about West Mexico if anyone is interested in further reading.
It's hard to remember everything I've read this year but here are some that stuck out to me!
Cabanes, Bruno. The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924.
This book is fantastic, unfortunately Cabanes' other work is in French so I can't recommend it. In this work Cabanes focuses on the development of humanitarian organizations (both international and domestic), humanitarian feeling or consciousness, and new social rights (for children, and for veterans). Cabanes looks at key figures in the post-war world who helped bring about these changes, as well as the push and pull between international forces and domestic ones and how these new challenges were solved or not. The book does a great job examining the wide reaching effects of WWI, how the war had had such a drastic effect on not only those who fought but for ordinary people, the blurring of the line between combatant and non-combantant.
Gatrell, Peter. A Whole Empire Walking, Refugees in Russian during World War I.
In a similar vein Peter Gatrell's A Whole Empire Walking, Refugees in Russian during World War I also focuses on the effects WWI had on non-combatants. Gatrell writes that Russian refugees were a “a social group that appeared in the public arena virtually overnight” (Gatrell 197), and would present a enormous challenge (socially, economically and politically) to a turbulent post-WWI Russia. The act of resettlement, Gatrell argues, stripped these people of their livelihoods, possessions, social standing, familial ties and many other things. Gatrell examines how refugeedom challenged traditional gender roles. Gatrell argues that refugeedom challenged and subverted typical forms of identification in Tsarist Russia, and created the opportunity for the growth of non-government relief agencies based both on ethnicity or simply of regions. This in turn helped create public organizations that challenged the role and abilities of the government. A fantastic book.
Tooze, Adam. The Deluge.
A fantastic history book, mammoth in its scope and supremely written, I have to get my hands on Wages of Destruction now. Honestly I have too much to say here...
Sanborn, Joshua. Imperial Apocalypse, The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire.
This is the best book (that I have read) that deals with Russia's experiences in WWI. Sanborn argues that the end of the Russian empire was born out in 3 key steps during WWI, 1. imperial challenge, 2. state failure, and 3. social disaster. Sanborn is adept at showing how early challenges to Tsarist rule evolved over the course of the early 20th C. and during WWI. The blossoming of political consciousness amongst the empire's borderlands was slow but proves to be key. Sanborn argues that the way the state responded helped to foster this consciousness but was unable to respond to it. A great book.
Moon, David. The World the Peasants Made, 1600-1930.
This book is fantastic, despite covering a broad range of time and a massive subject it handles each topic well and Moon is able to show how things developed over time or why they remained static. In my view the peasantry is one of the most important topics in 19th C. Russian history, between the emancipation of serfs and peasants making up the majority of Tsarist Russia's army, understanding the way peasants lived, expressed themselves in a revolutionary and reactionist state, and many other topics is important. From how peasants struggled to stay alive, to how they resisted Russia's land owning elites. The book is a fantastic overview of one of the most important topics in Russian history, bonus points for continuing past 1917 which very few Russian history books do.
It's been a relatively slow reading year for me, but anyone interested in US foreign relations/US politics might want to take a gander at my list.
H.W. Brands, Reagan: A Life: A very disappointing, superficial biography on a subject in great need of a real scholarly biography. The best is still Lou Cannon's Role of a Lifetime.
Jon Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush: Meacham is far too uncritical of Bush, but this will likely be the best biography of the 41st president for some time. Meacham had access to personal interviews with Bush and several other major administration figures (along with George W.), as well as Bush's personal diary, which historians don't have access to at the Bush presidential library. A good read packed with information, although the analysis is sometimes way too favorable.
Daniel Wirls, Irrational Security: The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama: An uneven, but at times shocking study of how and why US politicians continue to pump so much money into the US defense industry--often for reasons having nothing to do with defense. The author goes off on tangents a lot, but this is overall a great read about the wastefulness of US defense policy since the Reagan presidency, when defense "build-ups" and "military transformation" became buzzwords for increased defense spending, despite the end of the Cold War.
