If i was going to recommend one book on legal history it would probably be

• Tamar Herzog (2018): A Short History of European Law

Writing a book on everything from roman law to EU-law in 250 pages sounds like a really bad idea, and to a degree it is. The book doesn't nearly achieve the scope it's title and timeline implies. In fact, the vast majority of Europe and European law is ignored and never mentioned, and despite the title, a chapter is devoted to North America!

But that is for the better, as what the book does, really effectively, is give a good view of the events or concepts typically considered "key" for how European legal systems got where they are today. It achieves that by cutting all events and details that aren't strictly needed, but allowing for nuance in the topics that are. The language is also very readable and the book is pretty cheap.

I would recommend for someone who is interested in European history, law or politics, where some context of legal history would be fun or valuable.

A book that has absolutely reframed my thinking this year is Scott C. Levi's The Bukharan Crisis, which radically reshaped how I view Eurasian history. To give you a brief elevator pitch of what the key things you'll learn from it are:

1. The political history of the Khanate of Bukhara from its emergence c. 1500 with the overthrow of the Timurids to its effective collapse in the 1750s following the invasion of Nader Shah;
2. A deconstruction of the concept of the 'Silk Road' as it applies to Eurasian history, emphasising not just that exchange was mostly local and regional, but also what implications that has for the way we should conceptualise Eurasian history;
3. A discussion of both the broad global trends at work in 18th century Eurasia, in conjunction with the unique regional dynamics of Central Asia; leading into
4. A broader consideration of how you write an 'interconnected' history, where you acknowledge the explanatory power of larger global trends without erasing the agency of local actors.

There's not much I can say that would not be a restatement of 'this is an absolute masterpiece'. Levi lays out not just a specific historical question, but also a grand historiographical one, and in answering one answers the other (in both directions). If you have to read one recent book on Central Asia, this would be a very worthwhile choice.

I have a request. There's some super knowledgeable experts here, what are some books written by flairs, mods or community members? I've seen some examples mentioned a few times before, but I'd love to have a list.

Here is the short list I tend to recommend for Native American/early United States history. All of these books blew my mind in some way by shattering what I thought I knew about North American history. I hope they can do the same for you, or a loved one, this year.

• Matthew Restall Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest is a mind-blowing book. Restall establishes seven persistent myths of the conquest, then breaks those myths down in one brief volume. This is a very readable book, but with sufficient sources to track down anything you find of interest. If you are new to New World history this is a great place to start.

• Daniel Richter Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America is a great introduction to eastern North American history. The big appeal of this book is shifting the narrative of contact away from the European perspective, and instead anchoring the story in Indian Country. The narration looks east, showing how a thriving vibrant continent responded to European settlement. A great book to challenge how you view contact, and a great place to start learning about the eastern U.S.

• Andrés Reséndez The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America is the single best introduction to understand the temporal, geographic, and cultural magnitude of the native slave trade in the Spanish Empire. The role of indigenous slavery has been overlooked for far too long, and this book will give a wonderful foundation for understanding how the slave trade destabilized populations far beyond colonial settlements. Absolutely vital for understanding the history of the Americas, and great for those looking to learn more about the Spanish Conquest.

• Colin Calloway One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark is the best introduction and overview of the American West. I absolutely adore this book. This is a little more academic than previous recommendations, and slightly more dense, but it is one of my favorites. Probably a great gift for someone deeply interested in the history of the American West.

• Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, no other book really addresses the fundamental ecological impacts of colonialism, and how those changes prohibited the continuation of previously established Native American land use patterns. Focused on the Northeast, and a great book for those with leanings toward the impact of settlement in colonial New England, and those interested in ecological history.

• Paul Kelton Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 is a great deep dive into the health and history of one place, the U.S. Southeast, that shows how many factors worked together to transform the region, influence host health, and then perpetuate the first verifiable smallpox epidemic in the region. This is also slightly more academic, and much more specific to one place and time, but no other volume so expertly shows how colonial settlements, disease, the native slave trade transformed the Southeast.

