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!
A common setting in WW2 FPS games are small French communes and/or towns where you fight in skirmishes and/or small battles. For example, in the first Call of Duty game, you take part in the engagement at Sainte-Mère-Église What are some good books or articles that talk about WW2 engagements (such as Sainte-Mère-Église) which took place in small communes or towns?
I have always been interested in how people's taste in fiction and music have changed over time. For example, today, people of all ages and backgrounds in film, from casual movie goers to serious film buffs, can say they like Star Wars, but when when Star Wars first came out, mostly younger people liked it and older people like Alec Guinness didn't. (There is even a contemporary review from the New Yorker or something that said [paraphrased] "Star Wars is for children and adults that haven't grown up.") Similarly, almost everyone today likes the Beatles but when they first started, only teenagers liked them while adults did not. What are some good books that explain this type of change in taste for fiction and music throughout the 20th century?