(((I am NOT a jew)))
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I don't care what subject, I just would like to learn more about world history. Any recommendation is welcome.
History books worth reading
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- Feb 1, 2015
"The Khyber Pass" by Paddy Docherty, 2008
I found it a useful primer for explaining the Afghanistan / North West Frontier as the backdrop for cultural and civilizational flows from ancient days to the 20th century. The focus of the book is naturally on the eponymous Khyber Pass, but it is pretty far ranging, touching on the influences of Central Asia, India, Persia, and other distant nomad points on the region.
Before reading the book, I just had a vague idea of Afghanistan history consisting of Alexander the Great, and Mongols invasion, and Silk Road, and the Great Game. But the book really helped me get a better idea of not just chronology of who was invading or in power, but what was the major cultural influences in each era and what, if any, impact that had on the modern demography and cultural landscape of the region.
I found it a useful primer for explaining the Afghanistan / North West Frontier as the backdrop for cultural and civilizational flows from ancient days to the 20th century. The focus of the book is naturally on the eponymous Khyber Pass, but it is pretty far ranging, touching on the influences of Central Asia, India, Persia, and other distant nomad points on the region.
Before reading the book, I just had a vague idea of Afghanistan history consisting of Alexander the Great, and Mongols invasion, and Silk Road, and the Great Game. But the book really helped me get a better idea of not just chronology of who was invading or in power, but what was the major cultural influences in each era and what, if any, impact that had on the modern demography and cultural landscape of the region.
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2022
Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath
Hoover writes a critical take of FDR and Second World War from an isolationist perspective. Also the Soviet infiltration of American politics was discussed in length. It was considered so radioactive it was only published 50 years after Hoover's death because it attacked the sacred cow of the "Good War". Hoover is usually rated pretty low on the presidential scale, but while some of his domestic policies weren't so successful, he was crystal clear and foresightly on Soviets, Hitler and the Japanese.
Hoover writes a critical take of FDR and Second World War from an isolationist perspective. Also the Soviet infiltration of American politics was discussed in length. It was considered so radioactive it was only published 50 years after Hoover's death because it attacked the sacred cow of the "Good War". Hoover is usually rated pretty low on the presidential scale, but while some of his domestic policies weren't so successful, he was crystal clear and foresightly on Soviets, Hitler and the Japanese.
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2019
The Boer War by Thomas Packenham.
Interesting insight into how war would be waged in the 20th century (trenches, concentration camps, prisoners being tortured/shit, etc.) and how the Bongs got BTFO'd in a rather embarrassing fashion. Lots of firsthand accounts.
Interesting insight into how war would be waged in the 20th century (trenches, concentration camps, prisoners being tortured/shit, etc.) and how the Bongs got BTFO'd in a rather embarrassing fashion. Lots of firsthand accounts.
Shart Attack
kiwifarms.net
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- Mar 14, 2022
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David Anthony. It's about the origins of the Indo-European language family. A few chapters in the middle are pretty dry, when the author starts dropping Russian/Ukranian place names like his English-speaking audience knows what the hell the Usatavo-Yamnaya-Kamyutksaski-Matryushka Valley is, but the rest of it is fine.
The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. A collection of articles commissioned by the WPA during the Great Depression in which people describe their local food customs and such. An interesting look at what Americans were eating in the 1920s and 1930s. I love the chapter that's nothing but a list of old-timey diner slang. Give me one on a pillow with a bottle o' red, and dress one pig for my gal pal here.
The First World War by Hew Strachan. Easy-to-read history of the war. Was also made into a great documentary series.
The Code Book by Simon Singh. It's a history of cryptography and cryptanalysis, written so well even an dumbshit like me could understand it.
The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. A collection of articles commissioned by the WPA during the Great Depression in which people describe their local food customs and such. An interesting look at what Americans were eating in the 1920s and 1930s. I love the chapter that's nothing but a list of old-timey diner slang. Give me one on a pillow with a bottle o' red, and dress one pig for my gal pal here.
The First World War by Hew Strachan. Easy-to-read history of the war. Was also made into a great documentary series.
The Code Book by Simon Singh. It's a history of cryptography and cryptanalysis, written so well even an dumbshit like me could understand it.
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- Dec 7, 2018
Albion seed is something of a key touchstone on Colonial American culture and helps explain the arising of different regional cultures.
