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.
Byzantium by John Julius Norwich is a very informative and all encompassing (for the lack of a better word) book(s) regarding the history of Byzantium. I found it very informative and pretty easy to ready as it seemed like he told a story rather than just laying out the facts in a dense manner. I was wondering if there was something similar to this regarding Japan's Kamakura, Sengoku, Edo and even Meiji restoration periods?
Im really desperate for quality literature on 20th century American shipbuilding. I asked a full question during the week but got 0 votes or responses. There is loads and loads on British 20th century shipbuilding but i cannot find anything for the US. I dont know whether its simply as im in the UK i cant find it. I want to understand how the US shipbuilding survived the boom and bust of the 10s/20s and the naval building holidays of the 20s/30s to be able to produce so much during the 40s. As the standard narrative is that these things killed the British industry and i wanted to understand what happened differently in the US?