As noted a few weeks ago, I was reading Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan by Adrienne Lynn Edgar (2004). Well I finished that, and have to say it was indeed a great read. It only covers Turkmenistan up until about 1932, but that is when, as Edgar argues, the major developments of the Turkmen identity (as conceived by the Soviets) were undertaken. She covers topics like the territory of the republic, the language and writing system, the class system, and the status of women, all in excellent detail. It has become a key source on early Soviet nationality policy, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic, especially as it's such an easy read, even more so for an academic work.

This will keep me honest (I'm studying for exams)!

This week I read about urbanism in Gaul (one of my exams is on comparative ancient cities) and some fairly well-known monographs on the "decline and fall" of the western Roman Empire.

• Bachrach, Bernard S. “The Fortification of Gaul and the Economy of the Third and Fourth Centuries.” Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume 3, Number 1 (2010).
• Barrier, Sylvie. “Romanisation in Gaul: New Methodological Approaches for the study of Gaulish Fine Ware.” In A. Bokern et al, eds. TRAC 2002: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012.
• Dey. Hendrik. 'Spolia, Milestones and City Walls: The Politics of Imperial Legitimacy in Late-Third Century Gaul,' in S. Birk Toft and B. Poulsen (eds.), Patrons and Viewers in Late Antiquity (2011)
• Goodman, Penelope J. The Roman City and its Periphery: From Rome to Gaul. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Périn, Patrick and M. Kazanski. “Identity and Ethnicity During the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of the Archaeology in Gaul.” In R. W. Mathisen and D. Shanzer (eds). Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011.
• Woolf, Greg. Becoming Roman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Mathisen, R., Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition. Austin, TX, 1993.
• Ward-Perkins, J.B. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. New York: Oxford, 2005.
• Heather, P. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford, 2005.

edit: formatting

It seems that I can ask for book recommendations here?

I'm currently extremely interested in the crusading period, specifically during the first crusade. I'm currently reading a book about the Teutonic Order and the northern crusades, it's called "Teutonic Knights" by William Urban.

Can I ask for recommendations about books to read about this topic? My main method of selecting them currently is by whatever books are in the "also purchased" section of Amazon, and then checking out the reviews. Most of these books have a very small sample pool of reviews so it's hard for me to make a decision. For instance, currently I have my sight on "Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193" by R. C. Smail.

It's has only 4 reviews all of which are positive but I don't know just how much I can trust them.

I'm specifically looking books about life after the crusading Kingdoms were founded and how they lived and tried to hold their holdings, which the above book seems to do, but I'm also interested in books about the crusades as a whole.

Bonus points if you can offer me books which have an electronic format as sadly, I'm Ecuadorian and it's very hard for me to obtain these books as they won't ship to me and shipping them to my country is not easy.

Would it be presumptuous to ask to read the PhD or master's theses of the flairs/participants of this sub who have written one? I apologize if it is. If it is, might I ask what reading led you be interested in what you wrote about?

Edit: How about the abstract?