If you want to hear me drone on a bit about the German nuclear program, in the context of a much more interesting piece on Nazi uranium cubes, click no further. For more background on the cubes, see this Physics Today article from earlier this year. I got to touch and play with the Harvard cube, many years ago, when I was a graduate student, before some humbug changed the rules about grad students just borrowing radioactive materials for the day...

(And this is what I called the "strange modernist chandelier of cubes")

I started my MA on Monday! Extremely stoked to work on my own project and further my historical thinking.

Hello all-

For the past few months, I've been working on a book (partly inspired by my experiences on this wonderful sub) titled "Questions about Ancient Greece and Rome (you were afraid to ask in school)." The idea is to provide historically accurate answers to 40 or so frequently-asked questions about the classical world. The book is still a long way from completion, but I've started to post short (and hopefully engaging) versions of my answers on YouTube. So far, I've uploaded two:

How did the Romans capture animals for the Colosseum?

Did the Greeks and Romans play drinking games?

Enjoy! (and if you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to message me)

Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap

Friday, August 23 - Thursday, August 29

Please let me know if you have suggestions to make this roundup better for /r/askhistorians. I can search for posts based off keywords in the title, URL and flair. And I can also search for comments.

If you would like this roundup sent to your reddit inbox every day send me a message with the subject 'askhistorians'. Or if you only want a weekly roundup, use the subject 'askhistorians weekly'

However, I can do more.. you can have me search for any keywords you want on any subreddit you want. Send a message with the subject ['set askhistorians'](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=set%20askhistorians&message=200%0A25%2C%20keyword1%2C%20another keyphrase%2C%20last example) and in the message: specify a number of upvotes that must be reached, and then an optional list of keywords you want to search for, separated by commas. You can have as many lines as you'd like, as long as they follow this format:

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50, keyword1, another keyphrase, last example

You can also do ['set askhistorians weekly'](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=set%20askhistorians%20weekly&message=200%0A25%2C%20keyword1%2C%20another keyphrase%2C%20last example) And you can replace askhistorians with any subreddit.

See my wiki to learn more: click here

I've been digging into Russian Rulers from 800-1929. There's a massive dearth of Anglo books on the topic unless the tsar in question is Nicholas II so I'm gonna write my own.

I've no formal training whatsoever and no idea what I'm doing, so this'll be a fun endeavour.

Vaguely related, I really enjoyed reading Rasputin The Untold Story by Joseph T Fuhrmann recently.

Had my last class for my MA this week! I'll be going back to the states, then interning at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC and starting my MA thesis on the use of fantasy and folklore in Holocaust literature.

Were there families or dear friends divided, ideologically or especially physically, by the American Revolution? Is there much correspondence from the era that survived? I'm curious especially as to what kind of tensions existed in the immediate postwar period regarding travel or writing.

Does anyone know any good literature by respected historians that's available in audiobook form? I unfortunately find myself with less and less time to read these days, which is not too much of a problem with fiction, since almost everything worth reading I can just as well have read to me in this era of audible and librivox. The same can sadly not be said for academic literature.

So far I've worked my way through Adrian Goldsworthy's works on ancient Rome, plus some books by non-academics such as Robert Caro and Ron Chernow. But with the possible exception of super-popular topics such as WWII or the American Revolutionary and Civil war, it's hard to find material, and harder still to separate the wheat from the chaff. So I'm open to all suggestions, no matter the subject or era.

What do you love about history? What makes it exciting and interesting for you?

I found it really dull as a kid because it felt like just memorising dates but as I get older the more I find it interesting

Can anyone point me to any descriptions of smaller medeival or earlier era battles? Everything I've found seems to be in the thousands at a minimum. I'd like to learn about a smaller battle to understand what went into it and how it progressed. thinking more along the lines of <100 men on each side if possible.