Doug Rossinow, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s: By far the best book on the 1980s. If you have any interest at all in the 80s, you need to check this book out. Rossinow offers a measured analysis of the decade that goes beyond the myths of the decade as being solely defined by movement conservatism, financial greed, and the Reagan spectacle (although these subjects are still discussed in depth). For a scholarly history, this book is also surprisingly well-written. I can't recommend this book enough.
Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Policy in the 1970s: This will likely become the go-to book for anyone looking for a history of US foreign policy in the 1970s. Very dry, but the analysis is good and the conclusions are intriguing (Sargent, for instance, claims the Cold War ended in mid-70s, although it reemerged in the 1980s). This book is a must-read if you're interested in US foreign relations, otherwise I'd avoid it due to the dry writing style.
Mary Sarotte, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall A narrative history of the fall of the Berlin Wall told from the perspective of various Germans (mostly Eastern) "on the ground". A very good supplement to Sarrote's other book, 1989. A quick, engaging read that is tied together in a solid analytical framework--a rarity for narrative history.
Alfred W. McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation: One of the best histories of the modern War on Terror. McCoy traces the roots of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to a decades-long tendency for US government officials to learn and teach (and sometimes use themselves) methods of torture going back to the early 1950s. The book begins to lose steam near the end, but this is a devastating critique of the War on Terror that is grounded firmly in historical analysis--something that is very rare in the literature on the WoT.
Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt's Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War: A very good book that shows how the relationships between state leaders can influences the course of world history. Costigliola shows how FDR, Stalin, and Churchill attempted to forge a friendship in order to maintain peaceful relations between their three countries in the immediate aftermath of WWII. With FDR's death and Truman's ascension to the presidency, these friendly overtures between US and Soviet officials dried up and played a significant role in the creation of the Cold War. A great read, and highly recommended.
James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America: This should be the new standard history of the Haymarket Affair that can replace Paul Avrich's The Haymarket Tragedy. Green's book doesn't add anything new from Avrich's account; he's simply updated the narrative for a today's readers. Overall, a great read and highly recommended.
Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History: A good introduction to the Vietnam War. Karnow is a little vague about dates and battles though, so it can become confusing for a reader with little to no background on the war.
Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History: At 175 pages, this is the go-to book for anyone looking for a quick introduction or refresher on the Vietnam War. Lawrence does a good job at giving equal weight to American, Soviet, Vietnamese, French, and Chinese perspectives during the Vietnam War.
Just a few things I'll mention:
The first is Jason Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015). This is by far the most thorough and well thought out theorization of environmental history that I've seen, and if it catches on I could see this book becoming required reading in all environmental history seminars, and even possibly for general historians. He works through Marx's concept of value, and puts it in dialogue with cultural histories of environment that investigate the meanings of "nature" and the boundaries between the human and non-human world (Bill Cronon, Raymond Williams stuff). No one else that I've seen has put the material and cultural together so effectively. It's not an easy read, but if you're serious about environmental history, I think it's essential.
The second is Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy: Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Field of Fire. They're fascinating books on their own, but as historical fiction they're absolutely masterpieces. Reading through the series, it's obvious that Ghosh knows the scholarship and the primary sources on British India, Qing China, and 19C world trade really well. There are parts of the novels that drag (last half of the second book and first half of the third), but it's still the best fiction I've read in years.
