Thursday Reading and Recommendations is intended as bookish free-for-all, for the discussion and recommendation of all books historical, or tangentially so. Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to:
Asking for book recommendations on specific topics or periods of history
Newly published books and articles you're dying to read
Recent book releases, old book reviews, reading recommendations, or just talking about what you're reading now
Historiographical discussions, debates, and disputes
...And so on!
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion of history and books, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
Any recommendations for books on the origins of Christianity, especially the first 200 years?
Seems like everything I find fixates on the Edict of Milan and Council of Nicaea as the “origins” of Christianity, but I’m especially looking for those first centuries.
I am looking for any good reccomendations on books about the history of the Imperial Japanese Army. A lot of what I've found in bookstores comes off as pop history, but I would be really interested in reading something with a bit more academic merit.
Additionally I can only read English, so any Japanese language histories are unfortunately not helpful.
Thanks!
I'm looking for books that analyse the history of the Holy Roman Empire (preferably from the 15th Century onwards, but I'm not too picky) from a Marxist historiographical perspective. I know Engels' The Peasant War in Germany, but nothing else. All suggestions are appreciated.
I started doing some reading on Sergo Ordzhonikidze the other day. For those who aren't aware, he was an early Bolshevik and a close ally of Stalin, at least initially. Sergo (I won't keep spelling his name, which is Georgian by the way) was the first head of Heavy Industry, and thus was the nominal head of the first Five-Year Plan. Before all that he led the Bolshevik conquest of the Caucasus, and gained a name there for being brutal and uncompromising, and his actions actually (namely the Georgian Affair; see below) led to one of Lenin's last political moves, an attempt to call out Stalin (though Lenin was too sick to do anything, and so Stalin remained). But Sergo also was opposed to the Purge, and tried to defend some of his Heavy Industry people, and ended up shooting himself before he was caught up in anything.
Anyways, I started reading on him regarding the Georgian Affair, which was about Soviet nationality policy, based on how the Bolsheviks wanted to handle Georgia. I won't get into details here, but it was a defining moment in the formation of the Soviet Union. But while reading on it I realised I didn't know a lot about Sergo, so wanted to study him a bit first. Been interesting so far, I have to say.
Looking for book recommendations on the viking age in either the British Isles or Scandinavia. Especially interested in the GHA and the unification of the Scandinavian countries. I've read Julian Richard's "Viking Age England" and am looking for other English language sources.
Any recommendations for modern (last 15 years or so) scholarship on the Minoans for the casual reader? The few books I've been able to order through my local library have been extremely dated and seem to have been driven by wishful thinking (no judgment...I love the image of peaceful, relatively equal and free, hippy bull leapers...that fantasy image is what initially made me curious about the Minoans, but I don't think that image is a fair representation of current scholarship....)
Any good recommendations on WW1 or WW2 books.