CFC's Top Recommended Historical Works

That's not true, I'm sure at least Plotinus knows a bunch of them too.
 
That's not true, I'm sure at least Plotinus knows a bunch of them too.

Maybe a few church historians and others who've worked on related things. But I'm not really a historian, at least not of the kind of history that mostly gets discussed here, so I don't know many of these people.
 
Pangur Bán;13103295 said:
Yep. If you haven't done much history, then chances are you'll be looking to the Romans, Vikings and that odd little disagreement between Hitler and Stalin. If you've done a lot of history then this book will be more interesting. State-sponsored warrior religious cult with a grand temple at Vilnius? Sacrifices of fully-armed German knights to the Baltic gods? Pagan kings with German Franciscans and Russian monks issuing charters in their name in German, Latin and Russian, while trying to get the Byzantine Empire to give them a metropolitan? Rulers converting back and forth between paganism, Orthodoxy and Catholicism depending on political opportunity and eventually ruling the biggest territory in Europe west of the Horde? That's pretty interesting if you think medieval Europe is about feudalism, courtly love and slavish religious conformity.

Huh. I have no memory of the warrior cult in Vilnius, what was that about? Pagan Lithuania's fascinating, and I'm always on the lookout for more books about it. It's a shame a lot of the state archives were destroyed in a fire in the 16th century.
 
Huh. I have no memory of the warrior cult in Vilnius, what was that about? Pagan Lithuania's fascinating, and I'm always on the lookout for more books about it. It's a shame a lot of the state archives were destroyed in a fire in the 16th century.

Rowell basically argues that Lithuanian warriors evolved their own national cult to mirror that of the 'crusading' Germans whose aggression united them and to become a focal point of Gediminas' 'state'.
 
Pangur Bán;13107661 said:
Rowell basically argues that Lithuanian warriors evolved their own national cult to mirror that of the 'crusading' Germans whose aggression united them and to become a focal point of Gediminas' 'state'.

That's really interesting. I wonder how I could've missed that. I'll have to read that book again to refresh my memory. It was pretty good, though I skipped the chapter on Church politics and history after a while.
 
I've just stumbled back upon this thread, would someone (moderator?) be able to update the OP to reflect the posts?
 
Antilogic wanted some sort of nomination-election system. These are the recommendations I found on page 3, did I miss any?

Espedair Street by Iain Banks
S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345 (Cambridge, 1994)
Alexander to Actium - Peter Green
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler - David Glantz
A History of Russia - Nicholas Riasanovsky
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1776 - Robert Middlekauff
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy - Adam Tooze
The French Revolution -- Carlyle
History of the French Revolution --Michelet
Ordinary Men -- Browning
 
Antilogic wanted some sort of nomination-election system. These are the recommendations I found on page 3, did I miss any?

Espedair Street by Iain Banks
S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345 (Cambridge, 1994)
Alexander to Actium - Peter Green
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler - David Glantz
A History of Russia - Nicholas Riasanovsky
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1776 - Robert Middlekauff
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy - Adam Tooze
The French Revolution -- Carlyle
History of the French Revolution --Michelet
Ordinary Men -- Browning

I think the list as it currently stands - at least, those which don't seem to have been meaningfully quibbled - is roughly as follows:

The First World War - Hew Strachan
Iron Kingdom
- Christopher Clark - a history of Prussia between 1600 and 1945
Battle Cry of Freedom - James McPherson - the American Civil War era.
1491: New Revelations of America before Columbus - Charles Mann
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 - Daniel Howe

With the below pretty sure-seeming candidates for inclusion:

China Marches West - Peter Perdue - the Chinese conquest of Central Asia in the 16th Century
Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America - Daniel K. Richter
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West - Guy Halsall - Barbarians and Romans in Late Antiquity.
The Transformation of European Politics 1763-1848 - Paul Schroeder
Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin - biography focussing on Abraham Lincoln but encompassing many of the movers and shakers of the ACW era.
Alexander to Actium - Peter Green
The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy - Peter Wilson
The Inheritance of Rome: History of Europe from 400 to 1000 - Chris Wickham

I'm not really sure how much discussion there's been about the others: Ordinary Men seemed pretty popular but I think most of those were just mentioned by one person and then not brought up again - which could be taken as tacit recommendation, I suppose.
 