I read quite a bit of historical fiction and am hoping to get more into historical non-fiction this year. I'm a history major, so I read a lot of primary sources and little bits and pieces of biographies during my research for my papers, but I have a few titles I'd really like to read in full for 2016. This year I really enjoyed The Calligrapher's Daughter, which is about the Japanese occupation of Korea, Moloka'i, which is about a leper colony in Hawaii, and The Song of Achilles, which is a re-telling of the Iliad. I also read An Essay On Crimes and Punishment by Cesare Beccaria and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Probably one of the only non-fiction historical books I read this year was Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, which was a good primer on the subject. On my list for 2016 is Paris by Edward Rutherford, Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Daughters of the Samurai by Janice Nimura, and as many works by Robert K. Massie (a Russian historian) as I can squeeze in. Some historical fiction I read this year that I wasn't too impressed by was The Gold Eaters by Ronald Wright, All Woman and Springtime by Brandon W. Jones, and Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese.
I didn't get to read nearly as many books as I had wanted to this year, but I still managed to get some really good books in...
The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany by Ian Kershaw. Easily one of the best books I've read about the final year of the Third Reich. Kershaw does an excellent job of showing that not only did Nazi extremism ramp up to an incredible degree after the July 20th plot, but that many citizens continued to go along with Nazi policies or become extreme themselves in the face of Germany's coming defeat. Excellent stuff.
Nomohan, 1939: The Red Army's Victory That Shaped World War II by Stuart D. Goldman. Great book that goes into minute detail about the border clashes between Japan and the Soviet Union prior to the outbreak of World War II. Goldman does an excellent job presenting his thesis that the clashes helped bring General Zhukov into the limelight and enhance his command and leadership skills prior to the outbreak of war with Germany. Goldman also does a great job detailing just how poorly the Japanese military leadership was at reigning in junior officers in the Kwantung who took it upon themselves to engage the Soviet Union. Obviously written with a lot of foresight to help see things clearer, it does do a great job in showing that patterns seen in WWII were quite prevalent before the outbreak of WWII. Highly recommended.
Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Richard Holmes. One of the best history books I have ever read, period. Holmes goes into minute detail about the lives of ordinary British (and to a lesser extent, Commonwealth) soldiers fighting on the Western Front during WWI. I learned so many little things while reading this book, and Holmes did a masterful job of blending military and social history into this fantastic book. The section on company cadences was one of my favorite parts. I was disheartened to learn that Richard Holmes passed away shortly after publishing this book. He has written two other books in the same vein though, Redcoat and Sahib, so I look forward to reading those down the road.
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. I really wished I had read this sooner, but I'm glad I did get around to reading it. I can also see why parts of this book were used by some of my undergrad and high school history teachers as Browning keeps balances his writing so that it avoids becoming too heady or removed from it's subject matter while transmitting not only just how awful the events that occurred were for both their victims but for some of their perpetrators as well. Browning's work here is very well done, and if you get a later edition of the book, he has a pretty good section that rebukes the criticisms directed at him by Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Highly recommended to anyone with a passing interest in Holocaust history.
The Martian By Andy Weir. I read this before the movie came out. Enjoyed it quite a bit but it does have its issues. Overall a really fun read. Even if you've seen the movie, I still recomend it.
Dominion by C.J. Sansom. Pretty good Alternate History book where the Nazis end up forcing the U.K. to sue for peace shortly after Dunkirk and the changes that resulted in the ten years afterwards, as well as a plot to tip the balance back in favor for the U.K. and the U.S. While it's not perfect, it was certainly very enjoyable and the premise kept it from being too absurd or outlandish to enjoy.
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson. Finally after only having read some excerpts from the Liberation Trilogy I've been making progress in fully reading it. Atkinson does great work here in giving a solid and informative narrative account of Allied campaign to gain a foothold and progress through Axis held Italy. While the book is American centric, Atkinson does do go into a fair amount of detail about the British and Commonwealth armies fighting in Italy as well. Atkinson also presents some solid criticisms of American and Allied strategy where it's due, which I make an effort to point out as I've had people mistake the series for one that provides ample lip service to American military leadership during the war and nothing else. I will say I enjoyed Army At Dawn a little more than this, but it's still a very solidly researched and written book. Can't wait to finally wrap up the trilogy soon enough.
