This weekend I'm reading John Haldon's newly published The Empire That Would Not Die: The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640–740 (2016). And. It. Is. Amazing.

I haven't finished it yet, but Haldon sums up quite well the huge amount of progress we have made in the last few decades in understanding the Roman/Byzantine empire in the seventh century. So much has changed that even the basic narrative might surprise the reader, so it is great that Haldon has written such a clear synthesis of the latest research. Moreover, other studies tend to be very specific and as a result overlook the 'bigger picture'; this book however fills this important gap, adding a much broader perspective to the recent explosion of studies on the seventh century. In between all his incisive comments on socio-economic and cultural change, Haldon also brought in some pretty interesting results from studies on the environment, which is super-exciting for me, particularly in light of the recent research on this topic.

Not everyone will agree with his conclusions (seventh-century themes don't real!), but I have no doubt that this will be an important book for anyone studying the empire in this tumultuous period. The existing survey of this century, Haldon's own Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture (1990), has done its job well, but now we have a whole new book to cite and/or argue against. It is too soon to say that we have dispelled the myth of the Byzantine 'Dark Ages', but Haldon's work presents an impressively nuanced and non-judgmental picture of the past, an important thing to consider when there is so much nonsense out there about there being a 'clash of civilisation' between Christianity and Islam and the improbable idea that the eastern Romans somehow preserved 'civilisation' for Europe. As for myself, I certainly will quote it extensively in my answers at /r/AskHistorians from now on!

I'm writing on the military reputation of Sparta at the moment, but I was distracted by Anton Powell's 'Why did Sparta not destroy Athens in 404, or in 403 BC?' (in Hodkinson/Powell (eds.) Sparta & War (2006) 287-303). I've answered this very question here a month ago based on what I'd heard, but I hadn't previously read this recent specific treatment of the question.

While it seems my answer mostly holds up, Powell dismisses the traditional explanation offered by Paul Cartledge and Donald Kagan that balance-of-power politics and fear of Thebes stayed Sparta's hand. We are inclined to regard Thebes as a rising power, given the events of the decades that followed, but the Spartans had no way of knowing this at the time. An intact Athens would have seemed a much greater threat than a growing Thebes.

Powell instead places the decision in its context of internal rather than interstate politics. In the thread I linked, OP mentioned Lysander, and I spoke about him briefly in my post. Powell instead bases his entire reasoning on the fact that factionalism was on the rise in Sparta; Lysander was getting too powerful, and resistance to his domination of Spartan policy was growing stronger. It was clear to the Spartans that Lysander's power base rested on his access to vast amounts of money as well as his personal influence with the narrow oligarchies he had put in place to govern the cities he had "liberated" - including Athens. Therefore, they could not allow him to sack Athens when he took it (which would have brought in a tremendous quantity of cash), and they could not allow him to prop up the Thirty Tyrants when Thrasyboulos' democratic insurgency brought them down.

I really like this explanation for the way it ties into Hodkinson's account of how Sparta's rise to Empire created tensions within a previously insular socio-political system that deliberately curtailed the ambitions of its citizens. It also shows that Greek city-states' policies are essentially self-interested, short-sighted, driven by personal motives, and often irrational. Sparta cared much more about Sparta than it did about Athens, and this could ironically turn out to work in Athens' favour.

I'm currently reading a report from a Royal Commission appointed to investigate the Andover Union Workhouse in 1845. There were allegations of extreme cruelty and very low diets there, so low that inmates (not prisoners, strictly speaking, although they were certainly subject to coercive measures such as being locked into rooms to work and sleep, and being given food only when certain labor had been performed) claimed to have eaten the putrid flesh from the bones of animals sent there to be ground into bonemeal fertilizer.

What's amazing is how Edwin Chadwick fared in this investigation. He was one of the architects of the Liberal state: was one of the Poor Law Commissioners from the enactment of the New Poor Law in 1834, and also the one in charge of the major 1842 report on sanitation. When he was brought before this particular commission, he was questioned for what looks like several days, and his testimony is a solid 80+ pages transcribed. It's shocking how much of it is basically him saying that he doesn't know things, or wasn't aware of this, or hadn't written that particular regulation. He comes off like an absentee bureaucrat!

Still looking through this testimony; after fifty pages of them trying to sort out just who is responsible for what, the investigators start asking Chadwick about how the workhouses work, and how they're supposed to work.

They're like, "So, is this place supposed to be punitive? Are people supposed to be given only the barest support, and only when they've demonstrated that they're literally starving, which we know because we've made these such miserable places that no one would come here unless they had literally NO other choice?"

And he replies, "Uh... no."

"Isn't this exactly what was put into the report that you helped write and put into action in 1834, the one in which you couldn't stop talking about how anyone getting parish relief was 'demoralized' (immoral), lazy, and drunk, and therefore they deserved basically nothing? So, isn't it the case that the abuses in Andover in 1845 are pretty much the logical outcome of the policies and ideology you put in place in 1834?"

