I'm in the process of reading Susan Reynold's Fiefs and Vassals and I am finding her arguments to be very interesting as they are making me question what I thought I knew about medieval socieities. Truthfully, it is a lot to take in but I find she does an excellent job at putting across her points. I particularly like her analogy about medieval society being similar to a trifle with the boundaries between status groups being very blurred compared to what sone historians say and that collective values 'soaked' through to touch every part of society. I imagine I have a lot of work ahead of me in understanding Reynold's arguments but I also have some shorter essays of hers that are helping me grasp some of the basics.

Reposting a comment of mine on last week's RnR thread with some additional requests!

Hi there! Lately I've found myself to be really interested in industrialisation from an historical perspective. I'm looking for resources about the industrial revolutions, and about how the USA grew into an economic powerhouse.

For the first industrial revolution I found a book, called The Enlightened Economy, by Joel Mokyr, since it was recommended on this subreddit.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could chime in and let me know if there are other books, about either the second industrial revolution, or focused about economics, industry and production in the late 19th century and early 20th that you guys consider to be great. Something along the lines of Tooze's The Wages of Destruction (which, by the way, I already read and greatly enjoyed). Something like The Deluge (from the aforementioned author would be great), but unfortunately its reviews both on this subreddit and in other places are quite critical.

Additionally I'm extremely interested in hearing any thoughts about Jorn Leonhard's Pandora's box: A History of the First World War, it's a relatively new book (the german edition is from 2009, the english language one from 2018) about world war one, some reviews hailed it as the best single volume history of the war (it's pretty long, coming in at 1100 pages).

Finally, I'm interested in books about the history of astronomy (I recently bought an astronomy textbook, which provides some information on the history of astronomy, yet, as quite a few answers on this subreddit said, scientists are usually not that great at writing history), and books about anarchism (for example the Free Territory of the Ukraine and the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, or a more general history of the movement, since i'm interested in Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and the likes. Thanks to this subreddit I got the Spanish Civil War covered).

Thank you very much!

Does anyone have any recommendations for good books on Zhou Enlai.

I'm reading The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer and I'm looking for something similar but covering Continental Europe and, specifically, the Austro-German regions. For further specificity, I'm looking for a book that details and describes the world of late Medieval (14th-15th century) Central Europe (modern-day Germany and Austria); delving into the cities and towns, landscape, law and order, everyday life, and general atmosphere of the time and place.

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Honestly, I'd appreciate any reading suggestions of this nature for any pre-industrial region, not just Central Europe.

Hey!

I’m looking for recommendations on resources so I can bring myself up to speed on the life and legacy of Alexander the Great. That can include but does not have to be exclusively books!

Cheers