OutInTheRain
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Wars Of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen. He was the special advisor to the mujahideen in the late 80's and he covers the history of Afghanistan from its ancient past to about a decade ago when it was published. Due to his experiences he spends a long time on the mujahideen era of the 80's. Lots of slagging the CIA in it, lots of going after Pakistan as well. I found it to be insightful and does help fill in the blanks that aren't normally discussed as to why the region is the way it is.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Here's my list of ones I gave 5/6 or 6/6 reviews to, a few filtered out, history or intellectual history.
Specific titles that don't explain themselves:
The Men Who United the States is a series of fun stories about US history loosely tied together by themes of things like energy, mineral wealth, water, etc., like connecting resources to human stories. It has very interesting stuff in it.
Slavery by Another Name is about the reenslavement of Blacks through convict labor from Reconstruction up through the New Deal (arrest them on "vagrancy" charges, sell them to a private firm, work them to death). It's harrowing.
Rome of the Caesars is stories about specific people in the Roman Empire.
Bloody Pacific is an interesting progression through the Pacific Front of WW2 that explores each part through themes (like the discovery of a new frontier, paradise, the island as hell, etc.), really trippy writing.
A Disease in the Public Mind explores the Civil War's outbreak as mass hysteria. It's overly pro-Confederate in sentiment but it has a very good take on the idea that it was two groups of raving luantics egging each other on.
Villains of All Nations is about pirates, explored as revolutionary phenomenon.
Storm Before the Storm is about the initial slide into decline of the Republic, so the era of Gracchi Brothers, Marius and Sulla, that stuff. Tons of eerie applicability to modern America.
Plagues and People studies the spread of disease and development of civilization as similar phenomenon and the ways they are linked together. There's this notion of a sort of equilibrium that civilization and disease both seek (stable levels of predation on their hosts).
Days of Rage is about the late 1960s/1970s Leftist radicals terror campaigns, tons of applicability to today's Leftist violence, is a very dispassionate, fair book but will bring out a lot of feels.
The Worldly Philosophers gives chapters to each of significant economists (Smith, Marx, Malthus, Veblen, etc.) with an eye to explaining how their personality and their culture shaped their worldview. Veblen was a fucking weirdo and it showed in his obsession with human social posturing. Keynes was a fucking Chad.
Invisible Armies is a comprehensive book on guerilla warfare and terrorism across the ages.
Stalin book is focused on Stalin's court life and personal relationships. Absolutely fascinating psychological portrait, I found this fascination with Stalin's lifestyle and the way he related to people.
Bridge at Andau is a book of interviews, written like a novel, about the Soviet's disgusting invasion of Hungary during the 1960s. Applicability to today.
Devil is Here in these Hills is about the Coalfield Wars.
Knights of Spain is about, VERY DETAILED, De Soto's conquistador expedition to the South back when it was all tribal chiefdoms (more advanced than what the English later found). Is the best glimpse we have into a lost world.
Persian Fire is Greco-Persian Wars, it's kind of piss to be honest, probably shouldn't be on this list, very basic-bitch telling from the Greek perspective.
Season of the Witch is about 1960s/1970s San Francisco, partitioned into three units by time and theme: enchantment (the promise of the Summer of Love, utopian dreams), terror (serial killers, revolutionary terrorism, crime and drugs), and deliverance (recovery).
Blood in the Water is way more than just the USS Liberty, it goes much further back into Israeli villainy and the Zionist cabal within the CIA. It turns out there was actually basically a conspiracy INCLUDING the CIA to try to false flag the US into declaring war on Egypt.
The Right Stuff is about the Mercury Seven in the Space Race. It's written extremely well, it manages to convey through almost a gonzo journalist style the feelings associated around those events, and is interesting for how it reveals the insanely dangerous world of the test pilots that got overlooked for the astronauts.
Wicked River and Cattle Kingdom both are collections of stories, loosely tied together by theme, from their respective subject matter. Wicked River's is fascinating, the Mississippi River Valley of hte Old South was a batshit crazy place.
Last Days of the Incas is about the conquest of the Incas, it's vastly underappreciated because it turns out that while it doesn't get the play the Aztecs do their story was WAY more heroic (they nearly beat the Spanish off the map) and complex (constant backstabbings, puppets come and go, ups and downs, internal Spanish civil war that killed off pretty much all of the conquistadors).