• Jeffrey Ostler Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas is a great, readable volume that details how Native American nations responded and adapted to the emerging U.S. Indian policy, concluding with the Indian Removal Act and the displacement of most eastern nations in the west. What Ostler does so well is show how the territorial displacement, warfare, and threat of genocidal violence destabilized and harmed indigenous communities, and how they responded to maintain cultural continuity and sovereignty in seemingly impossible situations.

I will never stop recommending Maristella Svampa's works. She believes in freedom of information, and so she makes all of her books and articles available for free download in her website. I'm particularly inclined to recommend Neo-Extractivism in Latin America and Development in Latin America, which are the only two books that have been translated into English. Her approach to both current events and history from the perspective of sociology is an excellent interdisciplinary job.

Courtesy of /u/drylaw, who introduced me to his work, I can also recommend José Rabasa's Tell me the story of how I conquered you and Writing Violence on the northern frontier, both of which give a fascinating perspective into early Spanish colonialism and imperialism in México and Mesoamérica in general.

I would be absolutely remiss if I didn't mention Sabine Hyland's fascinating research. Professor Hyland is one of the most involved anthropologists there are in the study of Andean cultures and communities, and her work in the processes of deciphering the Inca khipus is extraordinary.

• The Jesuit and the Incas: The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas Valera, S.J.,
• The Quito Manuscript: An Inca History Preserved by Fernando de Montesinos (which is probably my favourite of all of her works)
• Gods of the Andes: An Early Jesuit Account of Inca Religion and Andean Christianity
• The Chankas and the Priest: A Tale of Murder and Exile in Highland Peru
• She also participated in the writing of The Chanka: Archaeological Research in Andahuaylas (Apurimac), Peru in collaboration with several other scholars.

Now, for some more LatAm and Argentine history, sorry, most of what I use is in Spanish, for self-explanatory reasons. But here they go regardless.

• La Gran Depresión en América Latina coordinated by Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight, an excellent collection of essays written by historians from different LatAm countries giving their individual perspectives on the impact and influences the Great Depression had in the development of the region.
• The two tomes of América Latina. La Construcción del Orden by Waldo Ansaldi, in which he and other historians analyse the early period of the construction of order and political unification movements in the region.
• Modernidad e Independencias by François-Xavier Guerra, a comparative study of the different ways in which independence movements were built, ideologically and materially, in the different regions of the continent.
• Autonomía e independencia en el Río de la Plata 1808-1810 and Ciudades, Provincias, Estados: Orígenes de la Nación Argentina (1800-1846) by José Carlos Chiaramonte, two fantastic overviews of the early revolutionary periods in Argentina.
• Revolución y Guerra by Tulio Halperin Donghi, yet another fantastic analysis about the way in which the revolution ended up becoming the long decades of civil wars between Argentine provinces.
• Historia de la Argentina 1806-1852 by Marcela Ternavasio, arguably the most complete, complex and thorough textbook-like abridged history of Argentina's early period, from the first English Invasion all the way to the end of the Civil Wars with the defeat of Juan Manuel de Rosas at the Battle of Caseros.

I could go on forever, but I'll exercise restraint.

My mother loves reading Historical fiction about Tudor and Medieval Queens, and I want to get her a non-fiction book which covers the same topics.

Can anyone recommend a good beginners book on the idea of 'queenship' or a more accessible recent work on Tudor Queens?

Looking to buy books on the Vietnam War? Why not offer them recent and fresh perspectives, anchored in modern scholarship!

Mark Atwood Lawrence's The Vietnam War: A Concise International History is a great work to refresh your knowledge about the overall war. It covers many different perspectives of the war into one concise narrative which is very useful for beginners and experts alike, if only for reference. It's far balanced and more scholarly than other alternatives out there (Whether it be Karnow or Halberstam).

Christian G. Appy's Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. A great introduction to the overall experience of the American combat soldier in South Vietnam, this is a scholarly approach to the topic with much to reveal about the experiences of the men who were sent to South Vietnam. An alternative to this book who would like a less scholarly approach would be James Ebert's A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam.

