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.
Last night I started reading the Spanish translation of Michel Graulich's Moctezuma: Rise and Fall of the Aztec Empire. In it the author attempts to write Moctezuma's biography. I was pretty excited when I bought the book, Moctezuma's always talked about but only in the context of the Spanish Conquest. I have a vague notion of his life before the war, but to see a book about his origins, education, political and military career and life as an emperor was a breath of fresh air.
Then I read the introduction and my excitement subsided. The author flat out says that native accounts and chronicles do not have intrinsic historic value. They are better suited for studying the nahua's perception of the world. Saying how the natives had a different perception of time and history and that native chroniclers, be them pre- or post- war, are biased in favor of their own agendas. This is true. What bothers me is that he then says that Western sources are more trustworthy since they had no bias and could look at things from the outside. He even uses Cortes' letters to Charles V as an example of an unbiased source! This ethnocentric stance really disappointed me. I'm still eager to read the book, but with a more critical mindset.
The author also supports the theory that Moctezuma thought Cortes was Quetzalcoatl. This is a whole other problem and one of my history pet peeves, so I'll leave it at that.
/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov do you have any reading recommendations for someone wanting to learn about the "wild west" and the frontier in general? Some sort of starting point.
Any book/article recommendations on cultural history of the 20th century? Very broad, I know, but I’m looking for texts specifically outside of my subfield and niche, so any recommendations that people offer are appreciated.
Currently partway through Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945 by J. Andrew Ross (2015). It is a published PhD dissertation, and one of the few that covers the business of the early years of hockey (John Chi-Kit Wong has Lords of the Rinks: The Emergence of the National Hockey League, 1875-1936 from 2005, and the two have considerable overlap). It is definitely an academic book, one that doesn't talk about game action or anything like that, but rather building leases, revenue per ticket-holder, and boardroom discussions on what exactly an "amateur" is. I'm about two-thirds done, and while the major themes are not new to me, the specifics are good to have, and I'm glad that someone has written something like this.
Years after reading /u/WendyLBelcher's excellent AMA in this very sub, I'm finally reading The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros! Enjoying it so far.
I know it's a bit late but any recommendations for arleigh burke and destroyer combat in ww2