I think adding a brief note explaining the topic covered would be nice. Some titles dont let you figure out.
 
We may as well add Ordinary Men. Everything I've heard about it points to it being An Important Book, and if it comes with the approval of both Park and Dachs, it doesn't seem like we could ask for much greater assurance.

I would also like to recommend The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, by Richard White. It's pretty much the definitive book in the study of Indian-white relations in the old Northwest, and ties together elements of ethnohistory and diplomatic history in really powerful ways.

That could replace the Richter, if we don't want too many on that topic.
 
I never hear anything about India on these threads.
 
I never hear anything about India on these threads.

That's because:
a) None of us regulars specialize in Indian history

and

b) Much like with Russian history there's not a whooooole lot of current academic English-language material being put out.

Some books from me:

Paul E Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America

A delightfully written picture of 2nd Great Awakening New York. It's short, reads super fast - you can finish it in a couple hours - and is just plain fun reading.

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England

This book is 80 years old now and it's still a classic. Due to its age and proximity to the events it describes I wouldn't recommend it on its own, but the book is still must-read material for anybody interested in early 20th Century British Political History or anybody studying World War I and its causes.

Peter Brown, The Body & Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in early Christianity

Impeccably written analysis of Roman and Early Christian perceptions of the body and sexuality. I don't know about how Plot feels about this book, but to my mind it's a must read for anybody studying late Antiquity or Early Christianity

John Davies, A History of Wales

Perhaps the best comprehensive history of Wales available today.
 
That's because:
a) None of us regulars specialize in Indian history

and

b) Much like with Russian history there's not a whooooole lot of current academic English-language material being put out.

And yet, a Russian history has been recommended on this very page.
 
George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England

This book is 80 years old now and it's still a classic. Due to its age and proximity to the events it describes I wouldn't recommend it on its own, but the book is still must-read material for anybody interested in early 20th Century British Political History or anybody studying World War I and its causes.

Are we doing 'primary' sources in this list? I mean, I'd recommend Herodotus to anyone interested in Greek history on the same grounds, but wouldn't really trust anything he says.

John Davies, A History of Wales

Perhaps the best comprehensive history of Wales available today.

Without being funny, how much is that saying?

And yet, a Russian history has been recommended on this very page.

We do have Cheezy, who has an interest in Russian history and so is more familiar with it - plus I think it's generally more visible in the general reading scene than Indian history. I've certainly seen A People's Tragedy on several occasions, but I don't think I can name a single 'recurring' work on India. This may be a reflection on my reading/shopping habits though.

I've added a few notes to my draft list to the more ambiguous ones.
 
I think it's important that Owen's points are taken together: we have nobody with a special interest in Indian history who can recommend particular titles, and the topic as a whole is not so prominent that people without a special interest are likely to have come across any particular work. We have a poster with an interest in Russian history, which compensates for its lack of prominence, and other topics, such as Medieval Europe, are prominent enough that they can be discussed even without a resident expert. Indian doesn't seem to have either; best bet is maybe Masada or Tailless, our resident experts on South-East Asia, having come across something in their studies.
 
And yet, a Russian history has been recommended on this very page.

Because we have a couple of English-speaking Russian specialists on these boards. Even so there are only like 3 or 4 quality, current broad histories of Russia that exist in the English language at this point.

The same is true of Indian history, if possibly even sparser. If you were here 4 or 5 years ago you would have seen Dachs complaining weekly about the nonexistance of any English histories of Classical and Preclassical India.

Are we doing 'primary' sources in this list? I mean, I'd recommend Herodotus to anyone interested in Greek history on the same grounds, but wouldn't really trust anything he says.

*Shrug*

Without being funny, how much is that saying?

Not a whole lot. There isn't a lot of Welsh history being done outside of Wales.
 
Is there a book about the evolution of sex in modern (17th-19th Century) England you could point at?

It doesn't have to be that specific, but I'm interested in Britain rather than the US.
 
Volume 1 of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality literally wrote the book on the field, though there must be more modern takes on it.
 
Of course, I should have thought about that. My prof recommended a book by some obscure professor in a British university with a very complicated Middle Eastern name, but I couldn't find that in any public library.
 
Someone was asking recently for a book on the history of sailing. I was recalling an old book called Men Ships and the Sea. It has 4.5 stars on Amazon, so some people besides me seem to think it's good.
 
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