Heather Marie Stur's Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era looks at the other side of the coin and integrates women into the narrative of the Vietnam War. How did the war influence gender roles? How were women involved in the war and what images of them were produced to support the war? This is an interesting piece of cultural history that broaden our understanding of gender in the 1960s.

Robert K. Brigham's ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army and Andrew Wiest's Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN are both indispensable in revealing the complexities and realities behind the often maligned image of the South Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War. Using both macro and micro historical approaches to the topic, Brigham and Wiest deepens the understanding of the war beyond simple stereotypes.

Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen belongs to a new era of scholarship focusing on putting the Vietnam War into global history and the involvement of other nations beyond the United States, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and South Vietnam. Nguyen's book is all about contextualizing the decisions, events, and negotiations that occurred throughout the war in an international context.

Pierre Asselin's Vietnam's American War: A History and Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 look closer at the North Vietnamese experience of the war, based on a broad range of sources, many of it in Vietnamese. One of the foremost scholars in the field, Asselin's books are a treasure trove for those interested in finding out how the war came to take the shape it did, how it subsequently was shaped by North Vietnamese decisions, and how North Vietnam ultimately won.

Edward Miller's Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam is an important book that asks difficult questions about Ngo Dinh Diem and manages to give a more nuanced and fair image of Diem as a politician and the South Vietnamese context surrounding those early years of the war up until his death. A great companion to this book would be Jessica Chapman's Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam that takes a broader look at this time period, while at the same time offering an equally well-researched book.

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 by Qiang Zhai. It's never wise to ignore other actors in the larger drama of the Vietnam War. China plays a very important role in modern Vietnamese history and this book tells you exactly why. From the Indochina War to the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, China's view of Vietnam was constantly changing. From helping Vietnam to waging war against it, understanding China's place in the conflict is vital.

Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War by Andrew Wiest and Michael Doidge (ed.) This is a fantastic book about the current state of Vietnam War scholarship and the historiography surrounding the war. What are the current debates? Where is the field going? Why is the orthodox vs. revisionist debate such a pressing matter in the United States, or is it? For those who desire to study the Vietnam War at an academic level, this is a great place to start. A companion to this book would be Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives by Marilyn B. Young and Mark Philip Bradley (ed.). This is a collection of essays surrounding different aspects of the Vietnam War out of new approaches and historiographical debates. It's a good book to read to gain some new perspectives and follows in the same tradition of Triumph Revisited although not as focused on the historiography as much.

I just finished Season 4 of The Crown and rather than throw something at my TV or rant about it (yep, the criticisms from historians appear pretty valid), I'll do something constructive and recommend a book on the modern British monarchy!

But it's not one you'd expect. Instead, it's Jane Ridley's 2014 masterpiece, The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince about Queen Elizabeth's great-grandfather. And despite somehow only being once mentioned in passing ever on r/AskHistorians, it's a remarkable achievement.

Edward VII has a terrible, and often well deserved, reputation as the party prince who spent most of his life running around having affairs, bankrupting friends when he came to visit, and essentially spending his first 60 years in degenerate debauchery.

Ridley doesn't shy away from this, but what is far more interesting is what she uncovered about the last 10 years of his life as king, when he was the last English monarch to wield genuine political power - and even more remarkably generally used it wisely, including when he was largely responsible for allying Britain with France in a way that nobody in his government could (or would), with the amusing bonus of being believed by the absolutist monarchies of Europe as possessing far more power than he actually held, which in turn fed into his actual influence. In short, his reign is the factual version of what Peter Morgan often poorly fictionalizes when he tries to bring the Royal Family into British politics, and unlike that adaptation, it's both fascinating and true.

After his death, politicians across several parties did their best to diminish his legacy for a variety of reasons, and it took Ridley years of painstaking and original research - even the chapter on her methods is great reading - to uncover a more balanced legacy. Highly recommended.

