Finished Ostler's Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas this week and was blown away by such a well-written and vital book on an overlooked piece of American history. He is working on a second volume, and I can't wait.

Ostler's thesis is the early United States created an unhealthy world for Native Americans leaving them vulnerable to famine and disease. The U.S. established genocide as a policy option when interacting with Native Americans, the military committed acts of genocide, the rhetoric and threat of extermination was used to force Native American agreement to treaties designed to divorce them from their lands, and removal policies had genocidal consequences. What he does spectacularly is show, through actual words and deeds of political leaders, that disappearance of Native nations was very much a goal, and indigenous groups very much interpreted threats of extermination as a real, consistent threat to their lives.

He dives into the cultivation of the myth of the disappearing Indian that was used to support removal of Eastern nations, and shows how demographic indicators don't actually support an unsustainable decline among nations east of the Mississippi in the early 1800s. Discussion on resistance and negotiation is nuanced, and he compares the success of various strategies employed by Native Americans to accommodate or rebel to demands as the United States expanded ever westward.

Sometimes a book gloriously whacks you on the head with a blind spot in your thinking. For me it was the impact of Eastern removal on the nations living in the Zone of Removal, including the Osage, Omahas, Pawnee, Witchitas, Caddos, and Quapaws. I knew tens of thousands of Native Americans were forced westward, but I guess my brain forgot they weren't moving into vacant land. The arrival of these refugees set off dominoes of population movement across the west, and set the stage for prolonged conflict in the West. One heart rending discussion involved the Kanzas. Scholars of the escalation leading to the Civil War know about Bleeding Kansas. An amazing deep dive by Ostler showed how, as pro or antislavery forces flooded into Kansas in an attempt to control the slavery debate, those settlers were stealing Kanzas land, with disastrous consequences. They were asked to vacate their reservation, begged surrounding nations to survive for two landless years, and were finally granted another reservation smack in the middle of the Santa Fe Trail. Disease and dispossession followed.

I highly recommend this book for those wanting to learn more about early U.S. Indian Policy, the Native American response to colonial encroachment, and how policies, through sins of omission and commission, create an unhealthy world.

I’m looking for any books on queens and queenship. Anything outside of Europe is especially welcome (China? Ottomans? Incas?), but I’m open to any suggestions.

I’d also like reading suggestions for royal courts and palace ceremonies.

Hi, i am looking for books on the legal or political development of Meiji, Taisho and Showa-Japan (primarily pre-war, but good books on post-war showa are welcome). Books on the same topic for Manchukuo would also be great.

Primarily i am interested how the political system developed, how the interactions between civil and military institutions worked and the legal framework that was in place. But all general suggestions of books on politics, law, economics or culture in this timeframe are appreciated.

Hello! I'm looking for further reading about Cleopatra. I've seen a couple of social media posts recently saying that she was turned into a seductress by the Roman media as a means to vilify her and downplay her intellectual abilities, and I would like to learn more about this. I would like to learn more about Cleopatra the ruler and how she governed.

TIA! :)

Any recs for someone looking into:

• the relationship between religion, science and magic in the Middle Ages (so far I’ve read on alchemy, divination, conjury, necromancy and astrology and I am so down to read more)
• whether “magic” was implemented in medieval warfare or politics
• paladins in medieval French lit and their real life inspirations
• the relationship(s) between astrologers and the crown

May be late to ask here, but does anyone have good books that take a deep and detailed look at how authoritarian regimes collapse? This might be a cross with political science, but I'm interested in learning about the very specific ways in which repressive regimes function and then fail--especially regimes that collapse as the result of popular dissent rather than coups. Close histories of specific examples, such as the USSR, would work for me. I don't really want books that just say "the regime lost support among key interest groups," but books that get more specific--which interest groups, and why did the loss of their support matter so much?

What is the general consensus of The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins?

I'm looking for books on the history of the Canaries or books that cover the history of Canarians in the Americas

Does anyone here know of any good Anglo Saxon historical fiction? I asked this once in the suggestmeabook subreddit but I haven’t gotten many good responses.

So far I’ve read and loved Hild, Warlord Chronicles, Saxon Stories, Camulod Chronicles, Northumbrian Throne and The Abbot’s Tale