Historical Book Recomendation Thread

Has anyone read Thomas Cahill's "The Hinges of History" series? It consists of:
- The Gifts of the Jews
- Desires of the Everlasting Hills
- Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- How the Irish Saved Civilization
- Mysteries of the Middle Ages

I've read the bottom two, and am re-reading Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea. Cahill's style is informal, but quite readable.
 
does any one have any suggestions on books about the punic wars im very interested in the carthage army and hanibal himself and his tactics he used against the romans
Goldsworthy wrote The Punic Wars some time ago. It's pretty good. Alternatively you could go straight to the source and read Polybius, my favorite classical historian, who discussed all three of the Punic Wars in his book.
 
thanks for the recommondation ill have to read those
Polybius has been shown to decrease the risk of heart failure in patients over the age of seven. :D Seriously, he's awesome. He was even there at the end in 146 BC(E), when the city was captured and sacked by Scipio Aemilianus' troops.
 
I've never had the pleasure of reading Polybius, though I have read Livy. Everyone tells me that Polybius is far superior, though Livy covered a greater period.
 
I've never had the pleasure of reading Polybius, though I have read Livy. Everyone tells me that Polybius is far superior, though Livy covered a greater period.
Livy is relatively boring and had a major agenda to push with the whole "glorify the emperor, who gave you money to write this" bit. Polybius' history is smaller in time scale (about a hundred years) but its scope is much vaster, covering an area from Spain to the Hindu Kush, and it's a history with a theme, that is to say why Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
 
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes - History of Australia from its founding to the
abolition of the transportation system.

The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin by John Erickson - Starts just
before the great Red Army purge, and traces the Eastern Front from the Soviet
perspective.

@Private Hudson - Have you read Bruce Catton's Civil War triolgy The Centennial History of the Civil War? If so, how did it compare to Foote for you?
 
Livy is relatively boring and had a major agenda to push with the whole "glorify the emperor, who gave you money to write this" bit. Polybius' history is smaller in time scale (about a hundred years) but its scope is much vaster, covering an area from Spain to the Hindu Kush, and it's a history with a theme, that is to say why Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
ok, now i have added this to my amazon basket.
thanks :D
 
Yes, blatantly false things tend to do that. You realize that Gibbon's analysis of Christianity's effect on the Roman Empire has been considered intellectually invalid for at least a hundred years or so, right?

I only use smileys in the history forum for a handful of reasons, and one of them is to indicate that I know a little more than what I am posting, often because it's sarcastic, ironic, or funny given the context of the statement.

On a slightly different note, I have just started reading Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money (might have butchered the guy's name, not sure), and I wanted to know what everyone else thought of the work. I think he made a slight logical error when talking about the fall of the Incan Empire (he doesn't seem to acknowledge the role of disease nor the numerous hostile factions to Atahualpa, and instead sticks with the "natives afraid of horses" explanation). For him, it seems to comes down to the Incans not realizing they can turn their gold and silver into money, while the Spanish have this amazing revelation. I don't think he considered the idea of the relative scarcity of gold and silver in Europe and in the Americas when he wrote this part...
 
Private Hudson - Have you read Bruce Catton's Civil War triolgy The Centennial History of the Civil War? If so, how did it compare to Foote for you?

Not sure to be honest, I have an audiobook around here somewhere by him but that doesn't seem like it would be a trilogy since its only 7 CDs. I'd have to listen to it to find out and I'm in the middle of a book about the CSS Shenendoah at the moment.

I understand he's well regarded though, so its on my "to listen" list. That's a very long list though...
 
I can't believe I forgot Fernand Braudel's three volume "Civilization and Capitalism," which covers the rise of capitalism in early modern Europe. Braudel was one of the members of the "Annales" school of bottom-up, economic and social history, and these books reflect that, but I found them quite a pleasure to read.

I love Braudel. I would Recomend his A History of Civilization. He spends a great deal of time on the middle east, asia, latin america and africa. Although he spends a lot of time on the US and USSR, but he definately does not appear biased in his writings.

Just want to add Egypt, Greece, and Rome, by Charles Freemen. It's a great introductory into each of the three civs, and is a great springboard into more specific areas of study.

Also want to ask if anyone has read good books detailing the spanish and portuguese empires from 1500-1650 (especially colonial development)? I know enough spanish to make it through spanish textbook, although i don't know if could read the original sources perfectly. Suggestions would be greately appreciated.
 
Also want to ask if anyone has read good books detailing the spanish and portuguese empires from 1500-1650 (especially colonial development)? I know enough spanish to make it through spanish textbook, although i don't know if could read the original sources perfectly. Suggestions would be greately appreciated.
I recommended J.H. Elliott's Empires of the Atlantic World, a comparative history of the Spanish and British American empires in an earlier post. You might start there, at least its bibliography. I've enjoyed Hugh Thomas, but gather some people are down on him. He's definitely more 'popular history.' For Portugal, I have the same question as you. I read A.J.R. Russell-Wood's The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move several years ago, and concluded that while it was good enough as far as it went, it was very short given the magnitude of its subject. C.R. Boxer's "The Portuguese Seaborne Empire" is supposed to be good, but I haven't read it.