Let me tell you about "Why Dinosaurs Matter" by Kenneth Lacovara. I have suggested it once or twice. Maybe. Its easily become one of my favorite books I read this past year, and also comes in both audiobook and Tedtalk appetizer style!

As a dedicated Dino lover I was already the perfect audience for the book, but Lacovara writes (and narrates the audiobook) with an incredible passion that keeps you hooked. It's also a fairly short book, I read it in an afternoon, but interesting enough that you'll reread it a few times.

I'm going to copy a block I wrote before about what the book is about.

A main thrust of his argument is that "We" use Dinosaurs as an insult. It means old, outdated, failed to move on. Part of his argument is that that is a hurtful mindset to fall into. Dinosaurs were hands down some of the most successful animals on the planet. They survived for eons beyond anything we've dreamed, evolved to fit pretty much every continent (at the time obviously) and with untold variation. More then that, Diosaurs never died out. Some species did sure, but huge portions of them evolved into birds. Again, one of the most successful species on the current planet. A big part of it is trying to change the mindset that "old" or "Extinct" automatically means failure.

The book takes you through a history of the dinosaurs and what made them such a powerful and effective species, pointing out they don't actually all die off and disappear like many of us were taught as kids, and really spends time talking about how we today can take lessons from this. Both as a species, but also how we view the world and animals around us.

And I for one found all that pretty neat.

I highly recommend this recent title by Arash Azizi: The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions

This book is a very well written and engaging overview of the life and importance of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general assassinated in 2018 by the Trump administration. In addition to offering a balanced account of Soleimani’s life, influence, and meaning to Iranian society, it also gives an excellent and well-researched overview of the foreign policy and regional ambitions of Iran since the 1979 revolution. While it doesn’t cover every part of Soleimani’s life, it helps to provide some understanding of both his role and Iran’s role in the Middle East over the past 30-40 years. A great gift for anyone interested in contemporary Middle East politics, or who wants to understand the story behind the controversial assassination.

I really enjoyed After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC by Steven Mithen - it's a telling of the prehistory of much of the world based largely entirely on archaeological evidence.

My real passion has been oral histories, and I would love to find if there are any really good compilations and analyses of oral histories of a collection of communities in places around the world - i.e. histories of various regions of North America that draw extensively on actual oral histories, or histories of Aboriginal Australia that draw on peoples' actual oral histories.

So - any historians know of any good tellings of "pre-history" based on oral history, or in general any good books on regions' prehistory that draw on DNA and archaeological evidence?

Americas

Why You Can’t Teach United States History Without American Indians ed. by Susan Sleeper-Smith. Every chapter of this book blew my mind. The book is designed for American educators who teach surveys of US history, but it's accessible to a wider audience. Each chapter takes a commonly taught aspect of US history such as the Civil War, slavery, or urbanization, and reframes it from the perspective of how Native Americans were involved. Take the fur trade - we call it that because fur is what the Europeans wanted, but you could just as easily call it the cloth trade because textiles constituted the majority of what Natives traded the furs for. Native consumer demands in turn shaped the textile industries of Britain and France. That's just one example of how this book makes you rethink US history.

Native North American Art by Janet C. Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips. This book offers a great survey of artistic traditions from the North American continent. It's got lots of colour photographs and covers everything from prehistoric times to the modern day. It's also a really good way to familiarize yourself with the different regional sub-divisions of Native cultures if you have a hard time understanding and visualizing the differences across the continent.

Chaco Canyon by Brian Fagan. Unlike the first two recs which are broad geographical surveys, this book addresses one site, Chaco Canyon in what's currently New Mexico. Fagan is an archaeologist who takes you through the different phases of the site, from its earliest occupation to its medieval heyday and eventual abandonment. Chaco Canyon is an example of how much the Ancestral Pueblo shaped their landscape and vise versa, with details of religious pilgrimage networks, long distance trade in turquoise and parrots, and sophisticated farming techniques.

