So about the middle of September I ordered a pair of used books off Amazon. One is a gift. The other is the only book I've ever seen cited about Emancipation in the US North, bar state-level studies. (And there's like one of those, for New York.) It's from the Sixties. I've searched a few times and come up cold, but I did a fresh one and there was a used copy. Ordered it. Got an unusually long delivery estimate but didn't think much of it; Amazon tends to safe side these things. Usual turnaround, even for third-party shippers, is about a week.

The book does not show up. Once it's been almost two weeks I start to wonder what's going on. I check, but there's no tracking. Figure I'll give another week and then reach out and strangle the seller. A couple of days ago a mauve package arrives in the general shape of a book. It's the one, but the postal markings are unusual so I give it a second look. Amamnford, Carmarthenshire, UK. I'm in Michigan. Unless a lot of the shipping cost (~$4) was buried in the book price (~$10), I think I came out way better on that one than they did. Maybe it's cheaper than I think; I've never ordered books internationally. Last thing I did get from abroad were DVDs from Cambodia via ebay.

Not reading that right now, of course. I finished up Stamped from the Beginning and Kendi ultimately went just where I thought he would. I've written about it before so I'll be quick: he believes white supremacy is a poor deal for most whites and that they'll opt out if only they have the right facts. This is completely contrary to every word of the book written to date, where he correctly notes that no amount of well-meaning education has really moved white supremacy.

From there I've gotten into Keri Leigh Merritt's Masterless Men, which is about very poor whites in the Antebellum South. She's definitely right that "poor whites" in most of the scholarship aren't the utterly destitute people she studies. She's also right that the plantocracy fear for their loyalties to slavery. She's angling for their being natural allies for the Republicans, who at this point are a single issue antislavery party. I'm halfway through and there's still a chapter on race to go, but I don't see how she's getting there at all. Most of what's come has just been ways they're treated like crap and the fact that poor whites and enslaved people sometimes cooperate to mutual benefit. This is not a promising case, particularly given how she also highlights that enslaved labor is an issue because poor whites can't compete with it.

I don't want to read too much into this either, but Merritt's footnotes -she uses real footnotes- for slavery stuff tend toward the old. I haven't gone over them systematically, but there's a lot of Genovese and little of it from even recent works. There's also a bizarre moment where she dances around a point about southern censorship arising as a result of the abolitionist mail offensive of the 1830s. She expresses doubt that the two are clearly connected, whilst citing nothing. Elsewhere she cites Clement Eaton, who absolutely thought they were effect and cause. If there's some kind of debate about that that I'm not aware of, cool. No indication in the notes that there is and I have trouble seeing how there could be.

I suspect Merritt and I are going to have the same disagreement I have with Kendi. They seem to have an ontological commitment to class being more "real" than other sorts of issues, identities, or analyses. So when people privilege something else, they are inherently irrational and deceived. Two books in a row of that and I'm going to be very ready for a long break.

I am hoping that folks can recommend some good general history texts (college level) on the state of Colorado.

I have taken an interest in the Pacific Campaign and the history of naval aviation and am now looking for recommended reading.

On my shortlist so far:

I have heard very good things about Mr Toll's work, which should cover the whole campaign; Shattered Sword I heard is the definitive book on Midway; Kaigun and Sunburst are apparently on the technical side, which is right up my alley. I'd be very interested in suggestions for the same kind of books about the American side!

I finished reading Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus and I'm left wondering. His central thesis is that you can use old bible texts and critical thought to argue that the oldest Christians did not believe Jesus Christ was a historical figure at all, but some metaphysical being that appeared in dreams and hallucinations. I can go along with this to a certain extent. I am willing to say that maybe there was no Jesus, evidence is sparse and some religious sects can believe weird things. I can't read ancient languages, have not studied bible texts, or even read most of the Gospels, I am not going to argue against the man. But my questions center around two issues Carrier seems to wave away.

First there is the constant use of Bayes' theorem to build a numerical model. The thing is most of the numbers are guesses, even the author admits that. The result is anything but precise and I am not sure it is useful. He even urges readers to use their own guesses and see how likely a historical Jesus is in their calculation. I am not convinced by this whole business with the numbers, do real historians actually do this? Does any of this extensive numerical guessery advance the basic argument about Jesus any further than Baruch Spinoza did centuries ago?

The second issue is with the Carrier's whole case. He is considering two hypotheses, namely that there was some sort of historical basis to the Jesus myth, or that there was no such thing. But to the Christian faithful both of these theses must be nearly equivalent, either their religion is based on a falsehood, or it is based on a falsehood. I do not believe and can't really argue the case for it as I am not a Christian either, but Carrier seems to miss a point. I also think he is rude to Christians, for example he refers to an event as a space battle, when he could have equally well have said that there was a celestial struggle between good and evil. This 'space battle' is what he argues the oldest Christians believed in. I think this is basically the equivalent of calling Prometheus an astronaut because he went to heaven to steal fire from the gods.

