Its an interesting read and Grantham gets mentioned.
I essentially brought it as it was mentioned in this thread and that it has good reviews on Amazon. I think I'll probably read After Tamerlane next.
Its an interesting read and Grantham gets mentioned.
I essentially brought it as it was mentioned in this thread and that it has good reviews on Amazon. I think I'll probably read After Tamerlane next.
Marx
Warlord
David S. Landes - Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Carlo M. Cipolla - Before the Industrial Revulution
I had to read those for an elective economics course. The first is takes on an interesting perspective, but it is quite an interesting read.
Carlo M. Cipolla - Before the Industrial Revulution
I had to read those for an elective economics course. The first is takes on an interesting perspective, but it is quite an interesting read.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
This book I'm reading now, "Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban," by Stephen Tanner, is a pretty good read.
Abaddon
Deity
Thanks for the suggestions guys.
carmen510
Deity
The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent.
Supercade, by Van Burnham.
The former is self-explanatory, with many good quotes and stories.
The latter is basically a video game album of large, glossy, and awesome pictures, combined with anecdotes.
Also, Russia A History, edited by Gregory L. Freeze, is a nice overview of Russia's history, with a large section dedicated to the Soviets.
Supercade, by Van Burnham.
The former is self-explanatory, with many good quotes and stories.
The latter is basically a video game album of large, glossy, and awesome pictures, combined with anecdotes.
Also, Russia A History, edited by Gregory L. Freeze, is a nice overview of Russia's history, with a large section dedicated to the Soviets.
Cabeza da Vaca (yes, it means head of the cow) wrote a journal of his experiences wandering the American southwest after the shipwreck of Panfilo Narvaez's expedition in the Gulf of Mexico. It's been published under at least a couple of names in English. The edition I have is called "Castaways," but I haven't read it yet...
For things I have read:
Samuel Eliot Morison - Several books, including a biography of Columbus, as well as The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages and The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages. Morison sees these men as heroes, not villains as later historians frequently do. In any event, they are immensely readable get grounded in scholarship. They don't sail into the flights of fancy and speculation that plagues so much popular history (cough, Gavin Menzies, cough).
J.H. Elliott - Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 - is a comparative history of the two largest American empires. It is definitely not popular history, and may be slow going. I intend to read his Imperial Spain, but haven't gotten around to it. While mentioning Elliott, let me express my dislike for the works of Henry Kamen. There, I said it.
Charles Hudson's Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun is a step-by-step reconstruction, using the accounts of the survivors and modern archaeology and anthropology to reconstruct Hernan De Soto's ill-fated expedition and the world of the Indians through which he traveled. Fascinating, but sometimes slow going - or was that because I read it while I had the flu?
Laurence Bergreen: Over the Edge of the World - A popular history of Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation. Even my wife, who doesn't like history, liked this one.
Peter Russell: Prince Henry 'the Navigator' - A scholarly biography of Infante Henry of Portugal and the expeditions of exploration he sponsored. Interesting on the mindset and worldview of that time and place as well as the deeds and doers, and on a subject that doesn't receive a great deal of coverage in English.
For Europe more generally during the time period, I am drawing something of a blank. For the 16th and 17th centuries, the major themes are the Reformation and the Wars of Religion/state formation, the Military Revolution (was there/wasn't there - for this start with Geoffrey Parker), and the birth of modernity (arguably - there's always an argument).
Stolen Rutters
Deity
My favorite book about early colonial times is The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto.
Another one is Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.
Another one is Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.
Abaddon
Deity
Thankyou very much.
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.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
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The second one has some interesting information, but the firsts one is just a long and tedious exposition of an old dumb theory (a rehash of the "superior protestant ethics" nonsense...), utterly ignoring the material conditions which favored first the Mediterranean countries (climate and soil more favorable for ancient agriculture) and later the ones further north (it was no accident that the Industrial revolution happened where iron ore and coal were plentiful: Pennsylvania, British midlands, and Northern France/Belgium/Ruhr region).
Not to defend the Protestant Ethic theory (I haven't read Weber) or Landes, whom I haven't read, either, but China had and has plenty of coal and iron, but didn't launch an industrial revolution until it began imitating the European example in the 20th century. Don't neglect either the importance of water power. America's industrialization started with water-powered textile mills in New England.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Yes, that too is important (and a point which Cipolla rightly stresses, as he describes the pre-industrial economy based essentially on agriculture and clothing - mechanization started in the textile industry, and goes back to the Middle Ages).
I agree that resources are not enough, it is also necessary to know how to use those. But while learning that can be quickly done, overcoming a lack of important resources usually requires waiting for the next big technological shift. In Europe the Industrial Revolution started in Britain, but its technology spread quickly to every region which had a (broadly speaking) "european culture" capable of readily absorbing the new technology, and the resources to use it. Southern Europe didn't remain "back" because of a different culture, it was held back because it couldn't compete due to lack of resources during that first Industrial Revolution. That becomes obvious in France, where only the north became the heavy industry region.
Without resources the new steam technology had a much reduced use. Railroads would be built everywhere, small quantities of coal mined locally or imported, but the big iron and steel works, shipbuilding, etc, developed close to those resources, as moving them made production of industrial commodities uncompetitive (those railroads would be build with imported rails...). Only when oil and electricity replaced steam did industrialization spread. And by then those which already had led during the first Industrial Revolution had more human and financial capital available.
I'm not aware of the historical locations of mining operations in China, it may be that they did had coal and iron available in some regional "clusters", like those I mentioned. But that fortunate combination is rare, and judging solely from what I know of their difficulties with industrialization during the 20th century my guess is that the known mines were separated or in sparsely populated areas.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
China was also absent from the agricultural revolution. Mechanizing rice production is much more difficult than other grains, and surplus rural unemployment + urban migration is what helped kickstart Industrialization.
BananaLee
Fruity Penguin
I'll just shoot my essay on Chinese economic slowdown to give reasons why an Industrial Revolution never happened aight?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310279
And for the record, Jared Diamond's books are good reads but have really shaky history. Don't take it as gospel. And if anyone mentioned 1421, I'd shoot myself.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310279
And for the record, Jared Diamond's books are good reads but have really shaky history. Don't take it as gospel. And if anyone mentioned 1421, I'd shoot myself.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
Menzies, G. 1421.
BananaLee
Fruity Penguin
I can't find the smiley where the dude shoots himself. ..
Have you guys read the Conquest of Mexico by Prescott, and what did you think about it?