Wisconsin Talk edited by Thomas Purnell, Eric Raimy, and Joseph Salmons. If you are interested in the history of linguistics, I highly recommend this collection of essays. Wisconsin is a very linguistically diverse state, with many different language families represented from the Indigenous to the immigrant. There are some great historical chapters on things like the history of German language use in the state as well as some more contemporary topics like Hmong linguistics.

Walking in the Sacred Manner by Mark St. Pierre and Tilda Long Soldier. Excellent book about the lives of several different Plains medicine women, particularly from the Lakota people. This book draws from interviews with medicine women, their families, and the people who they treated. It focuses mainly on the 19th and early 20th centuries but also talks about connections to pre-colonial practice.

Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner. If you are interested in the history of feminism, I highly recommend this book. It's about how early white feminists, especially Matilda Gage, were influenced by their Haudenosaunee neighbours. The Haudenosaunee are matrilocal, matrilineal, and in some ways matriarchal. White feminists like Gage were very aware of how much better off Haudenosaunee women were than white American women, and this book traces the direct ways that inspiration led them to fight for their own rights. As I've said before, this book puts the Seneca back in Seneca Falls!

Gods of the Andes by Sabine Hyland. This is a translation and commentary of an important colonial text on Inca religion. The author, Blas Valera, was a Jesuit who was half-Inca and half-Spanish. He was ostracized by the other Jesuits for arguing that in converting the Natives to Christianity, they should keep as much of the Inca religion as possible because it had real spiritual merit. This text is his description of Inca religion, contextualized with notes by Hyland.

Dance of the Dolphin by Candace Slater. In the Amazon, legends persist of the encantado, the river dolphin who transforms into a handsome man in a white suit who dances the night away before seducing women to join him in his underwater kingdom. Slater's book looks at how this legend operates in the late 20th century Amazon, with special attention to the rainforest's cities. She unpacks the way that the legend of the encantado wraps together Indigenous, African, and modern colonial ideas and anxieties, and how the urbanization of the Amazon affects the way people tell the tale. It includes interviews with people from the 1990s or so who claim they have encountered the dolphin themselves.

The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents. This is the incredible 16th century account of a friar who got lost on the Amazon river with a group of conquistadores. He records all the cities and magnificent art he saw, our best record of what the Amazon was like before disease ravaged through its urban populations.

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I'm sure loads of people here want to give Jewish history books for Christmas! That said, it's still Chanukah for another four days, so if you're in the market for a book, these are all ones that I own personally and read for fun-

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For something fun and pop-culturey:

Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof by Alisa Solomon is excellent, whether you're interested in Judaism/Jewish history, musical theater, both, or neither! Great discussion that tracks Fiddler from short story to movie to musical to movie again to general cultural phenomenon. While Solomon is not a historian, she is a journalist and theater critic and the book has glowing reviews from historians.

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For something more academic but still very readable:

Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and its People by Deborah Dash Moore et al is actually a condensation of a three volume work by several excellent historians of the American Jewish community, and while from a pure information standpoint I'd go for the three volume set, this book is an excellent breakdown that's well written, not too dense, and contains a lot of fascinating information from the 1650s to today. If you or your giftee want an engrossing book that will leave you feeling a lot more knowledgeable by the end, this is a fantastic option.

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For something definitely academic but also completely worth your time:

We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962 by Hasia Diner has a somewhat controversial thesis, but she makes an excellent case that it shouldn't be. She is troubled by the very common perception that post-Holocaust, American Jews didn't really discuss it til the 1960s (when first the Eichmann Trial and then the Six Day War prompted the conversation), and this award-winning book does a great job of depicting the kinds of responses that did, in fact, happen. While I think that her rebuttal has some limitations (the memorial events she depicts nearly all happened in religious contexts, for example), it is still both highly convincing, very readable, and both riveting and sobering.

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For something a little different:

Yiddish South of the Border by Alan Astro isn't a history book- it's a compilation of English translations of Yiddish language stories written by Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Latin America at the end of the 19th/turn of the 20th century. They're often funny, nearly always poignant, and an excellent window into a really fascinating era.