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Anthony Beevor. Pretty good narrative of the lead up to and the eventual Spanish Civil War as well as it's effects on the international community at large. While I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would, I can't really blame Beevor here since I feel it was mostly due to the confusing nature of internal Spanish Republican politics and the difficulty for an outsider to grasp at first glance. Even still, Beevor did a great job here and if you enjoyed any of his other books, I highly recomend this as well.
Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command by Sean Naylor. Good book on the operational history of the Joint Special Operations Command from it's founding during the Iran Hostage Crisis through the War in Afghanistan and recent events in the War on Terror. While I enjoyed reading the book and getting an idea of how the command operated itself, my biggest problem with it is that it is full of anecdotes from interviews and not much else. What makes this hard is that as a historian, I'm naturally skeptical of anecdotes being used as the primary source to write a history, but Naylor makes it work for the most part. To be fair, much of this book could not be written today without oral interviews and promises to keep particular sources anonymous (I've read other books on this topic that rely soley on public records, that for many reasons I did not find to be nearly as good or objective oddly enough).
Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane. Really enjoyable memoir about a USAF's pilots time with NASA during the golden era of the Space Shuttle program. Mullane goes into pretty great detail about his experiences as a military officer working with career academics and women for the first time in his professional life and how it helped to change some of his viewpoints. He also goes into vivid detail about the Challenger disaster as well as his personal relationships with those involved. I know some people have knocked the author of this book for being juvenile or cavemanish (and honestly, if you've ever met a military aviator from that era, you know what to expect), but Mullane is fully aware of those faults, points them out and embraces or rejects them at various points. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the history of the space program.
And finally, I'm currently reading/almost finished with The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy. So far it's a fantastic history of the Axis and Allied efforts to use bombing during World War II. Overy does a great job of showing how brutal the war was for both the bombers and the bombed, as well as the various issues plaguing strategic bombing, moral and logistical. So far I highly recomend it, though be warned, I had to buy a copy in the UK as the version published in the States does not include anything prior to America's entry into the war, which is a really stupid omission by the publisher.
I'd love to read a book for laymen on military strategies through the ages, any advice?
I hope this isn't the wrong place to post this question (though I can also totally wait until Saturday's topic post), but in the spirit of "what I'm going to be reading next year" and "I've got some field exam reading lists to populate"...
Any recommendations for modern academic works on a.) medieval Christianity or b.) methodology of medieval history? I've got a few leads, mostly recommendations from professors for particular scholars or simply names I keep seeing in articles on the topic (e.g. Jacques Le Goff, Margaret Barker, Jaroslav Pelikan, John Meyendorff) but searching through all their stuff in the library catalogue feels rather overwhelming (and I'm never sure how to tell what's meant for a religious audience vs. an academic one).
ETA: Oh, I forgot, I can actually add something I have read! Since I've been home for the holidays I remembered I downloaded a copy of Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, which I've been steadily working through off and on for the past week or so. I should finish it tonight, I think. It's only historical fiction, but it made me vastly more interested in Alexander the Great than I was before reading it, so it counts, right? Most of my knowledge of ancient Persia comes from that time I saw the Darius and Alexander floor mosaic in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, so I have no idea how historically accurate it is, but it's a fun read; Renault's style is spare (she keeps leaving out prepositions with indirect objects, yielding sentences like "I gave it him," which was very confusing at first) but also beautiful sometimes ("Do I grudge my lord the herb that will heal him, because another gathers it?") so I'm very glad I finally got around to reading it. Predictably, it's made me very interested in Persian eunuchs and Persia in general (did you know Bagoas has his own completely unhelpful entry in the Suda?) along with what the Byzantines thought of Alexander (whose entry is, naturally, much more fleshed out), but I've grown very fond of Bagoas so I've mostly spent the past couple days steeling myself up for the inevitable sob-fest that I know is going to happen at the end. ;(
Chiming in a bit late, but still:
W. T. De Bary (ed. et al.) Sources of Japanese Tradition - wonderfully keen evaluation and insight into the sources and authorities of Japan. Great work in integrating different sources and texts, and to compound its amount of good it critically evaluates these sources. An academic read for sure, but nevertheless a worthwhile one.
