After several weeks of reading through dense academic books for my dissertation, I decided yesterday to pick up a pop history book to read for fun. I bought Rick Atkinson's new book The British Are Coming, the first volume in a planned trilogy. Atkinson's a Pulitzer Prize winning author respected by both the general public and academic historians.

Despite his awards and reputation, I've yet again given up on reading one of his books because of the sloggy writing. He has this unique way of writing a lot but saying very little. Many reviewers have called him "the master of the set piece". They've raved about his lucid descriptions of battlefield terrains, military maneuvers, and the like. I don't understand the praise. His descriptions are often nothing more than an overly indulgent inventory of things. Take, for instance, this paragraph from The British are Coming, which describes a British warship that King George III was reviewing:

More than two thousand mature oaks had been felled to build a ship like this, the biggest most complex machine in the eighteenth-century world, the steam engine and spinning jenny be damned. The king admired the massive oak balks, the knees chopped from tree forks, the thick planks wider than a big man's handspan, the gun decks painted bright red to lessen the psychological shock of blood spilled in battle. Twenty or more miles of rope had been rigged in a loom of shrouds, ratlines, stays, braces, and halyards. Masts, yards, spars, tops, and crosstrees rose overhead in geometric elegance. Even at anchor this wooden world sang, as timbers pegged and jointed, dovetailed and mortised, emitted creaks, groans, and squeals. Belowdecks, where each sailor got twenty-eight inches of sleeping width for his hammock, the powder monkeys wore felt slipps to avoid creating sparks in the magazine. The smells of tar, hemp, pine pitch, and varnish mingled with the brine of bilgewater and vinegar fumigant and the hoglard pomade sailors used to grease their queues. All in all, it was the precise odor of empire.

In the next paragraph, Atkinson tells his readers that the king's cook brought various foods on to the ship:

soups, removes of fish, removes of roasts, pies...pastries, aspics, blancmanges, and jellies followed by fruit, ices, and compotes. The libations...were no less prodigious: 5,580 bottles of wine and 1,140 bottles of rum, arrack, brandy, beer, and cider.

There's beautiful writing in that inventory of things, but over several pages it just completely stalls any type of narrative progression. Atkinson's narrative, in other words, too often gets lost in description.

I've put the book aside for now. Hopefully, I'll pick it up later in a more forgiving mindset. I've instead chosen to read David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. McCullough gets a lot of flak from academic historians--too much, I think--but I've found most of his books to be good, if somewhat superficial, reads.

There is a brand new book called The Middle Ages: Fact and Fictions by Winston Black (ABC-CLIO, 2019) including chapters like: Was the Middle Ages the Dark Ages? Did medieval people bathe? Did people eat rotten meat covered in spices? It's basically Ask Historians for medieval questions, in book form, and I just thought I would put in a good word for it here! Everyone rush out and buy it today!

I mentioned it in an actual post but I'm trying to hunt down some actual substantial info on 18th Armoured Car Regiment (12th Manitoba Dragoons) from WWII. Any recommendations?

Edit: appears I never hit post or it got deleted but got no message...

So heres the whole thing:

I'm attempting to track down the regimental history of the 18th ACR (12th Manitoba Dragoons) especially from their time in Normandy through the end of WWII in Europe. The copies are rare at best, though located in a couple universities in Canada and the New York City public library. Does anyone have access to these, or have some other document recommendations more widely available?

The purpose is for my own research, and probably a write-up to supplement "Fortress Europe" for Flames of War.

I originally posted this in the subreddit for Paradox games:

There are two types of books i'm wondering if anyone here could recommend - I'm assuming some of you are history students even:

1: History of military tactics - Books that give more details on army composition and weapons and the fall of horse infantry. I find the military technology, describing hussars and pike infrantry etc very interesting.

2: Victoria 2 technology - Any books that cover the industrial revolution and the technological leap. Researching technology is actually my favorite part of Victoria 2. Going from the napoleonic tech and exploding into early modern technology is so interesting. The industrial revolution etc.

Thank you in advance.

Looking for something on Latin America in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (mainly the time around the various military dictatorships) similar in nature to Peter Kornbluh’s Pinochet Files.

Also anything and everything on Brazil during that timeframe!

Looking for a few suggestions

1. A good overview of the Latin American Wars for Independence across Central and South America.

2. A Book/books on 17th-18th century Carribean and Central American colonial affairs. The difference in management approach and economy of the French, British, Dutch, and Spanish colonies.

3. Your favorite book on the history of piracy during the golden age. I have a list of 30 and am looking to narrow it down to the good, in depth, reputable histories.

I am wondering if there are any good books on ancient Babylon. Thanks!

Looking for some good starter reads on the American frontier as well as the 'wild west.'

Does anyone have suggestions for an overview of historiography and/or history and theory? Preferably a book with a chapter each on the major thinkers in history like Braudel.

Hello! I’m looking for reading recommendations to point me toward what an educated person would have been expected to know/read if they lived in London ~1670-1720.

I’m most hoping for primary source recommendations like Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica — and if there is a preferred translation or edition, it would be amazing to have that specificity. I can’t read Latin, and I’m not sure how much that limits my search.

But I would also like to hear if there are general books about the state of scientific/general knowledge during that time period, or if there are recommendations on types of resources I could explore to try and dig up those books myself.

I'm looking for a narrative history of modern Ireland, by which I mean from the Elizabethan era onward. I'd prefer a single volume, but I wouldn't mind volumes on particular eras (Elizabethan, Stuart, Revolution, Troubles, etc.). I have R. F. Forster's Modern Ireland, which covers 1600–1972, and that's exactly the time-frame I'm interested in, but it presupposes a lot of background knowledge that I don't have.

Looking for English reading recommendations for the Viking Age in either the British Isles or Scandinavia. Especially interested in the unification of the Scandinavian countries and the GHA. Just finished reading "The Age of the Vikings" by Anders Winroth and loved it.

I'm looking for a few book recommendations.

1. A book about the history of Palmyra (especially in the Roman era) or one focusing on Odaenathus and Zenobia.
2. A book about the Han dynasty, especially if it focuses on the early Eastern Han (the from Guangwu's to Zhang's reign interests me the most - though I hope I'm not too specific :))

Also for anyone speaking german who may have read the book - is Hans-Ulrich Wiemers biography of Theodoric the Great (named: Theoderich der Große: König der Goten, Herrscher der Römer) good and accurate?

If not, any suggestions for a good biography on him?