Recommendations for General Histories
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CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
I second that. I have the highest regard for Bill Bryson.
More general history : The Decisive Battles of the Western World by JFC Fuller C.B., C.B.E., DSO. Volumes 1 (480BC - 1757CE) and Volume 2 (1792 - 1944).
For a detailed background to the Nazis, you could do worse than The German Dictatorship by Karl Dietrich Bracher.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Nearly Everything is great but a little too science-oriented. For a Bill Bryson history, get Mother Tongue and/or Made in America.
"A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" by Neil Sheehan
(I think it won the pulitzer prize)
A biography of a very comples, humane, intelligent, courageous, misogynistic, pewrson who was America's only civilian general in Vietnam
Jim
(I think it won the pulitzer prize)
A biography of a very comples, humane, intelligent, courageous, misogynistic, pewrson who was America's only civilian general in Vietnam
Jim
Again, I'd second "Rubicon" by Tom Holland for the fall of the Roman Republic, Also his "Persian Fire" about Athens, Sparta and their sturggles with the Persian empire, with a lot of background.
People were tough in those days...
Battle of Marathon: fight in hopolite armour weighing 70 odd pounds (the weight of an infantryman's load throughout history?) then race the Persian triremes back the 26 miles to defend Athens in the evening.
No thanks.
Mojo's sufgeesetion of Seller and Yateman's "1066 and all that" is very good, and is all the history that Englishmen of a certain age can recall, (they were subleterns in the trenches, which possibly made them a little cynical, henvce their humour).
I am not sure how well it would translate for Americans...
Jim
People were tough in those days...
Battle of Marathon: fight in hopolite armour weighing 70 odd pounds (the weight of an infantryman's load throughout history?) then race the Persian triremes back the 26 miles to defend Athens in the evening.
No thanks.
Mojo's sufgeesetion of Seller and Yateman's "1066 and all that" is very good, and is all the history that Englishmen of a certain age can recall, (they were subleterns in the trenches, which possibly made them a little cynical, henvce their humour).
I am not sure how well it would translate for Americans...
Jim
billyb1012
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I was going to say the first. The second is much shorter, 4 volumes as opposed to 14, but it covers less ground. Both of course, have been around for a while so will lack any current scholarship. But they're both beautifully written and a pleasure to read. And be very aware of Churchill's personality, environment and personal history; there's likely to be a sensible opposing view to every conclusion he makes.
billyb1012
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I've now gone back and read the entire post, which I hadn't done before my previous comments, and I see we're now allowing what might loosely be called "keyhole" histories, as opposed to general surveys.
That being the case, I'd like to recommend "I Will Bear Witness: A Diary Of The Nazi Years, 1933 - 1945" (2 Vol.,pub. Random House in USA), for a chilling and ultra-realistic account of everyday life in Nazi Germany, by Victor Klemperer, a Jewish-born Professor of Romance Languages in Dresden, who managed to escape the horrors of the Holocaust by virtue of his position and his marriage to a non-Jewish wife.
I've read both volumes 3 times in the six years since I bought them (both volumes at a greatly reduced price, in the remainders stacks, which I think makes a somewhat negative commentary on how Americans in the 21st century rank the importance of remembering the recent past, but that's a rant that deserves a post all its own), and I have every time been mesmerized by reading them. Are they page-turners? Well, no, not really, but I've found that it's their very dullness through many portions that is most illuminating.
Here's a brilliant and important man in the intellectual life of pre-war Germany reduced to writing about how he is going to make his next house payment (before his house is seized), how he is going to pay for needed car repairs (before his car is seized), who is going to be able to read his handwriting (after his typewriter is seized), how will he keep his emotionally unstable wife sane (after they are forced to euthanize their reaining pet, a cat they both love dearly)... the monstrous enormity of it, the enervating, almost daily grinding down of the will to carry on, are what keeps one reading through the pages of days becoming months becoming years of seeming drudgery.
But! Leave it to history, and its record of the years, to provide the dramatic impetus needed to propel the story along. Klemperer's fear of losing his house becomes sheer panic after the Kristallnacht, his fear of death is constantly reinforced once the evacuations begin, and he first hears, not of a place called Theresienstadt, which they hear is relatively humane (itself a comment on the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda!), but of a place called "Auschwitz", from which no voices are ever heard again ... hear him in his rare moments of defiant anger, when he swears that the Jews of KasparDavidFriedrichstrasse will be famous as far as it is up to him, and hear him rage against those professors who betrayed their intellectual backgrounds and sided with the Nazis, and hear his proposed punishment of them, that they be hung the highest of all from the lampposts, and left there for "as long as is compatible with hygiene".
