Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
We’re back with another action packed Digest! With everything from a wealth of book ideas to give as gifts, to exploring a wide variety of the past! Don’t forget to show some love for those hard working contributors, thank the writers and shower them in all the upvotes they deserve!
Start off in style with Give a gift of History with the AskHistorians 2021 Holiday Book Recommendation Thread!
Plus more book ideas in the Thursday Reading and rec.
And once again my duty is done for another week! Enjoy the threads folks, keep it classy and I’ll see all of you again next Sunday!
It's the first Digest of the month, which means it's time for another installment of "The Real Questions", where we take a look at the wilder side of r/AskHistorians! Here, I give a shout-out to people asking the more atypical questions on this sub: questions that investigate amusing, unique, bizarre, or less common aspects of history, as well as ones that take us through intriguing adventures of historiography/methodology or niche/overlooked topics and moments in history. It's always a wide (and perhaps confusing) assortment of topics, but at the end of the day, when I see them I think, "Finally, someone is asking the real questions!"
Below are my entries for the last month - questions with a link to an older response are marked with ‡. Let me know what you think were the realest questions you saw this month, and be sure to check out my full list of Real Questions.
Sunday is also a day where we show some appreciation for the overlooked questions that didn’t get an answer but did catch our eye. Feel free to post your own or others you came across!