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.
In this great video, the author recommends the book "The Bible Unearthed" about how the archeological evidence relates to the actual contents of the Bible. I'm very interested in this, but the book is from 2001 which is already 20 years ago. Does anyone know if the contents of the book are still largely up-to-date or if there are better, more recent works on this topic available (for an interested layman)?
Hi! Can anyone recommend books on any of the following?
Any annotated version of Isabella Bird's writing
An English language biography of Natsume Sōseki
Non-super racist books about the Ainu, preferably in pre-industrial times
A good annotated Tale of Genji
Any English language work on the journal Seitō (青鞜)
Any version with picture preferred.
Thanks for reading!
I'd like a recommendation for books on the Weimar Republic. I know there are quite a few works that talk about how it led into the Third Reich, but I'd like a book that focuses on the period itself. Thanks!
I finished a book related to hockey recently, and I want to say it's really frustrating when you read multiple factual errors in the writing. These are things I find just casually going through the book, I wasn't looking for them, so they should have been caught while editing, and I find it really unprofessional. It's also not the first time this has happened, and if they are things I catch without trying, it makes me wonder what other issues are going on that I didn't notice.
It's especially annoying because in the most recent cases I've seen this (3 within the past year, all related to hockey oddly enough), all the authors are well-versed in the sport (one was an autobiography, albeit ghostwritten, but a long-term executive; there were date errors with things he himself had done), so should have no excuse for making these types of mistakes.
I bought a pop-history book about the International Military Tribunal to gift to my friend. There are a couple of things that made me raise my eyebrows, especially how the book treats the Soviets, but I really like that all of the defendants get plenty of space.