Intoxication is more about animals, but it discusses some historical drug use and animal drug use, fascinating and deeply disturbing in how universal it shows the drive for intoxication and its self-obliterating effects are even on critters like bugs.
Additional ones I probably reviewed too harshly:
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
- Boring as fuck, but has something important to say that there was a cabal in Western finance that was in the habit of financing revolutions (the idea being you get a very strong bargaining position with the new regime) that funded the Bolsheviks heavily (it got out of hand).
On the list below, American Child Bride is about the history of age of consent and marriage practices in the US, complex differences between regions and the evolution of thinking towards it along with really interesting stories. One big thing I learned from it is that marriage used to be a way to legally emancipate oneself, so children frequently married friends across state lines to loophole the law.
United States of Appalachia is just some selected topics, not real good.
William Cushing was a Naval officer of the Union who did lots of amphibious raids.
Sprinting through No Man's Land is about the first Tour de France, held after WW1. It was very boring, grueling, but if you have a specific interest in that it can be worth suffering through.
Blacklisted by History is about not just McCarthyism (McCarthy was right, obviously) but also the whole history of Communist infiltration of the US government, which it turns out was a million times worse than I could have ever imagined (the State Department in WW2 was completely eat up with them to the extent it basically directed US diplomatic policy).
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to know is fun stories.
George Washington's book is focused on him as a businessman, it sounds lame but I ended up being rather surprised at how it revealed just how screwed up British mercantilism was (even if ti mostly went unenforced).
Fifth Sun is particularly notable for relying heavily on the Aztec sources (written in Nahuatl after conquest), it also presents the proof that the Cortez-was-a-god story was a later fabrication, talks about Aztec history pre-conquest, Conquest, and then post-Conquest issues.
El norte rambled too much, kind of basic bitch history, it gets much more interesting in the later parts where it starts talking about the overlooked history of anti-Hispanic persecution.
Diamonds Gold and War is mostly politics and diplomacy, kind of boring, very detailed though.
The Battle for Christmas is fun, it walks through the evolution of Christmas in the US, wind up with the takeaway that Christmas basically used to encapsulate features of what wound up becoming Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve, and was also like Protestant Mardi Gras.
Dictatorland is okay, it's stories about different African dictatorships grouped by themes of specific resource curse (oil, chocolate, human slavery, diamonds, etc.)
Wright Brothers is okay.
| The Men Who United the States |
| My Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery |
| Slavery by Another Name |
| The Bible as History |
| Rome of the Caesars |
| Bloody Pacific |
| The Age of Napoleon |
| The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century |
| A Disease in the Public Mind |
| Black Indian Slave Narratives |
| Villains of All Nations |
| The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy |
| Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South |
| The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic |
| The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West |
| Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom |
| Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists |
| Plagues and Peoples |
| Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity |
| Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence |
| The Worldly Philosophers |
| Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire |
| Invisible Armies |
| Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar |
| Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia |
| The Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic, and Drugs |
| The Bridge at Andau |
| The Devil is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom |
| Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms |
| Christ's Samurai: The True Story of the Shimabara Rebellion |
| Persian Fire |
| Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love |
| Dining Out: A Global History of Restaurants |
| Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty |
| Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation |
| The Right Stuff |
| Wicked River: When the Mississippi Last Ran Wild |
| Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West |
| Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America |
| The Last Days of the Incas |
| Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances |
Specific titles that don't explain themselves:
The Men Who United the States is a series of fun stories about US history loosely tied together by themes of things like energy, mineral wealth, water, etc., like connecting resources to human stories. It has very interesting stuff in it.
Slavery by Another Name is about the reenslavement of Blacks through convict labor from Reconstruction up through the New Deal (arrest them on "vagrancy" charges, sell them to a private firm, work them to death). It's harrowing.
Rome of the Caesars is stories about specific people in the Roman Empire.
Bloody Pacific is an interesting progression through the Pacific Front of WW2 that explores each part through themes (like the discovery of a new frontier, paradise, the island as hell, etc.), really trippy writing.
A Disease in the Public Mind explores the Civil War's outbreak as mass hysteria. It's overly pro-Confederate in sentiment but it has a very good take on the idea that it was two groups of raving luantics egging each other on.
Villains of All Nations is about pirates, explored as revolutionary phenomenon.
