I've recently finished a couple of books:

Peter McPhee's Liberty or Death: The French Revolution was a pretty good overview on the subject, although it's certainly a slog for the first 150 or so pages. I thought it did a very good job at showing the tension between Paris and the provinces. At the same time, I feel like McPhee, in his attempt to show the Revolution in an overall good light, downplays the level and role of violence in making the Revolution.

Ervand Abrahamian's The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations is less about the actual coup and more about the Anglo-Iranian oil negotiations that immediately preceded the coup, a topic that the author discusses in a lively manner. At the same time, Abrahamian's argument that the coup was about oil and not (as most historians claim) about Cold War geopolitical concerns is a false dichotomy. The US ultimately saw oil as a major component of it's global Cold War policy, thus I don't think it's possible to disentangle the two.

Currently reading two books:

Jean Edward Smith's Bush, a biography of George W. Bush that focuses primarily on his presidency. This book is based solely on published secondary sources, and does a good job at combining all of them into a well-written, although certainly not lyrical, narrative. (The prose is definitely very workman-like, kind of similar to a Wikipedia page in parts). Smith gives what at this point has started to be called the "orthodox" historical interpretation of the Bush presidency: Bush ill-served the American people as president by his unwillingness to consider alternatives; he was influenced by a nefarious group of neocons (although Smith admits that Bush ultimately had the final call) into an unnecessary war; and there's not much in which Bush left the country or the world in a better place than when he came into office. The analysis certainly lacks nuance, and Smith's book doesn't replace Peter Baker's excellent Days of Fire as the best history of the Bush administration, but it's still a worthwhile read.

Charles S. Maier's Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500 is about the rise of territoriality as a political concept that emerged alongside that of empires and, later, nation-states. Having just read the introduction, I can already say that this book only further solidifies my belief that Maier is one of the greatest historians of the last 50 years. This seems like a book that will interest anyone interested in the rise (and decline?) of states, or for people interested in theories of political sovereignty.

Lastly, does any one have any suggestions for books on post-Revolutionary France? It can be an overview or focus more specifically on a particular era, doesn't matter to me. I'll read most anything at this point as I'm going through a bit of a modern French history binge.

Read The Political Culture of the American Whigs, finishing a bit ahead of schedule. I liked it, but feel like Howe didn't really span the space. His form is to explore the worldview through biographical sketches, which is fine, but there are only two southerners in the lot. You can't neglect Henry Clay, but the other one is Alexander Stephens and he only comes in to show how the Southern Whigs fall apart. There may as well not be a southern wing of the party for most of the book. I know it's a northern-leaning coalition, but the omission was glaring.

Which brings me to Holts The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. It started off fun but really hit the rocks about 1840. Holt says he cut more than 750 pages and it's still a behemoth. I appreciate the attention to complexity and contingency in that, but every election brings state by state surveys of the race and the midterms before. These eat up pages and pages and rarely seem to warrant it. I think he could have done the job with a single example of each thing he wants to talk about and then brief references to the rest. Similarly, the midterms probably don't need detailed explication. He could get by with generalities about the midterms showing signs of weakness or strength and footnote the rest. It gets pretty exhausting.

The book's also going to break my chapter a day system. They're edging up close to sixty pages, mostly quite dense, so new rule: if the chapter is longer than forty pages I have the option to cut it in half and call each a day's read.

Hunting through the published volumes of Hart Crane's letters and making a note of the references to H. P. Lovecraft and Samuel Loveman, whom Crane knew in New York in the 20s - one of Lovecraft's brushes with the literati of the period - and pricing the volumes as part of the debate whether to buy them or not.

[/edit] And then there's the outcome of the lawsuit over the Eddy/Lovecraft stories, which had me going through copyright statements in books just for my own edification. The thing is that in 1924/1925, Clifford M. Eddy Jr. wrote four stories which his friend and neighbor H. P. Lovecraft then revised - to the point of rewriting, as was Lovecraft's habit - and they were published in Weird Tales under Eddy's byline. At that time Weird Tales normally bought the copyrights for the stories, not just first publication rights (and radio rights, since they did some radio adaptations), so the rights should have rested with the publisher - and indeed, at least up until the 1960s that appears to have been everybody's assumption, and the tales were included in several editions of Lovecraft's revisions and collaborations. Now Eddy's grandson claims he owns the copyrights...which isn't impossible, but I'd really like to know more about what he bases that legal claim on.

Anyone have any reccomendations on readings about the Tagsatzung and the Old Swiss Confederacy in general? How about their early conflicts with the Habsburgs? Their economy in the modern period with so many people leaving to become mercenaries? I am disappointed so much of this history seems to only be in French and German.

I'm happy to pearn that at least there seems to be someone who made several books on Swiss watchmaking history though!

I am looking for gold books covering youth groups in nazi germany and the Soviet union such as Hitlerjugend and Komsomol. Any good tips? Otherwise any gold tips on books covering what society was like for the youth of these two regimes? How did they for identity?

So (un)fortunately for my coursework I also need to work with the aspects of Italian history that don't exclusively have to do with the communal era; I'm currently working on a paper on economic policy in the Italian States immediately prior to unification. I was able to receive an advance copy of an upcoming paper on the historiography of Italian economic development by Prof. Vera Negri Zamagni, which has some interesting material I can cite. Because the literature on the topic is so sparse I'm exited to have the opportunity to write about it, and maybe, just maybe, this paper will evolve into something worth submitting somewhere.

If anyone's interested in non-english papers, for the same paper I'm currently reading through LA SITUAZIONE ECONOMICA E SOCIALE DEL MEZZOGIORNO NEGLI ANNI DELL’UNIFICAZIONE. Una rivisitazione. ("The Economic and Social Situation of Southern Italy in the Years of Unification. A revisitation.") by the same author which was published in 2012, and it's a really great comprehensive overview of pretty much everything in mid-19th century Italy!

Starting on a paper that tries to do some intellectual history on the October Revolution, so digging through Ten Days that Shook the World (Reed); State and Revolution, What is to be Done?, and "Where to begin?" (Lenin); and soon The Debate on Soviet Power when it arrives. All primary sources; I have some theoretical backing for my project but not very much in the way of secondary sources yet.