Last week was the centenary of the 1916 Rising in Ireland. General consensus is that the event and accompanying coverage were actually managed very well, to pretty much everyone's surprise. Most of the posturing that usually marks the debate over the Rising was absent, replaced by a reflective yet appreciative mood*. I was particularly impressed with the emphasis the programme placed on women and civilians in the Rising, a marked step beyond '15 dead martyrs'.

Here's a short article from Diarmaid Ferriter, at the forefront of the current generation of historians on early 20th C Ireland, on the commemorations and the relevance of the Rising today. I'd particularly agree with the below passage:

The tone of the 1916 centenary commemorations was well pitched, as pride was allowed to breathe again and people took ownership of their history. There has been a laudable determination to accept the revolutionary generation on its own, complicated terms.

What was dispensed with, and rightly so, was a corrosive cynicism and suffocating judgmentalism that renowned Cambridge historian Richard Evans has characterised as “lecturing the people of the past on how they should have done better” and wishing a personality change on the generation of a century ago.

Of course, during the commemorations, questions were asked about the legitimacy of events 100 years ago, and these are part of the debate now as they were then. It is not for us to unthinkingly justify or condemn, however, but to seek to understand contemporary motivations.

*At least more reasoned than the man who informed me today, earnestly, that Ireland's current problems stemmed from "not being occupied by the Waffen SS for a decade". Unfortunately you don't have much choice of conversation partners in hospital.

Could anyone recommend books on the Ancient Near East that aren't on the sub's Reading List? I've read both the van der Mieroop books and enjoyed them. The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture certainly seems thorough but is quite expensive. The rest of the list, outside of Ancient Turkey, is biblical history, which doesn't interest me too much even though I should probably check it out. I'm hoping someone could provide a suggestion or two.

Just to mention it, outside of the reading list I've also read Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek, Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick, and Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East by Amanda H. Podany. All of those were good, as I recall, but Brotherhood of Kings was the most interesting since it took a different focus and covered different areas than the others.

I'm reading Will McCant's The ISIS Apocalypse at the moment. I suppose it's necessary but I always find it a little jarring when books on modern or contemporary Islamism/sectarianism take the sectarian account of early Islamic history at face value. So for instance I'm not super comfortable with short-hand summaries like:

As one might expect, the partisans of the losing side, called the Shi'a of Ali (Partisans of Ali and later just the Shi'a)...

It's not wrong per se, it's just you have to be really careful with conflating early dynastic conflict in Islam with later sectarian developments, which is really reading things backwards. The "and later just the..." makes it sound like it's a purely nominal difference when actually the leap from "the supporters of Ali" in the 7th century to "the Shi'a" (e.g. contemporary Twelver Shia Islam) is not really the same thing.

Could anyone recommend a book on the history of agriculture in general, and fertiliser in particular?

I was recently promised several texts on pre-Columbian Cuba. Here is a dramatization of my experience of trying to read them:

Oh, cool, it starts off with an introduction to the history of archeology in Cuba.

Huh... It seems like it just keeps going. Maybe if I skip ahead...

Wow. Okay, so this section is also a history of archeology, not really the results of said archeology... I mean, not what I was looking for, but still potentially interesting...

Day five. I've been wading through a history of archeology in Cuba for days. Anecdotes and calls for greater collaboration everywhere. Still have yet to learn anything about pre-Columbian indigenous peoples. If anybody finds this, tell my family I loved them.

Can anyone reccomemd a book about European Imperialism in Africa?

I'm recently trying to uncover more on Ngyuen Khanh. Outside of secondary sources from both orthodox and revisionist schools that depict him as a short ruling if rather incompetent "lone wolf" I'm having quite a bit of trouble finding information about him that would be substantial.

Trawling through the New York Times archives it's actually fascinating to see how US reception of Ngyuen Khanh when he rises to power in 1964-1965 changes very rapidly.

I might have to do some more research in the rebellious Buddhist movement too.

I previously posted about this, but I'll just try again: I've recently gotten interested in anti-communist political activity by White Russian émigrés in the United States. There's an awesome-looking book called The Russian Roots of Nazism that's already on my to read list, but several deep dives into library catalogs later, I'm now pretty sure there's nothing comparable for the United States. So my plan is to start with Heale's American Anticommunism and Powers's Not Without Honor for an overview and hopefully a productive mine of more specialized sources. But Heale is now 26 years old, while Powers is a mere 21. Anyone know how they've held up? Has either been superceeded at all?

Are there any good introductions to the theory behind analyzing objects in light of Material Culture? Material Culture is basically my jam, in terms of my historical studies, but I realize I haven't read a systematic, theoretical intro to it, and I am feeling the lack.

Been reading up on Napoleonic->American Civil War warfare. Swords Around a Throne, Battle Tactics of the Civil War, and Civil War Infantry Tactics. Entertaining seeing American Exceptionalist military history (Americans invented modern rifle tactics, destroyed linear combat and decisive battle, and invented guerrilla, trench, and total war!) get its teeth kicked in.