I'm excited about Robert Darnton's new book on the illegal book trade in pre-Revolutionary France entitled Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment. My focus is on French literary history and I've read all of his books. I highly recommend The Great Cat Massacre and Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. His new book is coming out in February, I know what I want for Valentine's Day!

I've been reading William Urban's The Last Years of the Teutonic Knights and overall I'm enjoying it. It's reasonably well written book about a subject I know relatively little, but it's definitely an interesting period of history that Urban manages to mostly succeed at making coherent and understandable to someone with no expertise (no small feat as there are a lot of people with constantly shifting alliances to keep track of).

William Urban is something of a weird figure in the study of history, though, and it definitely impacts my enjoyment of the book. He's a perfectly respectable academic who taught at a small American liberal arts college for decades and has been actively engaged in the study medieval Baltic history and the Teutonic Order specifically since around the time my parents started going to school. In terms of his publication output, it's almost exclusively in popular history (the book I'm reading being no exception), and generall I applaud that. I wish academia took the importance of producing books that can educate the broader public more seriously. My big issue with Urban is that in his published books he doesn't use notes. Not just doesn't use footnotes, he doesn't use notes at all - the only references are a couple of pages of Further Reading at the end of the book and the occasional reference to a specific book or historian in the text.

My problem with Urban's lack of notes isn't that I necessarily believe I am likely to be deceived by him. By all accounts he is a giant in his field (which is, in Englsh anyway, quite a small one in fairness) and I don't doubt that he does his due diligence in terms of research and analysis for his books. My issue is more that while it might in theory make the book more accessible to general audiences (do we actually know how turned off by notes "general audiences" are?) it makes them far less useful for anyone interested in using them for any kind of scholarly work (like me!) Not because I can't verify his sources, but because he gives me no path of where to go next if I find something interesting that I want to know more about. The Further Readings just point me to more big texts, what if I want to know more about something that only appears in one paragraph? Urban gives me nothing. He says in his introduction that he happily receives queries from students and scholars and provides references to help people where he can, which is very generous of him, but he's also like 80 years old (Wikipedia actually only lists a birth year for him, no month, so /shrug?) and he can't be doing that forever.

I also must confess that just reading a work of history without notes makes me feel uncomfortable, kind of like I'm skydiving without a parachute. Just not a pleasant sensation.

I think part of my struggle with Urban is that in a lot of cases there isn't another work in English that covers many of the subjects he writes on (especially history of the Teutonic Knights) in a more academic way. If Urban's book represented the popular history and I could turn to another book (or books) that did do the more academic (with moderate to heavy usage of notes) thing then I'd applaud the fact that the popular histories of this period are written by an expert on the subject working in an academic environment. As it is, Urban is often all you've got and while that is by no means his fault it does alter the frame through which I view his work.

That's a long and possibly needlessly introspective look at a book I've read like 60 pages of, how's that for a random Thursday? The tl;dr is that it's pretty good, maybe check it out if it sounds interesting.

I'm reading Cubism and Its Enemies by Christopher Green, and it's fascinating. It's like...an art history written like a political history. The various art movements of France in the 20s -- late Cubism, Dada, non-objective painting, Surrealism, lingering naturalism -- are like political parties vying for supremacy. Super interesting, I think even if you aren't as into that period as I am.

I had a look at the Handbook of European History 1400-1600 by Brady and it looks fantastic, but I can't find the thing as a proper ebook! I prefer to listen to audiobooks when possible, and at least with ebooks there's always text to speech. Anyone knows a similar work available as an ebook?

I have great time reading both the Tales Of Bygone Years/ Primary Chronicle "by Nestor" & Chronica Slavorum by Helmond of Bosau. They are so well written it's like you're reading almost a light fantasy novel. And the best thing is, they are both credible sources!

Anyone have any recommendations for books on Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed? Was just teaching about it and didn't realize how much the topic interested me!

I would love a recommendation on Cossack history. Any time period thats interesting.

"Tigers in the Mud" and "Lost Honor, Betrayed Loyalty" are great memoirs that open one's eyes!

This week I picked up both Munzer's "Roman aristocratic parties and families" and Gelzer's "The Roman Nobility." Started with Munzer and it has been a fascinating read so far but it is very dense. No ideas are too complicated to understand but it is a litany of dates, names, titles and positions. I often find myself having to reread several passages to understand who is talking about and when it happened.

That said, it has greatly broaden my appreciation and understanding of Roman families during the Republic and I think it is a must read for anyone interested in the subject. Munzer's method of analysing the Fasti, and giving detailed dives into family trees to demonstrate trends provides a detailed examination of the Roman Nobility in action. Despite the dense nature, it is still an enjoyable read, and never feels like a slog to get through. That said, it is quite expensive and English copies can be rare so should not be bought lightly. I would also not recommend for someone just starting their studies of Roman history as it assumes quite a lot of prior knowledge.

I haven't started Gelzer yet but hopefully by next week I will have finished Munzer and started Gelzer, to give my reflections on the books.

Motorcycle history recommendations? It's a subject I love but there's limited good resources.

Some previous

• Japan's Motorcycle Wars is excellent
• Stealing Speed is good for bits but gets quite a few things wrong about surrounding events which makes some it feel off.

Hi guys, i want to know more about Oliver Cromwell, but there are a lot of books about him. Any recommendations in particular?

Also, I'm interested in knowing about sir Francis Drake, any books you wish to recommend?

The use of the 'video essay'/'essay-film'/'film essay' in cinema/film studies is really intriguing, and I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations for history being done in this format. Of course, the three terms I've used aren't entirely interchangeable, but broadly speaking I'm thinking of the incorporation of video and audio into essayistic analysis. There's plenty on YouTube and other platforms (BFI has published a roundup of the year's best essays for quite some time now) but these often take film, or film history, to be its subject.

I've been thinking about using this format to explore environmental/urban history in my city, since the format seems to have a lot to offer in weaving in the experiential/phenomenological side to human life in built environments. Something that would incorporate both footage purposefully shot existing media/archival sources. Hopefully this falls under Thursday reading (well, watching!) and thanks in advance for any thoughts you have on the matter!

Does anyone have any books to recommend for learning about The Byzantine Empire, Gilgamesh, the Greeks, or Mesopotamia in general?

Not sure if this has already been asked, but Margaret MacMillan's War popped up on NYTimes best books of 2020 list, and I was wondering if people here have thoughts on it already?