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:
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.
Finished reading Anne Applebaum's Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine the other day. I like her writing, and so long as you are familiar with her background you can see that she doesn't do a bad job either (though I'll note here that she doesn't speak Ukrainian, and I recall had her assistants do the archival work; not that that's an issue, but it's something to know). I did like that she gave a strong background to Ukraine's relationship with the Bolsheviks, including going over the 1917-21 years (which is a really interesting time that gets overlooked). I was not convinced by her attempts to link modern Russian-Ukrainian relations to the Holodomor though, and she would have been better off not even trying to do that, but I get it (for those who don't know, she's married to a former Polish foreign minister, who was in office when the Crimean annexation took place). Overall though, a solid book and one that does deserve some credit for being the first solid look at the Holodomor since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Looking for recommendations on books relating to WWI and interwar period in Europe. I read a lot of 20th century military history stuff but most of it is WWII through Cold War era and realized I’ve been reading more things online and watching videos about the WWI/interwar period on YouTube and have been craving on reading more books about the period now.
I would highly recommend Elinor Pruitt Stewart's "Letters from an Elk Hunt" to anyone interested in the homesteading era of the western USA. Her writing style and her choice of anecdotes seem much more enjoyable to a modern reader than other primary sources I have read from the era.
Can anyone recommend other particularly good reading material on similar topics? Anything from Lewis and Clark, Oregon Trail, through around when the railroads arrived. I've read quite a few things, but the quality varies widely.
Can anyone suggest a book on socialist city governments in non-socialist states, e.g. Red Vienna, or the Sewer Socialists in America? How they came to power, what were the struggles they faced, etc? I got a great answer last week but it was more of a related topic.