Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
Hey, everyone! I'm hosting an AMA today on /r/fantasy regarding my book How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages! Instead of using history to inspire fantasy, I figured--why not use fantasy to teach history?
When you've got an inn to find, a barmaid to gender-inclusively flirt with, and then an inn to escape, it turns out that medieval Europe and the Near East have all the answers you could need. So come AMA how to survive your next fantasy adventure using advice from the actual Middle Ages!
Hello everyone! I come to you today with a question and a challenge, one that has consumed a number of the finest minds on AskHistorians already.
A buddy of mine has been watching Rocky IV, and there's a scene with a number of big banners featuring Soviet leaders. Marx, Engels, and Lenin are easy to recognize, but who is this fourth person?. Current guesses range from Kruschev but amped up, to random placeholder and more. What say you history experts?
For those who want the whole collection, this is the Full banner and this is a slightly different version that was "corrected' by a strange user by the name of Zhukov...
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, August 20 - Thursday, August 26
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 33,592 | 1 comments | [Meta] [X-Post] Reddit's unwillingness to properly contain COVID-19 misinformation is part of a broad trend of inadequate action by the Admins against bad faith actors. We stand with our fellow mod teams in calling on reddit to improve. |
| 4,315 | 36 comments | In the movie “Nuremberg”, when footage of the Holocaust is shown during the trial, there is pin-drop silence in the courtroom. Then one judge abruptly gets up to leave and vomit, followed by the rest. Is this dramatization or did the Allies have this strong of a gut reaction to the Holocaust? |
| 3,232 | 119 comments | I’m a crotchety old man in the 1700s. What do I complain about “kids these days” not appreciating and what sort of new inventions are ruining the world? |
| 3,074 | 171 comments | How badly did the "average" slaveowner treat their slaves? |
| 2,995 | 72 comments | How do we know that "Saturn Devouring One of His Sons" by Francisco Goya is in fact depicting Saturn and his Child if the 'Black Paintings' were not named and only found after his death? |
| 2,644 | 51 comments | The Jewish Temple at Elephantine postdates the Babylonian Exile, when the Jews are thought to have transitioned to monotheism. Yet the documents found at that temple attest to polytheistic worship of YHVH and his wife, Anat-Yahu. What does this reveal about the evolution of Judaism? |
| 2,548 | 154 comments | I often wonder what historically has happened near my home, or places I visit. Is there a "Google Maps" of Local History? |
| 2,446 | 51 comments | The earliest discovered preserved cheese was found near Xinjiang, China, which dated back nearly 3,600 years. Why does almost all modern east-Asian cuisine seem to eschew cheese? Was there a recorded point where cheeses fell out of favor? |
| 2,300 | 14 comments | Nowadays we look back at Victorian capitalists like Vanderbilt or Morgan in a pretty negative light. "Robber Barons", etc. But at the time, did they have "fans" like Elon Musk does today? Were they as visible in the media as people like Musk or Bezos are today? |
| 2,011 | 51 comments | China is overwhelmingly Han, but was ruled by the minority Manchu group until 1917. What is the legacy of this ethnic mismatch? Does modern China have Manchu people disproportionately holding high offices, the way that former European nobility does? |
###Top 10 Comments
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With the fall of Kabul, I find myself getting interested in military history again, especially the history of counter-insurgency operations.
I found a really good online documentary about the Malaya Emergency (1948-1960):
Malaya (Malaysia) is particulary interesting to me because it is a country that I have studied - and written a little bit about - in my field of Commonwealth constitutional history, but I've never really looked at it from a military angle before (at least, not since I was at Dartmouth, where I think we had a couple of classes comparing Malaya to Vietnam).
In the modern discourse of what I would consider a mistaken dichotomy of Capitalism vs Socialism (what is actually “Late Stage Capitalism” vs Social Democracy), it’s clear the discussion would benefit from officially and explicitly recognizing (at least in the US) that our economic model has transitioned from what we know as “Capitalism” to a new form that has never been seen before that would require a new name such as Corporatism, or Megalism or something similar.
Has any society ever had to “officially recognize” that their economy is different than intended?
Any favorite e- or audio-books for enthusiasts on early modern European political history? Really enjoyed Patrick Wyman's The Verge, Roger Crowley's works, and a few others, particularly from the wiki, but I want more. Basically anywhere on the continent is of interest to me, although bonus points for a focus on Italy or the Ottoman Empire.
Looking for book recommendations. Especially European history, WW2.
Who gave Eisenhower more headaches during WWII De Gaulle or Montgomery?
I just read F. Spencer Chapman’s “The Jungle is Neutral” can anyone recommend other accounts or histories of the Allied stay behind/ guerrilla operations in the pacific theater