Hi everyone!

I’m looking for books about European history during the late Middle Ages, if anyone has recommendations I would love to hear them!

I have a request! Does anybody know of any books that looks into the history of Guangzhouwan (Part of French Indochina) during the 19th-20th centuries? It's a very niche topic and I've been searching with little success. Thank you!

I'm looking for general history books about China from roughly the end of the Han until the end of the Tang dynasty. I liked Imperial China 1350-1900 by Jonathan Porter and I'm reading Mote's Imperial China 900–1800 right now. Something that spans a couple of centuries would be great but works on individual dynasties are fine too.

I looked at the History of Imperial China series but didn't really like the first one so I'm not sure about the others, and the Cambridge History of China is a bit much (and I'm a bit hesitant about spending so much money on books that were started in the 1970's).

Hello! I'm looking for books about the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Do you have any recommendations?

As I mentioned in another comment, I've been tossing around thoughts of making a "history for moms" list, as a counterpart to the "history for dads" lists out there that are full of WWII and other milhist. (Is this kind of sexist? Yes. Do we live in a sexist society that socializes people to have different interests based on their gender? Also yes.) So here are some thoughts:

The work of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History - You've probably heard this slogan many times, but did you know that it actually came from a 1970s article she wrote on Puritan women? Yep, the original intention was to reflect the way that these rule-following women left very little imprint on the historical record, since they didn't e.g. get hauled into court for skipping church or slandering other women. This book looks at the life the slogan's had since then, and the history of the women's rights movement. It's a really great introduction to women's history, and it's also kind of a hybrid of pop and academic writing, so it's great for someone who's not ready for/interested in dense university press books. She's also written several books that are a bit more academic, but still great choices for gifts: A Midwife's Tale, about Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; and The Age of Homespun, about the way that women did leave a mark on history through the furniture and textiles they owned, used, and made.

Helen Rappaport is another author to look for. She's definitely a pop history author, but a good one. She's written several books on the Romanovs: The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra is particularly interesting to me, because apart from the potential of Anastasia post-Revolution, when people talk about the Romanovs they completely ignore the grand duchesses. Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs is really good, but exceptionally grim by necessity, so many not a good choice for Christmas. I can't vouch for her other books specifically, but she's a good writer.

Hallie Rubenhold is also a good bet. The Five, about the victims of Jack the Ripper as human beings with their own lives and histories, is also a bit grim for Christmas but a very good book. She's also written The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris's List, a discussion of the 18th century sex trade in London. As with The Five, her focus is on dealing with the people involved fairly as biographical/historical subjects.

Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches by Marcia A. Zug. This is another one on the line of pop and academic - a good read. It's divided in two parts - the first is about the earlier period, when women who put themselves on the line to marry men in distant lands they'd never met were seen as brave heroines, and the second is about the flipside, ways that people viewed them as gold-diggers and problems.

I'm a big big fan of books on queenship, but most of the ones I like (from the Queenship and Power series published by Palgrave Macmillan) are a bit too academic to just give as a gift to someone who isn't already really into this stuff. Ones I think you could give are:

• Queenship in Medieval Europe by Theresa Earenfight - a broad overview of medieval queenship, talking about the role went from being merely the woman who was married to the king to having hard and soft power.

• Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile by Gilliam Fleming - actually quite depressing; a biography of Juana of Castile, often called Juana la Loca. She was very much the victim of the men in her family, who fought to make sure she wouldn't be another Isabel, ruling in her own right with no restrictions.

• For someone who likes popular period dramas, the intimidatingly titled Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers: Gender, Sex, and Power in Popular Culture could be a good choice. It specifically deals with the very popular The White Queen! But this is an edited volume so it's a bit of a mishmash about various depictions of queens in films/tv.

• History, Fiction, and The Tudors: Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License in the Showtime Television Series is specifically about The Tudors, and would be a great companion to the show.