Patricia Ebrey's The Cambridge Illustrated History of China - love the illustrations. You'd think it's some concise almost-children's book masquerading as a 'Cambridge University Press' textbook, however it's so much more. Goes into more than enough depth and then some more into everything and mostly anything. Similar to my overall thoughts on De Bary's book, worth the read.
Jeremy Black (ed.) War in the Early Modern World - starting off with a history book I guess..? Picked it up for the bits on Japan and China, stayed for everything else. Some good points raised with nice, critical evaluations of primary sources which is definitely nice. Other points I would tend to have some more of an issue with, however it's definitely worth a leisurely perusal.
T. J. English's Havana Nocturne - shoutout to my dad /u/dubstripsquads for recommending this book on the Cuban Mafia. Great read, as far as I know^? it's accurate, and it paints a vividly detailed story on the contextual backgrounds of the big names during the 40s and 50s. I admit to having, after read this book, slightly more than zero clue, so that means that the book was good.
Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness - would strongly recommend. Was hard to wrap my head around the multitude of characters and places in an entirely confusing way of naming them (which never got easier), however by the end I loved it. I guess the whole ambisexual/androgynous society tagline got lost a bit on me (and felt rather forced at the end - however, I will still say that it was cleverly and nicely executed throughout the book), it's still a great science fiction book in it's own right.
Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 - The plot is interesting enough and has a great many twists, and the characterisation is succinct yet deep enough to make you (or at least me) empathise with the characters and sincerely want things to go differently. The Soviet context is overdone in a whole heap of many and different ways and felt more intrusive (heh) than needed to be - whilst done for an obvious purpose, at times it felt like I had to wade through a ton of 'censorship, communism, cruelty, etc. etc.' that I just wasn't interested in going through.
Why not wade in a few books of my own that I have loved this year.
Firstly, By the Spear by Worthington, I 2014. This is a book that I picked up over the summer and shattered by traditional views of Philip II and Alexander III ('the great'). After reading it I went and did more research and it made question my godlike perception of Alexander.
Secondly, The Rise and fall of Classical Greece by Ober, J 2015. For me this wasn't a perfect read but it was good as when reading it I found I was thinking that his interpretation was not how's I'd look at it, and it was the first history book that I had my own view on without prior interference.
Another, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture by Hall, J 2002 When doing research on the link between Politics and Culture in classical Athens this was a great starting point and then further into the book it became more complex and really intriguing. It complimented classical works such as Aristophanes really nicely. (Currently all I can say for this time my phone is dying :'()
These are some of my favourite books related to my flair.
City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London by Judith R. Walkowitz was an enlightening and enjoyable read, about narratives of criminality, sexual danger and sexual crimes in the late 19th century. London was, of course, the home of Jack the Ripper, but Walkowitz describes and analyses a city filled with far greater and less acknowledged dangers, as well as the culture surrounding them. The theme of sexual danger was present in politics, industry and ideas surrounding sexuality, both femininity and masculinity, and women's rights, and this also looks at media representations, in particular representations of Jack the Ripper and of child sexual abuse and prostitution. It was an interesting book and one I would recommend, lay reader or student, particularly those interested in Victorian Britain, crime and criminal law, gender history and women's history.
A History of Forensic Science: British beginnings in the twentieth century, Alison Adams, is a good and academic book, with a ton of footnotes. It provides an overview of the development of forensic science within the UK from 1880-1940 or so, and is a comprehensive, if sometimes dry, book, which is accessible for lay readers or those who, like me, have no background in forensic science. This book is also good at looking at international (mostly colonial) influences on the development of forensic science, which is another positive. It's not fun reading, but it is absorbing reading for sure.
