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.
I'm currently reading the Dead Zone by Stephen King, which is pretty good, but I'm planning on reading something more historical soon. For the past couple of years I've made a habit of reading one long presidential biography a year, and this year my in-laws gave me a crap ton of them, so I have to choose which one I want to read this year. I'm being very indecisive, though, so I thought I'd put it to a vote. The options are:
Currently reading a collection of first person accounts of the Eighty Years War between the Dutch and Spain, it's very interesting and really colours in the knowledge I already had.
Hello all,
I'm interested in books that deal with treaties with First Nations peoples in the US and in the settler colonies of the British Empire. I'd like to compare them to the attitudes and actions taken by the British in Australia.
Also, I'm currently re-reading This Whispering In Our Hearts by Henry Reynolds, and were I made dictator of Oz I'd make sure every house had a copy. It details the actions taken by white humanitarians on behalf of Indigenous Australians from 1788 to the late 90s. It shows not just the atrocities, but also the best and worst of the societies at the time.
I have finally made the step (and financial free-fall) to order some of the most comprehensive period sources concerning the high and early part of the late middle ages in the Netherlands, a gap in my otherwise fairly extensive library on that subject where it concerns the academic literature. I'm eager and excited to have much more convenient access to passages that I've been scraping off the internet from various transcripts and translations as well as in second hand through the aforementioned literature.
It concerns: an unknown author's and Melis Stoke's Rijmkroniek covering events from 689 to 1305, with incredible historiographic value where it concerns the unprecedented events of the late 13th century (of which Melis Stoke was a contemporary); Willem Procurator's Kroniek covering events from 1168 to 1332 which includes passages from another source I've ordered, Annales Egmundensis (mid 12th century), which has been bundled together with the Chronicon Egmundanum (~1270), a continuation of the former.
I know what I'll be doing the remainder of the summer.
Started reading Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians, and the Russian Revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny. It's a look at the historiography of the Soviet Union, and so far is really neat.
Also finally going through The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917-1921) by Firuz Kazemzadeh. It was published in 1951 and remains the only book that covers this topic in depth. I used parts of it for my MA, but never read through it all. Really enjoying it so far, so many details.
I'm currently in the re-reading phase of the year. Every year I'll pick up two or four books I enjoyed reading in the past, be them fiction, non-fiction or academia related. Right now I'm going through Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals for the sixth time at least. Yesterday I also picked up my 1944 copy of Yevgeny Tarle's 1936 book Napoleon.
Tarle has been criticized for his change of "tune" due to pressures from the Soviet government. I for one, enjoy his rather unique way of doing historiography. Also, reading a Spanish translation of a Russian book that was made less than a decade after the book's release, is always interesting to me.
I just visited Florence and would love to get to know more about the Medici family. I studied history so I'm looking for a good book that isn't too 'popular history'. I saw there are books by Hollingsworth, Hibbert, Parks and Strathern, does anyone know any of these and could recommend some? Thank you!
I'm close to finishing Eric H. Cline's 1177 - The Year Civilization Collapsed and now I'm hooked on the (Late) Bronze Age. What should I read next? Books don't have to specifically deal with the collapse; I would just like to know more about the ancient Mediterranean/Near East world.
Any good biographies or operational histories on Montgomery and British contribution to ww2; didnt see any biographies in the book wiki
Looking for books that delve into the history of middle Eastern societies and their connection to the Indian ocean. Preferably from the colonial and post colonial period but recommendations for older periods is also welcome.
Anybody have recommended reading about the history of carrying weapons concealed in the United States? Or carrying weapons in general?
I've gathered the impression that a lot of the elements of U.S. "gun culture" are recent phenomena. It seems like concealed carry must be one of those things—I'm trying to imagine carrying, say, a revolutionary-era flintlock concealed on one's person and it just doesn't seem even halfway practical. Then again, a glance at wikipedia indicates that there were concealed carry laws as early as 1813. So really I just don't know anything about the history of all this and could use a place to start.