So it's been a pretty miserable start to 2016 for me. Not only have I been confined to bed with a serious illness, I don't have access to my mountain of unread books to pass the time. Not ideal.

Thankfully the OUP's Winter Sale came to my rescue. So this week I've been reading Serhy Yekelchyk's Stalin's Citizens, an exploration of the rituals and grassroots practice of Soviet politics in post-war Kiev. It's the most on-trend work I've read in awhile, ticking all the fashionable boxes: Late Stalinism, 'speaking Bolshevik', local case study and archival work.

It lacks the strong central thesis that really animates such local studies but I'm still enjoying it. Ranging across a number of areas, Yekelchyk looks at how state and society interacted through public rituals (elections, demonstrations, celebrations, etc). It was through these that the state received the affirmation it required and signalled obligations to the public. Conversely, the latter could use these rites to stake their place in the political order, displaying the correct 'civic emotions' and even bargaining with the state via agitators.

So definitely worth a read for anyone looking to add nuance to their understanding of politics and citizenship in mature Stalinism.

I read the first section in Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620-1860, by C. Dallet Hemphill, on the early colonial period. Great stuff! I have high hopes for the rest of the book. 18th and 19th century manners are so often blended and stereotyped, and I'd like to get a more scholarly look at them.

Fellow AskHistorians historians, a friend of mine could use your help.

He is an experienced journalist doing an independent documentary on bullfighting and has tons of footage shot in Spain and other countries with long traditions of the sport. The problem is that he is looking for images, such as artwork, lithographs, and photographs, depicting bullfighting to use between interviews and especially for the beginning of his documentary, which deals with its history up to the present day.

This is an independent documentary so his funds are limited. He is looking for images under Creative Commons license as his mainstay as well as artwork he can film himself (he lives on the East Coast of the US, so if a gallery of pertinent artwork is in NYC, for example, he would likely be interested). Obviously he could also be convinced to pay for usage as well where needed, but his budget means this option is limited.

It should come out late this year or early next year.

Thanks for your help!

Been reading "Identity and Power. The transformation of Iron Age societies in Northeast Gaul" by Manuel Fernández-Götz. A great case study on how to approach questions of Identity and the various vectors of how people might express their own in the context of social structures and power relations. How are collective identities constructed, and what agency is left to the individual? Focussed in archaeological sources (as is to be expected) but has a great theoretical part which I found highly valuable in which various theoretical approaches from archaeology, history and sociology are discussed and the question of how to approach Identity in the past. Not without modern relevance, too, because migration and ethnicity are discussed as well. I found it highly useful, as I'm trying myself to come up with a good approach to adress questions of identity and ethnicity in the context of what is called 'romanisation', the transformation of societies under Roman rule. Since I'm looking at material, textual sources as well, this has been full of good input. Would recommend.

Also read "The inheritance of Rome" by Wickham to broaden my horizons a bit into early medieval history, and a nice context to Deschners criminal history of (early) christianity.

Read "Das Amt und die Vergangenheit", the report of the historians commission tasked with researching the Nazi past of the German foreign office. Any myths about widespread resistance among the diplomats and and foreign office staff get buried (favourite quote: you can count the staff of the foreign office that were part of the resistance on the fingers of one hand), and you get to know just how eager many diplomats were to support the regimes' policies, which partially overlapped with their own (restoring Germany as a great power and dismantling Versailles), and to protect Germanys foreign image, when the persecution of the Jews started f.e. If you want to know just how many former Nazi elites got to get back into office and honours after the war, this is a good book as well. Might leave you slightly disgusted. Also I'm terribly hung over.

Is this for non-historians as well? I'm finally finishing Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum. It has been a struggle. It has made me aware of innumerable new historical tidbits but it gets rather dry with its focus on the many (dubious?) figures kept by Russia and the NKVD. I avoid fiction and really enjoy biographies and history but will I ever find another historical page-turner like The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt?

Borrowed Amy Chuan's World on Fire for the chapter on the Overseas Chinese, trying to see if I can mine her bibliography for something that explains (rather than describes) their general market dominance in SE Asia.

Is there any nice, cumulative book or series about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? I've always wanted to learn more about it, because my current knowledge is 'dysfunctional government, was invaded and consumed by Russians and Germans, had badass cavalry' and my heritage turns out to be almost entirely Polish.