And listen to his utter despair, this brilliant man, reduced to anguish over where the next 50 pounds of potatoes will come from. How he agonizes over the means of his death -- will he be starved slowly, or shot suddenly, or kicked to death in the street by an angry gang of youths who spot his yellow star? Or will he finally, like all the rest, be sent to the ovens of Auschwitz? And then you can marvel, if you've read this far, of his eleventh-hour deliverance by the Allied firebombing of the city of Dresden, the arguably most horrific act of terrorism ever visited by a free people on non-combatants in wartime, but an act which freed Klemperer, his wife, and his manuscripts so generations yet unborn have a record of what it was really like on the inside. A fair trade? No. But one we are fortunate to have.
I've read Shirer; I've read Speer; both are good, and contain valuable knowledge. But never have I read anything that made me feel so strongly what it was like to be there as Klemperer. The careful reader can feel, with the same numbing dullness, the straws being heaped, or like the caricatured voodoo doll, the pins being inserted, one by one by one, until the mind itself is altered. The reader turns the page not because he wants to, but because, like Klemperer, maybe the war will end on the next page. Maybe we will finally have deliverance -- tomorrow! How long can it go on? And in his deepest despair, again, the defiant anger -- I must go on!
I will bear witness, precise witness!
Wow -- that was quite a rant. Sorry if it went over the top, but I'd recommend these books to anyone who's reading this post.
That being the case, I'd like to recommend "I Will Bear Witness: A Diary Of The Nazi Years, 1933 - 1945" (2 Vol.,pub. Random House in USA), for a chilling and ultra-realistic account of everyday life in Nazi Germany, by Victor Klemperer, a Jewish-born Professor of Romance Languages in Dresden, who managed to escape the horrors of the Holocaust by virtue of his position and his marriage to a non-Jewish wife.
I've read both volumes 3 times in the six years since I bought them (both volumes at a greatly reduced price, in the remainders stacks, which I think makes a somewhat negative commentary on how Americans in the 21st century rank the importance of remembering the recent past, but that's a rant that deserves a post all its own), and I have every time been mesmerized by reading them. Are they page-turners? Well, no, not really, but I've found that it's their very dullness through many portions that is most illuminating.
Here's a brilliant and important man in the intellectual life of pre-war Germany reduced to writing about how he is going to make his next house payment (before his house is seized), how he is going to pay for needed car repairs (before his car is seized), who is going to be able to read his handwriting (after his typewriter is seized), how will he keep his emotionally unstable wife sane (after they are forced to euthanize their reaining pet, a cat they both love dearly)... the monstrous enormity of it, the enervating, almost daily grinding down of the will to carry on, are what keeps one reading through the pages of days becoming months becoming years of seeming drudgery.
But! Leave it to history, and its record of the years, to provide the dramatic impetus needed to propel the story along. Klemperer's fear of losing his house becomes sheer panic after the Kristallnacht, his fear of death is constantly reinforced once the evacuations begin, and he first hears, not of a place called Theresienstadt, which they hear is relatively humane (itself a comment on the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda!), but of a place called "Auschwitz", from which no voices are ever heard again ... hear him in his rare moments of defiant anger, when he swears that the Jews of KasparDavidFriedrichstrasse will be famous as far as it is up to him, and hear him rage against those professors who betrayed their intellectual backgrounds and sided with the Nazis, and hear his proposed punishment of them, that they be hung the highest of all from the lampposts, and left there for "as long as is compatible with hygiene".
And listen to his utter despair, this brilliant man, reduced to anguish over where the next 50 pounds of potatoes will come from. How he agonizes over the means of his death -- will he be starved slowly, or shot suddenly, or kicked to death in the street by an angry gang of youths who spot his yellow star? Or will he finally, like all the rest, be sent to the ovens of Auschwitz? And then you can marvel, if you've read this far, of his eleventh-hour deliverance by the Allied firebombing of the city of Dresden, the arguably most horrific act of terrorism ever visited by a free people on non-combatants in wartime, but an act which freed Klemperer, his wife, and his manuscripts so generations yet unborn have a record of what it was really like on the inside. A fair trade? No. But one we are fortunate to have.
I've read Shirer; I've read Speer; both are good, and contain valuable knowledge. But never have I read anything that made me feel so strongly what it was like to be there as Klemperer. The careful reader can feel, with the same numbing dullness, the straws being heaped, or like the caricatured voodoo doll, the pins being inserted, one by one by one, until the mind itself is altered. The reader turns the page not because he wants to, but because, like Klemperer, maybe the war will end on the next page. Maybe we will finally have deliverance -- tomorrow! How long can it go on? And in his deepest despair, again, the defiant anger -- I must go on!
