Today:
Saturday Reading and Research will focus on exactly that: the history you have been reading this week and the research you've been working on. It's also the prime thread for requesting books on a particular subject. As with all our weekly features, this thread will be lightly moderated.
So, encountered a recent biography of Stalin that revealed all about his addiction to ragtime piano? Delved into a horrendous piece of presentist and sexist psycho-evolutionary mumbo-jumbo and want to tell us about how bad it was? Need help finding the right book to give the historian in your family? Then this is the thread for you!
I stumbled across this fantastic reading list from the Michigan State University library called "Who Would Have Thought There's a History of That?" It combines really focused, single-context topics (Street Gang: A Complete History of Sesame Street) with sweeping narratives that follow one topic through centuries or millennia (Virgins: A Cultural History).
I've been and remain somewhat critical of long-term histories, having seen non-medievalists take the wrong sources at face value (Salt: A World History, I'm looking at you), I know. But this looks like a list of sheer joy to read, even with some inaccuracies almost a given.
:D
Blew through North of Slavery at two chapters a day and started in on Slaves without Masters, which is a book about free blacks in the slave states that so far doesn't include a lot of them, but it's the early chapters yet. Things improved considerably once he got into talking about life on the Gulf Coast. Looks like it's going to be good, but a bit denser than my last few.
I am more than a week ahead of my summer reading schedule, so that's nice. Two chapters a day appears sustainable.
I've been looking for two books. Any one have any recommendations for a book on the western front of the civil war. Also, anyone have a recommendation for a book on the occupation of Japan after World War Two?