• Likewise, Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire would be a cool gift for someone who liked Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire! It deals with basically all of the major female characters, discussing the historical figures that inspired them and what their treatment onscreen/on the page says about how they're viewed.

I am looking for a book that covers the Sertorian wars, I am not an academic, but I know the basics of the Roman History. I post this because I have not seen one that specifically covers this in the AskHistorians compilation list. Thanks in advance.
Edit: As I noticed this is very narrow, I am also open to reccomendations about the Cantabrian Wars, the Second Celtiberian War and the romanisation of the IBerian Peninsula. Sorry for the late edit.

Hi, I have two perhaps very niche requests.

The first one, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a book that discusses the differences in economic growth of different countries. For example, something that discusses why different countries industrialised at different times and how they did so, or the factors that influenced their growth over different time spans. I would love if it could be mathematically rigorous too, using Econometrics or something.

Secondly, could anyone please suggest a book that charts how different spheres of Economic thought developed over time? At university, and in papers, you hear about the Chicago school or the Swedish school, but how did these different schools of thought develop over time? And how has economic thought and analysis in general developed over the ages?

Thank you very much for any suggestions! I know these are very niche, so if anyone has research papers they could recommend instead of books, that would be great too.

Hello! Looking for a book on food/agriculture/diet in the America’s pre-European contact.

I got a taste of this (pun intended) in the book 1491, and am looking to find a book that goes more in depth on the culinary aspect of life.

1. I'm taking a historiography course this semester, and I'd like to get some recommendations for a book that delves into Rankean history but also shows how it was criticized and replaced.

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2. Another thing I'd like to read about is the state of Anatolia (and perhaps the Balkans) at the foundational era of the Ottoman Empire. I'm currently reading Between Two Worlds by Cemal Kafadar, and he made me curious about that time of chaos in which a very small state turned itself into a large empire.

Hello! I’m seeking a zoomed out history of Europe and the movement of its people for the last 2000-3000 years. Normans/saxons/visigoths/Franks/Romans/Gauls, Magna Carta, Battle of Hastings, all that stuff.

I’d like to learn about things like linguistics and cultural evolution in addition to battle strategy, if that helps narrow it down.

I usually listen to audiobooks these days, so a conversational or modern tone might aid listenability.

Thanks for this!

If anyone is interested in the history of drone warfare, I recommend "Kill Chain" by Andrew Cockburn

Hello ! My mom is a costume designer and we both love historical costumes and I've been searching for books on that matter for a while without knowing what to choose. Anyone has suggestions?

I'll take the opportunity:

I'm looking for good books (esp. from their approaches) which tackle pre-modern cultural practices such as hunting, or also relationship between religious sponsorship and rulership, and so on. I suppose, that take a more anthropological approach to history, ideally by connecting it to the political segment (i.e., rulers and rulership), although that's not a requirement.

Anyone might have an idea or two? ^^

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...unfortunately I can only recommend books in Japanese myself (I can drop a few recommendations if anyone would want me to haha). I just don't get to read all that much beyond those, apart from the occasional classic of anthropology or sociology.

I don't know if this has been asked or not, but I've been looking for some in depth books on the Roman Republic. Early and middle Republic preferably but I'd be interested in any books that deal with the Republic era. I read Tom Holland's book 'Crossing the Rubicon' and loved it. I can only seem to find books on the late Republic and early empire, or just on the empire.

I'm going through a viking phase, what would you recommend I get on the Varangian guard? Either a full book on them or one on ERE with a good portion on them. I'm more interested in interactions between them and the locals than whatever military actions they had a part in.

Like what did people think about pagan mercs guarding their emperor? Was there an effort to get them to convert? Did they use their own equipment or did the Emperor provide arms and armour?

Going by flairs on the sub I imagine u/Antiochene, u/ByzantineBasileus or u/DavidGrandKomnenos might have something?

Recommendations requested!

I have a tremendous curiosity for the American Revolution, so any books on that are always welcome in my library. In particular, I'm wondering if anyone has any good suggestions for anything with a focus on Benedict Arnold.