Storm Before the Storm is about the initial slide into decline of the Republic, so the era of Gracchi Brothers, Marius and Sulla, that stuff. Tons of eerie applicability to modern America.
Plagues and People studies the spread of disease and development of civilization as similar phenomenon and the ways they are linked together. There's this notion of a sort of equilibrium that civilization and disease both seek (stable levels of predation on their hosts).
Days of Rage is about the late 1960s/1970s Leftist radicals terror campaigns, tons of applicability to today's Leftist violence, is a very dispassionate, fair book but will bring out a lot of feels.
The Worldly Philosophers gives chapters to each of significant economists (Smith, Marx, Malthus, Veblen, etc.) with an eye to explaining how their personality and their culture shaped their worldview. Veblen was a fucking weirdo and it showed in his obsession with human social posturing. Keynes was a fucking Chad.
Invisible Armies is a comprehensive book on guerilla warfare and terrorism across the ages.
Stalin book is focused on Stalin's court life and personal relationships. Absolutely fascinating psychological portrait, I found this fascination with Stalin's lifestyle and the way he related to people.
Bridge at Andau is a book of interviews, written like a novel, about the Soviet's disgusting invasion of Hungary during the 1960s. Applicability to today.
Devil is Here in these Hills is about the Coalfield Wars.
Knights of Spain is about, VERY DETAILED, De Soto's conquistador expedition to the South back when it was all tribal chiefdoms (more advanced than what the English later found). Is the best glimpse we have into a lost world.
Persian Fire is Greco-Persian Wars, it's kind of piss to be honest, probably shouldn't be on this list, very basic-bitch telling from the Greek perspective.
Season of the Witch is about 1960s/1970s San Francisco, partitioned into three units by time and theme: enchantment (the promise of the Summer of Love, utopian dreams), terror (serial killers, revolutionary terrorism, crime and drugs), and deliverance (recovery).
Blood in the Water is way more than just the USS Liberty, it goes much further back into Israeli villainy and the Zionist cabal within the CIA. It turns out there was actually basically a conspiracy INCLUDING the CIA to try to false flag the US into declaring war on Egypt.
The Right Stuff is about the Mercury Seven in the Space Race. It's written extremely well, it manages to convey through almost a gonzo journalist style the feelings associated around those events, and is interesting for how it reveals the insanely dangerous world of the test pilots that got overlooked for the astronauts.
Wicked River and Cattle Kingdom both are collections of stories, loosely tied together by theme, from their respective subject matter. Wicked River's is fascinating, the Mississippi River Valley of hte Old South was a batshit crazy place.
Last Days of the Incas is about the conquest of the Incas, it's vastly underappreciated because it turns out that while it doesn't get the play the Aztecs do their story was WAY more heroic (they nearly beat the Spanish off the map) and complex (constant backstabbings, puppets come and go, ups and downs, internal Spanish civil war that killed off pretty much all of the conquistadors).
Intoxication is more about animals, but it discusses some historical drug use and animal drug use, fascinating and deeply disturbing in how universal it shows the drive for intoxication and its self-obliterating effects are even on critters like bugs.
Additional ones I probably reviewed too harshly:
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
- Boring as fuck, but has something important to say that there was a cabal in Western finance that was in the habit of financing revolutions (the idea being you get a very strong bargaining position with the new regime) that funded the Bolsheviks heavily (it got out of hand).
On the list below, American Child Bride is about the history of age of consent and marriage practices in the US, complex differences between regions and the evolution of thinking towards it along with really interesting stories. One big thing I learned from it is that marriage used to be a way to legally emancipate oneself, so children frequently married friends across state lines to loophole the law.
United States of Appalachia is just some selected topics, not real good.
William Cushing was a Naval officer of the Union who did lots of amphibious raids.
Sprinting through No Man's Land is about the first Tour de France, held after WW1. It was very boring, grueling, but if you have a specific interest in that it can be worth suffering through.
Blacklisted by History is about not just McCarthyism (McCarthy was right, obviously) but also the whole history of Communist infiltration of the US government, which it turns out was a million times worse than I could have ever imagined (the State Department in WW2 was completely eat up with them to the extent it basically directed US diplomatic policy).
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to know is fun stories.
George Washington's book is focused on him as a businessman, it sounds lame but I ended up being rather surprised at how it revealed just how screwed up British mercantilism was (even if ti mostly went unenforced).