Fatal Love: Spousal Killers, Law, and Punishment in the Late Colonial Spanish Atlantic, Victor Uribe-Uran. I read the preface of this book and was immediately wary. The author spent a paragraph talking about how he can call a spade a spade, and it made me think the rest of this book was going to be filled with self righteous sentences and pompous explanations. It was actually a really good book, although a sad one too, looking at honour, domestic violence, masculinity and femininity and other gender history as well as the place of the Church, along with studying colonial and indigenous populations, authorities and traditions. It's a readable, interesting book filled with anecdotes as well as illustrations, which add to it, and is great for someone who like me who knows little about colonial Spanish history outside of crime and punishment, providing context to the deaths, court system and punishments.
Writing the History of Crime by Paul Knepper is a new release, and it's a good one too. It explains and explores how crime was written as part of history, whether as being only connected with legal history, or the history of crime using social theory, as a part of social history, in microhistory and so on, looking at how gradually the history of crime has moved away from the history of law, and how it has slowly become connected to legal history once more. The development of different social theories and their application in the writing of history had an obvious effect on writing the history of crime, but this book looks into the less obvious effects as well as the reasons for the different styles and changing attitudes to previous styles and theories used. This is an important but still readable book and is useful for someone interested in anything from legal history to the history of crime to contemporary crime thrillers, and should be kept in mind when reading other books on this subject.
Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England: Age, Crime and Consent in the Courts, Victoria Bates. This was an enjoyable book despite the subject matter, with engaging writing and content. The history of sexual forensics has not been written about much before, so I wasn't expecting much, but this was a mostly excellent book exploring childhood, femininity, masculinity, ideas surrounding sexuality, gender, bodies and maturity, as well as crime, legal history, medical history and religion.
Roman Historians - What do you suggest or are looking forward to in 2016?
I'm not a flair-ed user (or educated) so I hope it's okay that I still submit my reads for 2015.
Rome Bits - Have a reading group that is working through some Rome this year.
A History of the Roman World 753 to 146 BC - H.H. Scullard
Caesar: Life of Colossus - Adrian Goldsworthy
The Conquest of Gaul -Julias Caesar
Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign by Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians - Heather
Egypt, read through the Oxford and I saw that AskHistorians suggested this. Since I wasn't happy with the Oxford telling I picked this up. Thanks Historians it was awesome.
My favorite bits:
A Short History of Byzantium - John Julius Norwich
The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 - John Julius Norwich
The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194 - John Julius Norwich
The Deeds of Louis the Fat - Suger
The Service of Ladies - Ulrich Von Liechenstein
Daily Living in the Twelfth Century - Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr.
William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry - Georges Duby
The Crusades: The Flame of Islam - Harold Lamb
Eleanor of Aquitaine - Marion Meade
Germany in the High Middle Ages c. 1050-1200 - Horst Furhmann
The Just War in the Middle Ages - Frederick H. Russell
Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 - John France
England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225 (The New Oxford History of England #3) - Robert C. Bartlett
Tournament - David Crouch
Suggestion from a friend and other reading group.
Sorry about the formatting, trying.
Just finished: Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present written by Michael B. Oren
I've recently read N.G.L. Hammond's Sources for Alexander the Great, an in-depth, chapter by chapter analysis of Plutarch's Life of Alexander and Arrian's Anabasis, and Three Historians of Alexander the Great by the same author, which provides a similar analysis of the other three main sources for Alexander's life, Diodorus, Justin and Quintus Curtius Rufus. Would definitely recommend.
A History of the English Speaking Peoples. Churchill, W.
Code Name Verity. Wein, E. - adoloscent historical fiction
Unbroken, Hillenbrand, L
The Victorian City: Everyday Life. Flanders, J. - loved the everyday info Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold. Seagrave, S.
Germinale. Zola, E.
