"books on a particular subject" ... erm, I'm just looking for recent interesting books that are lively and accessable for someone outside the field. Is that too vague?

What I've read recently were recommended in various posts here. They tend towards debunking, interestingly. In partial repayment of any help, I'll recommend them here (and omit specific glitches).

• Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. This is the favorite in my recent reading. A pretty descriptive title, and it doesn't have little nits (or big honkin' lice) like I saw on the others that I've read.
• In progress: Eric Jager, Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris. That's the provost of Paris's investigation into the murder of Louis, duke of Orleans. Fascinating, and I got a /r/HistoryAnecdotes post out of it. It's a little repetitive.
• Charles J. Esdaile, The Peninsular War. Massively detailed, covering the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, not just militarily but politically too. Lots of quotations of primary sources. He wrote about the devastation and mindless looting by passing soldiers a lot and in detail, which is something I haven't seen before. Wellington's saying/coining "the mere scum of the Earth" to describe his men is a lot more understandable.
• Mary Beard, SPQR. Lively indeed. It was bold of her to not name any emperors (unless needed for a specific point) or bother with much narrative between Augustus and Caracalla, on the grounds that the empire was basically stable. I think the notion works. To see lots of previous discussion of her here, do a subreddit search for "Mary Beard": she has been highly praised as a thoroughly solid scholar and good writer.
• Jonathan B. Parshall, Shattered Sword. A gine narrative of the details of the Battle of Midway. The continual ax-grinding was a bit distracting, though given the entrenched narrative, it's hardly surprising and maybe necessary. I'd love to see a counter-rebuttal -- there have to be holes in those arguments, but he's polemical enough that I don't see them. I wish he'd supported better his notion that Frank Jack Fletcher was a good admiral, thereby debunking Morison.
• On my "for later" shelf: Charles C. Mann, 1491.
• On my "for later" shelf: Marcello Simonetta, The Montefeltro Conspiracy.
• didn't read: Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. It has good reviews, but I realized that I didn't want to read about those rat-bastard conquistadors.

I'm trying to gather together some reading on royal confessors and waiting for a bunch of interlibrary loans about Renaissance cosmetics and material culture to come in for me. (Marta Ajmar-Wollheim's At Home In Renaissance Italy, the V&A's Renaissance Secrets, Recipes, and Formulas, Shirley Nelson Garner's '"Let Her Paint an Inch Thick": Painted Ladies in Renaissance Drama and Society', and a couple more.) Does anyone have recommended reading on either of those topics?

I came across a French re-enactment site where a member had made a speculative replica of the Sleeve of Saint Martin, with an English translation of the article. It included a quite detailed listing of information from the original French academic reports, as well as some good photographs showing the process of making the replica. The sleeve is one the only pieces of textile armour from the High Middles Ages (though, technically, it's not really armour, but padding for it), with the only other notable example that I'm aware of is this leather facing for an aketon or gambeson.

Interestingly, despite its thinness (<=8mm), the sleeve was constructed of two stuffed and quilted halves sewn together, much like the pourpoint of Charles VI. The major difference is how the stuffing and quilting was done - through the padding for the sleeve, and stuffed into tubes for the pourpoint. I don't have the practical skill to say whether this was purely for ease of production or because it would provide more protection (although I'm leaning towards ease of production), but it's something to consider when constructing thicker pieces for practical tests.

I've been reading the book Sota Suomesta: Suomen Sota 1808-1809 and I'm wondering if there are any other noteworthy books about this topic both in English and/or in Finnish?

A while ago, while looking into Greek-Indian philosophical and religious transmission, I came across a curious article published in the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies called The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters Among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World By Georgios T. Halkias. In it, Halkias makes a case to identify the gymnosophist Kalanos -who self-immolated in front of Alexander's retinue after falling ill and accompanying them to Persia- as a Buddhist, rather than a Jain or Brahman as is typically thought. While I find his argument sturdy, some might say enlightening, I think he perhaps goes too far in identifying them as definitely Buddhist.

For starters, while there is no evidence of Jain presence in Taxila prior to the first of second century CE there is only scant evidence of Buddhist presence in the area at the time, and the lack of evidence does not mean that they were not there, for if the Buddhists were why couldn't the Jains be? Similarly, he also tries to use this as justification for Pyrrhon of Epicurus being influenced by Buddhists, but there is little evidence of this as Pyrrhon and Kalanos never met. Furthermore, his dismissal of Ajñana identification for the teachers of Pyrrhon is based almost entirely on the somewhat unreliable Buddhist criticism of them. However, these are fairly minor flaws, and identification (of Kalanos and Gynosophists) with Jains is quite suspect because as Halkias points out, Jain ascetics can't handle fire. There is no evidence that they ever could and it seems highly likely they never practiced self-immolation.

Furthermore, the supporting evidence is quite good. His identification of similar practices among other groups who have a far more sound case for being Buddhist clearly establishes a link between Buddhism and self-immolation during the Classical Period. Similarly, Halkias clearly establishes, through use of Buddhaghosa's work, that there were monks who lived outside of the norm (however, there is no evidence they existed at the time of Alexander, though the Paccekabuddha path advocated in certain parts of the Pali canon certainly could serve as evidence for a VERY early origin of it). Certainly, along with other points he makes a somewhat convincing argument.