A bit of a more meta question, but can anyone recommend a good website that has reviews of history books by historians? I find that book reviews by historians tend to give some detail about competing viewpoints and more sense of the overall historiography, which is good context to have when reading a book.

I'm specifically looking for military history but more general sites are also fine. Right now I am reading reviews on H-net and the Michigan War Studies Review website.

I'm looking for literature on 1960s - 1980s American-Middle Eastern foreign relations, with an emphasis on American response towards events developing in the Middle East. Any recommendations?

I'm still reading source on the Battle of Hastings to answer a past question and, since last week, I've read Lawson's The Battle of Hastings 1066 and Christopher Hewitt's The Battle of Hastings: A Geographic Perspective. I originally read Lawson for his source criticism, as he seems to be the best and most recent author to critically analyse them as a whole. I've seen some more recent scholarship, like Katherine Keats-Rohan's expedition of William duke of Normandy and Earl Harold to Brittany in 1064 : the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry and William of Poitiers, which suggest that the Bayeux Tapestry was quite pro-Harold, but overall it's very complete. Lawson also provides plates from two early 18th drawings of the Tapestry prior to some later restoration attempts which don't show any arrow in the eye of the warrior commonly thought to be Harold, but a spear part raised. The arrow appears to have been added later.

Hewitt's thesis is also quite interesting. Almost every author who writes about the Battle of Hastings doesn't look at the geography beyond the physical battlefield itself, and there are often assumptions made about changes to terrain without much recourse to evidence. Hewitt, on the other hand, uses a variety of modelling techniques to test this idea and examine other factors important to the campaign (sources of salt, iron, crops and troops).

One important conclusion from the thesis is that the slope of terrain in the Hastings area has changed little from 1066. Even with all the human modifications made over the years, it was possible for Hewitt to model backwards from a 2005 DEM to 1065 in 50 year increments, and then forward from the generated 1065 map to 2005. The generated 2005 map matched the real world map almost exactly. This demolishes Lawson's argument that the slope of the hill has altered significantly over time.

However, the relatively low resolution of the DEM (50m) does mean that localised changes are unlikely to show up. For example, while the overall slope of the terrain below Battle Abbey might not have changed significantly, there may have been roughness or terracing that has been smoothed away by human interference over the millenium since the battle.

Another important part of his study was calculating the number of armoured soldiers Harold could have easily drawn on prior to the battle. Based on land use derived from the Domesday Book, roads, the location of estates run by the Godwinsons, the assumption of one armoured man for every five hides, and a limit of a three day ride from Battle for riders and six day march for foot, he estimated a total of 2500 armoured men might have rallied to Harold's standard. He adds a further 5000 lightly armed levies to the total, though he offered no evidence for that figure. I can only guess that it was derived from his estimate of two Norman foot for every knight, though he also doesn't offer much evidence for that either. I'd have pegged the ratio at 3 or 4 to one, based on 12th century numbers. Hewitt also doesn't take squires into his calculations - although the Bayeux Tapestry shows them in combat - and he ignores troops from areas other than Normandy in the same calculations.

The final calculation of importance is the amount of food available in the area. Using total cultivated land area from the Domesday Book, the percentage of land used for each type of crop and medieval crop yields, Hewitt calculated roughly how much food would have been harvested in the area. Once he removed the population from the equation (estimated from the Domesday Book), he calculated how long both armies - at various sizes and configurations - could have stayed in the area. I don't think that William had much desire to keep the population in the area fed, but losses from pillaging, inefficient transport and people fleeing with supplies might well reduce the usuable resources by that much anyway. Still, there is the possibility - probability, even - that William brought some supplies with him. To this needs to be added the livestock that Hewitt mentioned but did not - and perhaps could not - calculate.

From this, I believe that Lawson might well have had a point with his argument for larger army sizes than is usually assumed on both sides. I wasn't convinced before, and I'm still thinking it over, but I'm a lot more willing to consider the possibility now than I was before. Still, there's a lot more to consider before I make any conclusions.

Could anyone recommend books on church history? More on the European side of things, time period doesn't matter.

I already got my hands on the full Cambridge History of Christianity, and would also love to hear any opinions about it.

I just picked up A Rabble In Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip's War by Kyle Zelner. It has a very intriguing thesis and I'm eager to see if it meets up with my expectations.

Generally I'm happy to see the historiography of the American militia get more complicated.