Thursday Reading & Recommendations | February 18, 2021

by AutoModerator

Previous weeks!

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.

dagaboy

I'd like to find a good English language book about the Sanation movement in Poland.

rokfest

Is there a good resource\book that goes through a brief overview of American presidents and their impacts or most lasting changes made by them?

It doesn't have to include more modern presidents (i.e. Obama, Trump)

[deleted]

Alright, so I was wondering whether there are books on the history of Ontario and medieval Hungary/Central Europe in general

Sankon

Finished The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence this week.

A quite long book taking you from the fall of the Ming dynasty upto the first decade of this century. Despite its length and a few dry pieces scattered about, it its very readable and fluid. The author is well-regarded in the field and certainly does the proper research. Yet expect heavy focus on the events of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. He does not dwell excessively on the early Qing period.

I was introduced to this book through the author's work Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man, a collection of translated memoirs of a sort-of well-off man in the Ming period. I enjoyed it, though it certainly had its weaknesses. It gives insight into the lives of the upper classes in that period.

adgaps812

Hi! Any recommendations on Christianity in (mainland) Europe in the 19th century? I'm already reading Church in an Age of Revolution, by Alec Vidler, but I'm open for something more recent.

Also, any recommendations on politics and diplomacy during the First World War is welcome. I've already read David Stevenson's Cataclysm, and would prefer something similar to it.

Thanks!

chevalier100

Does anyone have any recommendations on the global/European war that was fought at the same time as the American War of Independence?