Hello, long time lurker, but this is my first time posting in this sub. I've always felt too intimidated by the incredible wealth of knowledge and resourcefulness from all of the contributors to even so much as ask a question, but this seems like the appropriate thread.

I play a PC game called Europa Universalis IV, which is a historical based Warfare/Diplomatic type game which is set from 1444 to 1821.

I am fascinated in learning more about Europe during this period, like exploration and colonization, the powerhouses like Castile (who I love playing as), France and England...The potential powerhouses like Portugal, Austria/the Holy Roman Empire, Ottomans, etc, and the politics behind all of the single nations (Burgandy, Brittany, Flanders, Bohemia, etc) who were eventually integrated into the countries we know today.

I've looked in the reading list for an author, or a series of books that covers this period, and although I recognize that it is extremely broad, I figured this would be a great opportunity to at least ask this community.

Thanks

Currently reading through a few articles regarding military oral histories, and came across a bit of a gem in Fred Allison's Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight: Changing Perspectives over Time. He makes mention of the Marine Corps Oral History Collection, and I decided to look at what the other branches have to offer.

The U.S. Army Center of Military History has a digital archive of publications, unit histories, art, and other imagery available which covers the gamut of Army history. If anyone is interested, should prove worth the time to dig through.

So I was in a very long flight yesterday, and was browsing the bookstore at the airport, I found a book called "The Shortest History of Europe" by John Hirst. It was exactly what it advertised a short history of Europe not as detailed as the more specialised books I usually read. But it was extremely well written, set up as a serious of lectured for new history students. I finished it on the first leg of my flight. A really good suggestion to people who just want to get a basic overview of it all and the from that decide what they want to read further into.

I'm currently reading The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor and it is AWESOME. I've never been particularly interested in American history because I felt like it was pushed too much in school and this period (outside the revolution) was always given scant coverage. I was hesitant to pick up this book because of that, but I'm glad I did. The writing is excellent and I'm learning so much: the history of Virginia plantations, the culture of slavery, the lives of slaves, the War of 1812, etc. It's so interesting to read about perspectives I've never heard before. I probably should have expected a good read knowing that this book won the Pulitzer, but it's still been a pleasant surprise.

I recommend this book, but I'm curious if anyone else has opinions on it that they might like to offer.

Also, I read Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East by Amanda H. Podany a few weeks ago. This was also a very good book. I've read several more general histories of the Ancient Near East, but this was a nice change in that it focused on a single topic (diplomacy/international relations) throughout the time period. I recommend the book, but wanted to share what I thought was a funny part of it.

One section near the end of the book discusses a peace treaty between Shattiwaza, king of Mittani, and Suppiluliuma, king of Hatti. The treaty lays out how Shattiwaza will be subordinate to Suppiluliuma and includes a section naming the deities of both nations that observed the treaty and the oaths that went with it. These deities were witnesses and guarantors of the oath. The treaty laid out the punishments that would befall Shattiwaza and his people if he broke the treaty (Suppiluliuma, as the clear superior, had no such punishments listed). That section of the book, quoting a translation of the treaty, reads:

The gods would "destroy you [and] you Hurrians, together with your land, your wives, and your possessions." The people would "have no progeny," and would live in "poverty and destitution," while Shattiwaza himself would be subject to the gods' particular ire: "they shall overthrow your throne...shall snap you off like a reed...you shall be eradicate. The ground shall be ice, so that you will slip. The ground of your land shall be a marsh...so that you will certainly sink and be unable to cross. You, Shattiwaza, and the Hurrians shall be the enemies of the Thousand Gods. They shall defeat you."

emphasis mine

Maybe there's something symbolic here that I'm missing, but I just love the fact that a treaty describing how a Thousand Gods will destroy Shattiwaza and all his people took the time to mention that they will also make him slip and fall on ice. That amuses me for some weird reason.

Can anyone recommend a book that details the day to day operation of a Catholic convent in pre-Renaissance Europe? I'm researching background for a project, and I'm having trouble finding reliable sources. I'm looking for anything that will give me a good idea of how a typical convent would have been run, both internally (rules, activity, and interaction amongst the nuns) and externally (how it dealt with the community and the church at large, as well as funding, supplies, etc), and what a nun's daily life would have been like. Basically if anything covering any period from maybe 1100 AD up to the start of the Renaissance would be fine for my need.

What are some good resources to learn more about the Chinese Warring States period?