Fifth Sun is particularly notable for relying heavily on the Aztec sources (written in Nahuatl after conquest), it also presents the proof that the Cortez-was-a-god story was a later fabrication, talks about Aztec history pre-conquest, Conquest, and then post-Conquest issues.
El norte rambled too much, kind of basic bitch history, it gets much more interesting in the later parts where it starts talking about the overlooked history of anti-Hispanic persecution.
Diamonds Gold and War is mostly politics and diplomacy, kind of boring, very detailed though.
The Battle for Christmas is fun, it walks through the evolution of Christmas in the US, wind up with the takeaway that Christmas basically used to encapsulate features of what wound up becoming Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve, and was also like Protestant Mardi Gras.
Dictatorland is okay, it's stories about different African dictatorships grouped by themes of specific resource curse (oil, chocolate, human slavery, diamonds, etc.)
Wright Brothers is okay.
| Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders |
| Moonshine: A Cultural History of America's Infamous Liquor |
| American Child Bride |
| The United States of Appalachia |
| William Cushing: Civil War SEAL |
| Sprinting Through No Man's Land |
| Blacklisted by History |
| Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: The Extraordinary Exploits of the British and European Aristocracy |
| Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi |
| George Washington: Dealmaker-in-Chief |
| The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt |
| Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs |
| El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America |
| Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of Modern South Africa |
| The Battle for Christmas |
| Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa |
| The Wright Brothers |
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2019
Most of mine trend towards dark and medical themes.
The Worst Hard Time: Easily the best source on the Dust Bowl. Was the basis for the Ken Burns documentary.
Rabid: A cultural history on rabies.
The Indifferent Stars Above: There's a lot of books on the Donner Party. This is the best one I have read. It's from the perspective of a woman who was on this trek as her honeymoon.
The Lobotomist: A biography on the pioneer of the transorbital lobotomy, Walter Freeman. It does take a less cynical stance on the man and his work which is pretty interesting.
Raven: The gold standard of your creepy cult books, this time on Jonestown and Jim Jones. It's very thick and will take time to get through but it's worth it.
The Worst Hard Time: Easily the best source on the Dust Bowl. Was the basis for the Ken Burns documentary.
Rabid: A cultural history on rabies.
The Indifferent Stars Above: There's a lot of books on the Donner Party. This is the best one I have read. It's from the perspective of a woman who was on this trek as her honeymoon.
The Lobotomist: A biography on the pioneer of the transorbital lobotomy, Walter Freeman. It does take a less cynical stance on the man and his work which is pretty interesting.
Raven: The gold standard of your creepy cult books, this time on Jonestown and Jim Jones. It's very thick and will take time to get through but it's worth it.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
The Rommel Papers is a pretty good read from what I remember.
Though really if you want history, read philosophy by the people who spoke that philosophy directly and not just wrote about it, as it will carry a lot of the thought of the period within it. Even fiction within a given period, that's written from the perspective of that period will give you some idea of the thought process in that period.
Though really if you want history, read philosophy by the people who spoke that philosophy directly and not just wrote about it, as it will carry a lot of the thought of the period within it. Even fiction within a given period, that's written from the perspective of that period will give you some idea of the thought process in that period.
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2019
I second this one, it gives a general background on left-wing terrorism in the US that was useful during the BLM riots of 2020.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
There is a pretty good (but sometimes dry) book, Slavery by Any Other Name, which covers pretty much the same thing but in the part of Mozambique governed by the Mozambique Company. Comparing the two might be interesting if it wasn't also so gay.
(((I am NOT a jew)))
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2022
Ughubughughughughughghlug
I salute you my good sir. Jesus, you really took the post seriously. But no, seriously. Thank you. That's way more books than I'll probably read anytime soon but I have them all on my to-read list.Would you have any historical fiction you'd recommend as well?
Thank you guys for all the wonderful recommendations! If anyone has any more please feel free.
Cornfed
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2023
The Civil War (3 volumes) by Shelby Foote.
I don't think they even have these in school libraries any more.
I don't think they even have these in school libraries any more.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk is superb. It's a history of the clandestine struggles over central Asia between Great Britain and Russia in the 19th Century.
I really liked Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower and A Distant Mirror, too.
I really liked Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower and A Distant Mirror, too.
southpawdagon
kiwifarms.net
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- Mar 8, 2023
I am currently reading A brief history of the war of the roses by Desmond Seward, kinda interesting.