I will bear witness, precise witness!
Wow -- that was quite a rant. Sorry if it went over the top, but I'd recommend these books to anyone who's reading this post.
ComsatAngel2017
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For WW2, Chester Wilmot's "The Struggle for Europe" is old but still worthy. For WW1, Sheffield, Strachan, Simpkins or Corrigan against the old school Keegan. Avoid Liddel Hart or Churchill on either war. i have recently read a book on Dresden that destroys all the myths about it - but can't remember either title or author. I shall find out and return to bore with the details!
"The Affluent Society" Galbraith?
I'm guessing not, but it *was* quite interesting, after all he studied the economics of the USAAF's strategic bombing campaign, and came to the conclusion that it was a greater cost to the US than to Germany in war material/production...
Back to other µhistories
"The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam" by Martin Windrow.
A bit confusing in the detail it goes into, but does describe it well, and at one stage it did remind me of the Blackadder paraphrase: "We need a pointless sacrifices, and decided on you"
The camp was doomed, so the French parachuted 800 of their bravest legionaries into it. What a waste.
Jim
ComsatAngel2017
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Nope, not Galbraith (and I'm currently reading Overy's "Why the Allies Won", which comes to quite the opposite conclusion to Galbraith). It's annoying - I can picture the dust cover properly, but Googling is too vague to bring up the author.
Polaris said:
Mohammed and Charlemagne, Henri Pirenne. Also a follow-up of sorts in Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (I'm blanking on the authors right now, but it questions Pirenne's conclusions in light of archaeological evidence)
A History of Civilizations, Fernand Braudel
Anything by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
I don't know how well-regarded it is, but I like my History of China by J.A.G. Roberts quite a bit.
A History of the USSR: Louis Aragon (yes, the selfsame Louis Aragon - French Surrealist Poet and cold war historian all in one. This book is more readable than your average pulp novel.)
Hope these suggestions helped a bit.
ComsatAngel2017
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I found Corrigen ("Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War"
by Gordon Corrigan (Cassell Military Paperbacks)) interesting, but wasn't convinced
Some of the "myths" that he "debunks" seem to stand up from his own data.
So the Somme offensive wasn't a waste (it was thus fine for the British to suffer 19,000 casualties on the first day without gaining anything?)
No more? than 12% of French men born in 1896 were killed in the war?
etc.
Jim
This is mainly a cut and past forom another thread, but seemed appropriate:
John Gribbins "Science: A history" on the birth and rise of (modern) science.
Jarred Diamonds "Guns, Germs and Steel" gives you a new perspective on the "why did things happen that way" questions. Not recommende as an introduction to history, since it asumes that the reader have an good overall view of world hsitory.
"A History of Fascism" by Stanley G. Payne to understand the run up to WW2. And "Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger (no less) to give you an insight into the realpolitik and power struggles by one who knew all about it.
And finally, a personal favourite: "The Railway Journey" by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, on how industrialization in the 19th century changed for ever how humans relate to time and space. But only if you love to read academic texts.
Jarred Diamonds "Guns, Germs and Steel" gives you a new perspective on the "why did things happen that way" questions. Not recommende as an introduction to history, since it asumes that the reader have an good overall view of world hsitory.
"A History of Fascism" by Stanley G. Payne to understand the run up to WW2. And "Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger (no less) to give you an insight into the realpolitik and power struggles by one who knew all about it.
And finally, a personal favourite: "The Railway Journey" by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, on how industrialization in the 19th century changed for ever how humans relate to time and space. But only if you love to read academic texts.
Here you go, ALL of history in one book 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Knowledge-Charles-Van-Doren/dp/0345373162
OK so not everything is covered in great detail....
Actually it's IMO just a good read that doesn't emphasize facts and figures but rather ideas and philosophies of the given people and times.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Knowledge-Charles-Van-Doren/dp/0345373162
OK so not everything is covered in great detail....
Actually it's IMO just a good read that doesn't emphasize facts and figures but rather ideas and philosophies of the given people and times.
autumn1971
Illuminator
I'll second Guns, Germs, and Steel, it remains one of my favorites.
For American history, I'd recommend A Few Bloody Noses. I can't recall the author's name, but it is interesting look at the history of the American Revolution written by an English historian.
For American history, I'd recommend A Few Bloody Noses. I can't recall the author's name, but it is interesting look at the history of the American Revolution written by an English historian.