For a seminar this week I'm reading Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire. Unfortunately, it's that time of year where there's a lot of other shit to do, and I'm not an American Indian historian whatsoever, so I am having to give it the briefest of skims.

Yet I'm a little sad about this, because it is one of the most fascinating books I've looked at in a while. Does anyone here have pronounced thoughts on it? Reading reviews, it seems that it has taken a ton of flak for its provocative structuring of the Comanche as an imperialist power. I'd like to ask any Native American scholars here what their reaction was.

Got through Empire of Cotton, which I didn't find as tedious as The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. Beckert tried, but he's no Michael Holt. Having read it all, I'm still not sure that I see a clear distinction between war capitalism and industrial capitalism unless it's just that war capitalism is what one does on the periphery. Suppose it's more viable when some of the periphery can fight back or who does the war than a difference in kind.

Unsure what's next. I've got Eltis' The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas and Frederickson's Racism: A Short History on order but they'll be a week. Could have gotten Eltis as an ebook for a mere ten times the cost of the used copy I'm receiving. I suspect Frederickson is going to be mostly familiar territory, but he's got a chunky appendix on academic discourses on racism that I usually only get by implication. Might read some fiction.

I am finally, finally, getting around to reading Paul Cobb's Race For Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. I've heard nothing but praise for it, and I'm excited to get started. I'm only ~20 pages in, so barely scratched the surface, but so far I'm enjoying it.

I also finished Christopher De Handel's Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts this week. I really enjoyed it, it's definitely worth a read if you're interested in medieval manuscripts.

Alan Moore and Jacen Burrow's comic book Providence #11 dropped this week; which weaves together fact, fiction, and metafiction regarding H. P. Lovecraft and his Mythos. I'm one of those poor souls annotating the issue on Facts in the Case of Alan Moore's Providence website. This particular week was Lovecraft Studies in action as I worked to track down all the references to history that Moore alluded to and Jacen Burrows illustrated - and I'm the resident Lovecraft-expert of the group, and this issue was pretty dense, so I was up past midnight on Wednesday getting the first pass in. Surprisingly few mistakes, but I pretty much know which books Moore is using based on his references and quotations, and which photos Burrows is using for his references for the various authors, so a lot of the "errors" amounts to nitpicks - Clark Ashton Smith looking too old and he didn't start carving his strange statuettes in 1922, Robert E. Howard committing suicide with a revolver when it should have been an automatic, little stuff like that. Still a tremendous amount of work put into this issue, and the series as a whole, to try and make the setting historically accurate (minus the occasional fantastical element).

I'm looking for books (articles) that will give me a good overview (including historiography of):

• The British Empire 1890-1945

• The Second Boer War, incl. and possibly primarily focusing on opposition/relief etc

I'm branching out from my more usual studies on interwar Europe so I'm trying to get an overview of the issues more globally that influence that period without having to read everything on that topic ever.

I'm almost done with Religions of the Ancient Near East by Daniel C. Snell. It seems like a decent introduction to the topic and also goes into the religions of people who interacted with people of the Ancient Near East (Greeks, Romans, Etruscans).

Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN. Chapter on Tet is legitimately cruel with the ironies it presents.

I'm trying to work on my French and Spanish, and thought I might kill two birds with one stone and find some interesting history books to read in these languages, since I'm sure there's a lot of interesting history material that is either not covered well in English or has an interesting point of view presented in other languages. My main criteria are only that it be accessible on a website that either ships to the US or will let me download ebooks in the US, and aren't terribly expensive, ie a well done book that's 20-30€ isn't out of the question, but an awesome book that's out of print or a limited run and costs 60€ probably is.

I'd be particularly interested in general histories of France or Spain, material covering their colonies/the states that followed independence, the Spanish Civil War or a history about pens within either country. Preference goes to books available as an ebook in the US, or available in print on domestic US or Canadian sites where possible. Thanks.

Hey guys I've never posted here either since I don't have the expertise or the research to answer the question, but I'd like to change that.

I was curious about the war in the pacific in general and although I know the basics of they (generally the stuff you can read on wikipedia and stuff online) I was wondering what you guys consider is a good primer for learning more about the pacific war in terms of naval actions and battles.

Finished Bailey's Race and Redemption in Puritan New England. Did not meet expectations. His entire premise relies on colonial New Englanders developing their ideas of race from day to day interactions, and influence from social and religious leaders. Yet if race didn't develop until after these interactions became common place - how do you explain the importation of African slaves by 1638?

You can't. New England was a part of the Atlantic world, and in that world Africans had already been racially subjugated and exploited - as were the Natives whose lands were taken and who were often sold into slavery in the West Indies or traded for African slaves.

And basically all of New England was "puritan" - even the Anglicans. So ultimately a great research question backed by decent research, but plagued by false assumptions and misinterpretations. Oh, and as Francis Bremer's review mentions, the selectiveness of the bibliography shows a bit of a confirmation bias. But I'll leave that to itself.

Hello, all. We are currently resurrecting the idea for a Book Club, originally implemented by /u/mictlantecuhtli. We are renaming it the Reading Group, since we're going to be discussing articles, not reading entire books.

One of the most common types of questions here is for experts to provide insight into the writings and debates of other scholars. For example, 'what do you think of Jared Diamond', 'is White Cargo taken seriously', or 'did Niall Ferguson really say this?!?!?' The idea behind Reading Group is to look at specific articles on important debates within the field of history, all based on articles that are hand-picked by the mod team so as to be interesting and accessible.

As the last sentence of the previous paragraph no doubt tipped you off, an important difference from the last incarnation of this feature will be that it will be heavily curated by the mod team. Specifically, mods will be deciding what articles or fragments of books will be read.

In doing so we will focus on:

1. Making sure the text is accessible to everyone, with no paywalls or other obstacles.

2. Trying to keep the size of the article down to (preferably) 20 pages or less.

3. Only using articles that are written accessibly. If you need a PhD to understand what the hell the author is talking about, that text is out.

The fact that we are curating this topic does not mean we are opposed to suggestions for new reading materials. We welcome any and all proposals, which can be submitted as replies to this comment, replies to the stickied thread which will be posted with each Reading Group thread, or as PMs to me.

Reading Group would be every Wednesday. Each week we would discuss the article submitted the previous week as well as post a heads-up about and link to whatever we were to discuss the following week. I will post the first article we will be reading this coming Wednesday. Those interested in participating will have a week to read it. The following Wednesday we will discuss it and I will post the name of the next article. Rinse, repeat.

I'm working on a final research paper about the warfare tactics of the Hittite Empire. Not the Old Empire or Neo-Hitties though. The part I need help with is putting it in an anthropological/cultural perspective. In the sources I have there is mention of warfare being a way to become a man and how much a part of culture warfare was as well as warfare being promoted by the gods. Anyone have any sources about Hittite religion or cultural norms/expectations?