Good luck to the grad school applicants heading into interview and acceptance season! (In any subject! although I think science interviews usually happen earlier?)

I had a fairly disastrous interview weekend and a prof who tried to veto me, and yet here I am--yeah, you definitely got this!

As many might know, in particular here in Scandinavia, the Finns are known for being rather blunt, pessimistic and non-verbose, preferring to not waste words on trivial matters and chit-chat.

What's interesting is that these tendencies are apparent already in this Finnish medieval chronicle

I was visiting the local bookstore yesterday, browsing their minimal to nonexistent selection of literature on local medieval history. Came across a book called Nobel Streven (Noble Purpose), by Frits van Oostrom, a biography of Jan van Brederode, a Hollandic nobleman of the late 14th - early 15th century. Now, I was familiar with the van Brederode family: they are near impossible to miss if you are interested in the Low Countries during the High Middle Ages. But this particular individual had flown under the radar. After all, he was born quite a while after my main period of interest. Still, I figured it could be a good read. I purchased the 360ish page book... and finished it that evening.

It was nothing short of a masterpiece. Not due to its amazingly gripping reconstruction of Jan van Brederode's life, which was an absolute rollercoaster of events, fortunes and failures - with Jan eventually joining and abandoning the Carthusian Order - but also due to its illustration of the historiographical process behind the story, which was just as (perhaps even more) thrilling. As absolute historiographical climax, it was known that Jan van Brederode fought and perished in the Battle of Azincourt as a mercenary. However, the known contemporary sources were conflicted about which side he fought on. Then two things happened. First, someone in England found an account of (ironically) the French king hiring a mercenary company of 11 men under van Brederode's command in order to fight the English at the siege of Harfleur during the beginning of the campaign. This, however, wasn't seen as resolving the issue, as mercenaries were well known of switching allegiances, and considering the English being outnumbered, it wouldn't be improbable that van Brederode had found employ with them later on. But then the author of the book figured it would be wise to search through older literature on the battle, including accounts that were deemed too improbable to be factual by modern scholars, and eureka, between the dismissed sources there was an account of Henry V being approached by a certain Olandyne leading a mercenary company of 20 men, offering his support to the English army, but the King denied him this, saying he was supposed to be a monk in the Carthusian Order. The source then states how this Olandyne then joined the French instead, in whose service he perished in the battle, proving how God was on the side of Henry V. Modern scholars on the battle had deemed it an apocryphal story with the purpose of improving the image of the King's piety. But Olandyne (a degeneration of Hollandie) was extremely likely to have been Jan van Brederode. A sad ending to the life of such a colourful persona.

I'm not doing the story half the justice it deserves, not in the least because my English is far from perfect. But it gave me a new appreciation of the difficulties surrounding the historiography of the Middle Ages and how local sources are often the missing links between international ones. Sadly, as far as I know, the book is only available in Dutch, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone that knows the language.

For a foreigner, what is the most comprehensive book series covering the history of America?

I'd very much like to experience a story of the birth and growth of the country.

Q: When did Raccoon City zombies first get wrecked by /u/bodombeachbod via Claire Redfield?

A: 1998. But also tonight.

Like most of my achievements, this comes with a "C." They want completion in 5 hours for an "A". Nah. Awesome game though. It was faithful enough to the original without being complete copypasta.

Do you guys (the mods I guess) have any expert on the history of palaeontology or anyone familiar with that subject here?

Antoninus Pius had a biological son - Marcus Galerius Aurelius Antoninus - who was bypassed by the adoption of Marcus Aurelius. What happened to him, and what was his role during the reign of Marcus?

Fairly recently found out I have a Cossack background. Just looking for good resources on the subject and wondering how they were looked at in a social context.

Were the 70’s truly a more innocent and tamer time? I was talking to my parents and their friends, and whenever they discuss serial killers of their time( we had just watched the Bundy tapes) they mention how besides the notorious serial killers, people never suspected things like this could go on and the scope of evil was different. So was there such a large cultural gap - when it came to the belief of crimes, that straight up caused an ignorance? Or could it just be the lack of media presence due to technology that caused people to not know what was going on?

I'm finishing Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy on the American campaigns in North Africa, Italy and Western Europe in WWII. Does anybody have recommendations on similarly comprehensive books/series for the Pacific theater or the Soviet war effort?

I've become interested in entrenching tools used in WWI and WWII, does anyone know where I can read up more on them? I'm having some trouble finding sources that give info (in terms of design, development, manufacturers, etc.)