"Umm....."

That leads to this exchange, which I will actually quote, rather than just paraphrasing to be funny, like I did above.

"[Q from the investigators to Chadwick] Should you not consider that it [a system of workhouse discipline based on hunger] had been pretty fully carried out if it had been proved before the Committee that the inmates of that house, in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger, had gnawed the extremities of bones, and eaten the marrow from bones they were appointed to crush?"

"[A from Chadwick] If it had been proved so [1], and if it had been proved that that had been the result of hunger [2], of course that conclusion would follow; but I observe on the subject of those principles, that those principles, as laid down in the report of inquiry, are to be taken with reference to the context (and the context is a very large one), consisting of the whole state of previous abuses; a state of things in which when ratepayers had only meat dinners once a week, pauper had meat dinners every day; a state of things in which when ratepayers eat only brown bread, paupers had white. [3]"

[1] In other words, if those good-for-nothing poor people aren't lying! [They could very well be, but still]

[2] THIS is the real reach, and I think it's here that you can see how Chadwick must be sweating, because what he's suggesting here is that maybe these paupers did gnaw on putrid bones, but not because they were hungry. WTF? Why else would they do it? For the flavor? This line of logic only makes sense if you don't regard the paupers as fully rational, fully "human" beings.

[3] In other words, "We convinced ourselves that the paupers of Britain* were all good for nothing, lazy and drunk, and were living large from government handouts. We found that this was sooooo offensive to us that we institutionalized a starvation-based system of discipline that essentially criminalized poverty. So, if, and I mean IF they're eating putrid flesh off bones, because they're hungry, well, then I guess you have to break some eggs to make an omelet."

• Historian's note--the rise in and problem of "pauperism" goes back to at least Tudor times, when large-scale enclosures of common lands began to throw the poorest segments of the rural population off their lands and out of their usual means for subsistence. With only very fragmentary labor markets in early modern Britain, these people tended to take to the road, looking for employment. Laws going back to at least the late 1400s criminalized this behavior, though it appears (from the Report on the New Poor Law in 1834) that many lords, aristocrats, and other notables didn't really enforce these laws because they recognized the inherent injustice of them, and existed in a moral economy that was far better at finding a place in society for the poor.

I'm interested in two subjects that I'm hoping someone could suggest books for.

First, I'd love to find a good book on the Ancient Near East that isn't on this sub's book list.

Second, I've gotten really into baseball with the start of the season and I'm hoping someone could recommend something on the game's history.

Do any of our Renaissance or Legal scholars know a good biography on Sir Edward Coke? He was a famous jurist and politician of the Elizabethan era and onwards, but despite his influence as the primary author of the Petition of Right, I can't find many biographies on him. My local Barnes and Noble literally didn't have a single book in their inventory for me to flip through. Not much turns up on Amazon either.

I'm slowly making my way through Christopher Tyerman's How To Plan a Crusade and it is slow going. Despite it's pop title and attractive cover it is a dense book. It's supposed to be about the logistics and planning involved in launching a Crusade but the first 100 pages or so focus more on the clergy's role in Crusades (launching them, recruiting people to go on them, that sort of thing).

One thing that makes this work particularly dense is that Tyerman takes the broadest definition of Crusade possible. Not only does he include the Recinquista and Baltic Crusades, he also includes the Albigensian Crusade and other movements like it (for example, the 'crusade' against Frederick II). His broad range of sources and information is impressive, but it can be a bit much to take in. It's breadth is impressive, but it also means his treatment so far has been necessarily fairly shallow. I'm hoping when I get to the chapters concerned with logistics and military planning he'll get more specific.

I'm searching for a good general overview on the rise and fall of the British Empire, particularly the Victorian age. Sadly the books and resources page is pretty lacking in this area, and while there's obviously plenty to find on the Internet, separating the wheat from the chaff is far from easy.

Bonus points if there's an ebook version. Audiobooks would leave me ecstatic, but I suspect Adrian Goldsworthy's works on ancient Rome have left me somewhat spoiled in that regard ;)

There's been a lot of controversy about the Civil War as an essentially Napoleonic conflict, or the first modern war. Basil Liddel Hart believed the campaigns in the west were a 'Signpost that was missed' for WWI, identifying technologies like rifled weapons, railroads, and telegraphs, and practices like entrenchments as foreshadowing for 1914. However, people like Earl J Hess and Paddy Griffith characterize it as essentially the same game as the Napoleonic wars, but rather amateurishly executed, lacking many of the necessary specialized arms or professional officers.

I tend to consider it more in the Napoleonic fashion, but does anyone know of books that address the arguments and still considers it a modern war?

I read and started OCRing seven books on the USN in WWI. I'm also reading a book (published in 1944) about The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, the flip side of the Committee to Defend America First. I have three more books on that topic to read.