Death in the City of Light. King, D Kept me intrigued the whole way. Very creepy too. Nana. Zola, E. Probably the best one I read this year. Story about a courtesan rising in society just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war.
Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens, C.
(Can't remember if it was this year or last year:
Germany 1945. Bessel, R.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
Ones I'm reading at the moment:
Saga of Icelanders
On the Map by Garfield, Simon
The Monuments Men: Allied heroies, Nazi thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Witter, B and Edesl, R.
I've got a couple of books on the Dreyfus Affair I want to read; Beevor's Stalingrad; Schama's Citizens
I'm looking to continue reading my Zolas and would love to be recommended anything about the Dutch Golden Age as well as England's Charles II/James II
My interest in History is rather amateurish, so the choice of books.
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life by Josiah Flynt. Although I wouldn't believe in every word he says, it is no doubts a first hand evidence on the tramps, which were known to me hitherto only from the stories by O.Henry. Although in his autobiography he is rather dull, his sketches on vagabond life in US, Great Britain, Germany and Russia are vivid and informative. Among other peculiar things he claims the evidence on the source of the word "bughouse".
A short history on nearly everything by Bill Bryson is a good reading but rather yellowish to my taste. If any vice or misfortune has been recorded for the scientist who happened to be mentioned on the pages, it will be inevitably delivered to the reader. But in a sense of the popular Natural history it's amazing work. To me it could be compared only to magnificent "History of the Earth and the Life on it", by Kirill Eskov, unfortunately only available in Russian.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill of which I am done three thirds by now. Although to me it should have been named as "A History of the English-Speaking Kings, Warlords and Prime-Ministers" as he scarcely writes on any other topic beside war and politics, it's still [to me] a comprehensive historical work by a very talented story teller.
Just finished reading Superforecasters: The Art and Science of Predictions by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner and really enjoyed it. Covers what goes into good forecasting and the social science behind it. Tetlock does a good job of involving the history behind the evolution of scientific rigor in various fields -- medicine is one example -- and makes a great case for how scientific rigor can be applied to the vague world of predicting events. Interestingly enough, Picketty makes a similar point in the introduction to Capital when he talks about how biases can manifest themselves more easily in theoretical discussions and the need for cold hard facts to dissuade that sort of unproductive conversation. Tetlock uses the example of the "Keynesians and the Austerians" and their two respective figureheads of Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson but the point stands true for any sort of debate.
The best history book I read this year was probably NASA uber-astronaut Captain John Young's autobiography. Young was selected in Group Two and flew two Gemini, two Apollo, and two STS missions and was the longest serving Chief of the Astronaut Office and held other senior administrative positions. Young's official NASA career was a mere 42 years long (about three quarters of NASA's history) but he continued to attend meetings for several years after his retirement. The writing leaves something to be desired but there are few better stories.
Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. Broadly it is a history of Dungeons and Dragons. It covers how chess evolved into Prussian war games and how they evolved into many different games from which D&D drew inspiration from. It also talks about how the mechanics evloved to what D&D uses such as health, experience, exploration, a neutral player, and more. It even goes into how it evolved into a fantasy game and talks about the history of playing a role. It was really quite interesting, and at times very technical and dry. Seeing how many parts came together at just the right time was simply fascinating.
At Days Close: Night in Times Past by A Roger Ekrich. History of humans and their relationship with the night. A pretty good read though I was hoping for something a bit more technical when it came to the various ways of lighting the night.
Energy in World History by Vaclav Smil. Currently reading this book and I love it. A perfect blend that has enough detail to remain interesting and not be a boring dry read but still being informative. Everything about how humans did things pre industrial revolution fascinates me and this book is scratching that itch quite well because of it.
This is not about what I've read this year but you guys really leave me wondering: How does one go about reading 40+ academic quality books a year? It seems like a near impossible task to me. Could any of the people who claim this achievement enlighten me? PM me if it is too off topic.
