Comrades! Normal posting of /r/AskHistorians Subreddit contest of best of contest would post today but with events of today there will be delaying of contest for day or two!

Does anyone know of some good youtube videos about Rome they could recommend? I'm looking for some that are entertaining as well as reasonably accurate.

I really don't understand the april fool's joke today. Everyone's in-character as historical figures...?

/u/commiespaceinvader rightfully crushed this question when I asked it before. I didn't want to limit it to one specific project as I think that would get away from the heart of what I'm asking. Hopefully, it's suitable to this thread.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has stated a number of times that there are only three drivers for great human undertakings (ex. Great Wall of China, Apollo Program, Great Pyramids.)

Economic

Defense/Military

Worship/Tribute to Gods/Royalty

Is there much truth to this? Or have humans undertaken great projects solely for reasons like those that were advertised for Apollo: adventure, daring, and exploration?

I mentioned reddit and this sub in a job interview a couple of days back as one of answers to how I pursue my interest in history.

I also mentioned Denzel as my favorite actor. Nothing could go wrong!

My inlaws gave me a two volume set of "Engraved Illustrations of Antient Arms and Armour" with the drawings and descriptions by Sir Meyrick and by Joseph Skelton.

I haven't been able to find out much online about the book. I'm basically wondering if there is anything particularly interesting I could find in it. Don't get me wrong, I love having the books and like flipping through the pages but just wanted to know if there is a unique page that I should be showing friends.

Over the past week I've mainly been watching anime, watching Blade Runner, and playing videogames, but I also read Ira Berlin's The Making of African America and had some thoughts on it I figured you might like, so check it out if you're inclined:

https://gunlord500.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/living-the-good-life-episode-1-april-1-2016/

As an overview of African-American history including the very important fourth great migration (The first was the Middle Passage, the second was the movement of slaves across the interior of the U.S, the third the internal immigration of Southerners to the North during/after WWI, the fourth is the immigration of people from Africa of their own free will to America in the second half of the 20th century and ongoing), Berlin’s book is quite solid and I would recommend it as an introductory text to African-American history. However, I do have a few interpretative criticisms—though they’re pretty minor.

Berlin claims that the ‘fourth migration’ (involving African immigrants) is part of the larger current of African-American history. However, he also notes that the Africans themselves don’t necessarily consider themselves African-Americans, nor do the African-Americans consider the African arrivals African-Americans; he demonstrates this throughout the book with news articles, etc. illustrating arguments and occasionally conflict between native and immigrant African communities. It’s a something of a tension he doesn’t really resolve. He kind of brings it up in the very last paragraph of the epilogue, but not in any concerted way. How would Africans themselves—the ones who said the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t part of “their” history, using an anecdote from the beginning—react to being included under the banner of the Fourth Migration? It would have been nice if he’d got insight from an African or Caribbean immigrant directly addressing this question—and I’m sure someone from that community has—rather than the brief note at the end of the book referring back to the “African immigrants discuss the Proclamation” anecdote.

Some more odd things I noticed made me a little suspicious of how he framed black history as a “series of migrations” as well. In chapter 3, his discussion of the second migration (black slaves in America being sold around among the states), he includes the aftermath of emancipation as a part of it. While yeah, obviously, you’ll want a comprehensive American history text to include what happened after the Civil War, categorizing the migrations of newly freedmen as part of the Second Migration, which was amongst the enslaved, struck me as a little strange. Similarly, in chapter 4, on page 154 Berlin states that “contemporaries called the massive exodus of black people from the South the great migration; in fact it was only the beginning of a third passage. it began with World War I and concluded in the decades following the end of World War II.” However, I had always heard that the migration of blacks to the North following World War I was called the first great migration and the migration north following World War II was called the second great migration. Again, I can understand why he’d jettison that schema in favor of one that included the Middle Passage and internal slave trade, but those were still separate events—and grow even more separate when you get to blacks moving back South later on. So it seems to me that while Berlin is correct to characterize migration as an important part of black life, setting it up as “Four Great Migrations” might be lumping in a whole lot of smaller but still distinct migrations into each other. ;o

Finally, on pages 190 to 191, Berlin doesn’t really mention the role of Anti-Nazism in justifying racial egalitarianism following WWII. As I recall, direct repudiation of Nazi racial theories was an important weapon civil rights activists had in their arsenal, but Berlin didn’t mention that at all. That’s no biggie, though, since in a general overview as opposed to a really indepth monograph (The whole book is only about 250 pages, not counting footnotes), that’s a more specific detail it’s understandable to glide over if you’re pressed for space. ;D

Who do you hate most in history? Not in a moral way but in a personal way, which historical figure just rubs you the wrong way?

Posted this question a little over a month ago, but I never got an answer: is this video, purported to be from Nazi Germany, real or Allied propaganda?

http://youtu.be/_1azHYjjG_U

I have read elsewhere that the song is sung to an existing tune with the lyrics changed to be about Hitler, and I've read accusations that this was staged for an Allied propaganda film. Is this a legitimate song that would have been taught to school children during the Third Reich? If not, what are some songs praising Hitler that children, both girls and boys, would have learned as part of their education or as part of their participation in HJ/BDM activities? Sources appreciated if they include English translations.

Anyone know stuff about The English Civil War and the Protestant Dissenters? I've posted that three times but I think it has always been the wrong time.

Hey guys. Looking for an authoritative intro book to the Protestant Reformation. I'm particularly interested in the Radical Reformation.

The /r/AskHistorians goodreads list is...well...its goodreads, and too often I'm fighting with the interface to figure out how highly regarded/how important to historiography a work is from that site.

I know MBTI is bunk, but how fair an assessment of /u/JeSuisNapoleonI is this?

http://www.celebritytypes.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wellington-vs-napoleon1.jpg

I don't really ever see this asked so maybe there isn't a lot of interest, but could anyone tell me about the Nazis? Just generally in like two or three sentences.