I would offer another, perhaps speculative hypothesis, though I'm not sure I believe it myself. I would put out the possibility that Kalanos was an Ājīvika. Studies on the Ājīvikas are few and far between owing to the scarcity of sources and the general lack of interest. However, in Arthur Basham's landmark book, History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas, he establishes two important details, the Ājīvikas association with fire and ritual suicide. While the Ājīvikas are linked to suicide through fasting like the Jains, their association with fire is attested throughout Jain literature. They were also widespread in India at this period and were perhaps the largest competitor to the Jains and Buddhists, so their presence at Taxila is not impossible. However, there are significant flaws in this hypothesis. For one, as I mentioned, the Ājīvikas had a fairly complex death ritual, none of which is attested in the accounts given in the case of Kalanos, however, this was perhaps only an ideal, or a marker of the final rebirth as in the case of Gosāla. That said, an inner fire is mentioned as one of the pure drinks, or the consequences of pure drinks made at the final part of death and suicide did seem to be common among their sect. There is also the matter of Kalanos talking, while Ājīvikas valued silence as a form of asceticism, however, this too seems to have been an ideal as there are many records of Ājīvikas speaking.

This is meant to be more of a thought, perhaps a devils advocate, that I have had on my mind sense reading it. I'm not sure how much more can be said on the issue as we will likely never have anything more concrete than what we have. Likely, we will never know whether Kalanos was a follower of the Vedic religion, a Buddhist, a Jain (unlikely), an Ājīvika, or some other lost sect, there simply isn't enough information to determine. However, the identification with the Ājīvikas seems never to have been suggested, so I'm hoping that someone more learned than myself on the issue can give a more nuanced view of the suggestion now that it has been offered, though I have no idea who that would be since very few people have even heard of the Ājīvikas, and even fewer study them.

What are some good sources for finding the estimated historical populations? The time period I'm looking for is 1400 onward.

I need the population estimates of Ireland (the island) , GB, France, Italian regions, Iberia, Japan, Korea, South India. But really anything belonging to the time period will work fine.

Does anyone have knowledge about which continental archives have what for the Holy Roman Emperors? Specifically Maximillian and Charles V. I know Spain has some things and Austria might have others. Did any of them publish catalogues in English before everything started to be online?

Also, are there ANY finding aids for what might be in the Vatican archives. I’m not looking for secret stuff, just correspondence from 1490-1540 ish with various rulers that might be collecting dust down there.

An overview of Japanese history, with a focus on narrative history?

I've read A History of Japan in three volumes by George Sansom. It's pretty large and I found it a bit dry. It's also from about 1960, which is nearly 60 years ago.

Eric Jager, Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris.

No, sir, I don't like it.

It's about the assassination of Louis, duke of Orleans and brother to the king of France, in the streets of Paris in 1407. The focus is intended to be on Guillaume de Tignonville, provost of Paris, who investigated.

The thing I liked: a look at a medieval crime investigation. He dispatched investigators over the city, looking for eyewitnesses along the route and others.

In my opinion, the fundamental problem is that he was trying to support an edifice on a slender reed. The original report is a scroll 30 feet long -- maybe 60 pages in modern type, I guess? He uses it as the meat of a book of 256 pages.

The tactical dislike: he gives a lively narration of the assassination, saying who saw what when. Later, he has what seems like an eternal chapter giving the depositions of various witnesses. Been there, done that, read his far more coherent overall description. It might have been better if he had given the depositions first, especially if they had come to his notice out of order, and then provided the lively narration as a summary. Or it might have been better to have only the narration without the details ... but that would have gotten rid of bulk, which he seemed to need a lot.

The major dislike: the investigation wasn't that important, or if it was, Jager doesn't provide evidence of that. Actually, didn't provide evidence of a lot of the statements that he made. I think Jager overblows the whole thing. The evidence presented, so far as I saw, just got de Tignonville to know a possible livery color, and know that there are a lot of people involved. Further stuff, like him suspecting where the killers fled, does not appear to be sourced. Then there are even wilder unsourced things like "Guilllaume waited from an answer, knowing that he was taking a terrific gamble"; that feels to me like what Barbara Tuchman decried in The Guns of August, the "he must have" style: "As he watched the coastline of France disappear, Napoleon must have thought back over the long ...". And "Guillaume solved the case" (p. 3): not demonstrated at all. The murderer confessed when (so far as I could tell) no man pursueth; Guillaume just asked the great lords to allow him to enter their houses and question people. It somehow did prompt the confession, but damme if I see how.

And speaking of padding: chapters 12 through the epilogue go thru the later French history and politics of Burgundy versus Orleans up to the battle of Agincourt and a few years after. That's totally irrelevant to the police document.

All in all, I think Jager was spreading a little paint over a big wall, and seemed to present unsourced speculation as historical fact.