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2023
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger is a biography of a German soldier during WW1. His enthusiasm even in fighting in sandbags made of human corpses was utterly captivating, and his remarks on the living conditions, from trench foot to the poor food help tremendously in showing the horrors of WW1.
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2019
Here's some of my favorites which haven't already been mentioned in this thread:
- A General History of the Pyrates by Daniel Defoe - A collection of brief biographies of contemporary pirates, including people like Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, John Rackham, Anne Bonny, etc. Has been used as a primary source for major figures in the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean and southern US regions. Because of poor literacy back then, a lot of these may be embellishments outside of major life details of the pirates and court documents and major maritime battles and raids, but still a good book. Also provides geographical descriptions of areas where these pirates operated like Madagascar and Brazil.
- Bitter Glory: Poland and Its Fate by Richard Watt - Very good history book about interwar Poland and the Second Polish Republic. It is also partly a biographical piece about Marshal Jozef Pilsudski (guy in my pfp), which was a plus for me because I had already been looking for a Pilsudski biography for a long time. The book was a great read, and it's good if you want modern Polish history before the Iron Curtain.
- Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales by Sergei Zenkovsky - Collection of Russian primary source documents from the medieval period as well as many early Eastern Orthodox writings. Talks about things like the origin of the Slavs from the Eastern Orthodox tradition as well as figures like St. Olga of Kiev.
- Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce by Christopher Hibbert - Excellent biography on Benito Mussolini written by a British historian. It is very detailed about Mussolini's life, but it's more focused on the man himself and not life under his government. It focuses a lot on his family as well as his military relationship with Hitler, though it does not talk about what happened in Italy after his execution and ends immediately after describing his body being strung up.
- Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford - History written by the multiple time governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford. It discusses major goings-on in the colony throughout the 1600s. A lot of people on Goodreads don't like this because they had to read it for school, but I had a lot of fun with it myself.
- The Earth is Weeping by Peter Cozzens - History book about the Native American wars during the time of the American expansion westward due to Manifest Destiny. The introduction and subtext in later chapters make it clear Cozzens is leaning in the Indians' favor, though he does not shy away from vivid descriptions of tortures inflicted on white settlers during Indian raids, and the book is not preachy at all.
- The Fate of Empires by John Glubb - Essay by a man of the British Empire that discusses how empires and world superpowers on average last 250 years before they fall and examines similar traits across an empire/superpower's lifespan which determine what is going on in the grand scheme of things.
- The History of Jihad by Robert Spencer - History book about Islamic holy war from its foundation to the modern day. Talks about medieval jihad as well as modern rape gangs in Europe as well as different American presidential administrations' approaches to Muslim violence.
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer - Lengthy history book about the Third Reich written by someone who lived in Germany for a time. It's also partly biographical about Hitler, though it also focuses on the structure of the German government as well as German military matters in the war. It is also viewed as the definitive work on this period of history.
- The Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Colonel Roosevelt) by Edmund Morris - Great trilogy of biographies about President Theodore Roosevelt. Morris knows his subject well, and this is a great piece of history if you're a fan of TR.
- The Vinland Sagas by unknown - Primary source Viking histories about Leif Eiriksson's voyage to what would be modern day Canada from Greenland and Iceland. The Saga of Eirik the Red, a biographical piece about Leif's father, is featured in here as the second of the two works compiled for the book. Entertaining, albeit brief.
- Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn Brodie - Very detailed biography on President Jefferson and talks extensively about his whole life. This book is notable because it is known as the first major Jefferson biography to make the case that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children, which has now been proven by DNA testing. That tells me the author knew what she was talking about, and I find this book to be sadly underrated.
- Two Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer - Biographical piece about Charlemagne, the first part, written by Einhard, is more historical while the second, written by Notker, is more talking about the mythification of Charlemagne's life and his place in European folklore.
- Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow - Very lengthy but very well done biography on President Washington. I walked away from this one feeling satisfied, and it's a very good read if you are a fan of Washington. It's not a shorter piece, but I feel this work should be read if you really want to get to know Washington as a president and as a person.
(((I am NOT a jew)))
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 14, 2022
Abyssal Bulwark
Thank you!Would any of you have decent recommendations for broad condenscened histories of countries or wars? Like a decent all-around guide to North American history or anything similar that would go into some detail while also spanning a large chunk of history?