Shifting gears a bit, I'm working through Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom right now. I'm enjoying it a great deal, though I find his style offputting at times. He really likes the word "fierce" and its derivatives, for instance, and exclamation points, the use of which was pounded out of me at an early age and which is rather surprising in the work of such a heavily garlanded professor writing for an academic press. That's a minor quibble, though. His theme is the evolution of a Christian religious culture. Though his focus is on the Latin West, he ranges as far afield as Central Asia by way of showing the other Christendoms, if that is not too anachronistic a word, that developed at the same time. My concern with him, and this is probably not the place to discuss it, is his treatment of the fall of western Empire, something which he goes to great lengths to minimize, effectively denying that such a thing happened. Obviously the stereotypical idea of barbarian hordes smashing the empire to bits is simplistic in its own right, but I suspect Brown and other exponents of "Late Antiquity" go too far in the opposite direction. I wonder what others here think.
 
My concern with him, and this is probably not the place to discuss it, is his treatment of the fall of western Empire, something which he goes to great lengths to minimize, effectively denying that such a thing happened. Obviously the stereotypical idea of barbarian hordes smashing the empire to bits is simplistic in its own right, but I suspect Brown and other exponents of "Late Antiquity" go too far in the opposite direction. I wonder what others here think.
What, exactly, does Brown say about it? You can definitely say that there was sufficient continuity between the pre-476 era and the death of Theodoric to claim that the Western Empire "lasted" for possibly another fifty years, but the Gothic Wars certainly put paid to that. But extending it beyond that is kinda dumb.
 
I'm not writing a book review, and I don't want to misrepresent him, though I will probably do so inevitably, but briefly: Brown depicts the recession of Roman authority from the west as the mostly voluntary collaboration of a generally very thin pre-existing Roman or Romanized elite with slightly-less Romanized barbarian warlords. The archaeologically-evident economic collapse in Western Europe in the 5th century is ascribed not to damage caused by war, but by the turning off of the spigot of money and material that the Roman imperial center had previously redistributed (presumably from the East, though Brown doesn't explain this) to Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and which had sustained there a level of development and material culture exceeding the native capability of those provinces. More later, when I have more time, but work is calling.
 
Again, being very brief, but Brown fails to explain, or is not interested in explaining, what changed to make local élites decide to go on their own, or how the Roman center weakened so much as to make it possible for them to break free. Something weakened the Western Empire, but Brown doesn't address this elephant in the room, except to imply that it was the separation from the Eastern empire that made the west unsustainable. But was the whole of the west really so poor? Britain, sure, but Gaul and Iberia, or worse yet, North Africa?

Responding to your post re: the Gothic Wars - Brown doesn't argue for continuity, per se, though one could see some continuity in Ostrogothic Italy. Rather, it seems to me, that for him the western Empire simply disappeared almost as if by magic and without taking anything with it. The continuity for him is all cultural.
 
Brown depicts the recession of Roman authority from the west as the mostly voluntary collaboration of a generally very thin pre-existing Roman or Romanized elite with slightly-less Romanized barbarian warlords.
This is kind of a legit point, actually, except for the "voluntary" part. We have plenty of examples of Roman landowners not having the ability to resist a group of barbarians who seized control of a region due to their inherent ties to their territory; Heather uses Sidonius Apollinaris' complaints very well to illustrate this point.
cypselus said:
The archaeologically-evident economic collapse in Western Europe in the 5th century is ascribed not to damage caused by war, but by the turning off of the spigot of money and material that the Roman imperial center had previously redistributed (presumably from the East, though Brown doesn't explain this) to Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and which had sustained there a level of development and material culture exceeding the native capability of those provinces.
The spigot was from southern Spain and North Africa, so he kind of misrepresents the genesis of the redistributed income. After all, northern Gaul was never as productive as the southern areas. And then the explanation usually continues to implicate the Vandal seizure of North Africa as being the imperial crisis, and the 468 failure to get it back the death-knell for the West. But even then, Gaul wasn't as unproductive as all that, and it'd be sheer lunacy to discount the effects of the 400s and 410s invasion.

Anyway, somewhat interesting, and I might take a look after I finish Iron Kingdom. Thanks. :)
 
I recall that in Heather, now that you mention it. I read that about a year-and-a-half ago. Recommended highly.

Further searching into Brown's oeuvre shows that he has written a book called "Late Antiquity." Perhaps he goes into more detail on the questions we're discussing here.

Clearly the magnates lacked the ability on their own to resist the barbarians. My objection to what I take to be Brown's point is that, voluntary or no, a sufficiently strong Roman government would have prevented that, but couldn't.

I really love this period. I wish we had better sources.

How is Iron Kingdom?
 
I recall that in Heather, now that you mention it. I read that about a year-and-a-half ago. Recommended highly.
Agreed. :)
cypselus said:
How is Iron Kingdom?
It's not half bad. I only got it today, so I'm only finished with the first few chapters, but from what I can see the book is a very good national history. Clark does a good job of staying away from partisanship so far, which is always nice to see in any history of a German state.
 
Is Peter Green's Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Era any good? It's expensive, and I might need to retroactively stop myself from buying it.
 
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