To Dach's fine list I would like to add The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (1986). This is a highly readable and detailed account of one of the greatest and melancholy achievements of science in the 20th century. It's been highly praised and has won numerous awards including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction(BCoF, Hist-1989).
To Dach's fine list I would like to add The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (1986). This is a highly readable and detailed account of one of the greatest and melancholy achievements of science in the 20th century. It's been highly praised and has won numerous awards including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction(BCoF, Hist-1989).
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Yeah, I heard the crickets chirping.
It's still a project I'm interested in doing. I might go coming through the old book threads to see if there were any heavily recommended works missed on the last page.
ParkCungHee
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While I do like the project, I think this is a case where less is more.
We can all come in and start offering books we each like, but I think we should restrict the list to mutually reviewed, introductory, broad subject books, the kind that you would recommend to someone who doesn't know anything about history.
We can all come in and start offering books we each like, but I think we should restrict the list to mutually reviewed, introductory, broad subject books, the kind that you would recommend to someone who doesn't know anything about history.
Agreed on both accounts.
ParkCungHee
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Well, first one person reads it. Then someone else reads it.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Then everybody else means to read it, but never actually gets round to it. Knowing us.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Persian Fire was a fascinating read, and I don't even much care for that sort of history. Of course, not sure how accurate it was.
I wonder if that's the same text as Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.
It is the modern book of choice about the Late Republic for people who don't know anything about the Late Republic. I wouldn't say it's out-and-out bad - Holland does get most stuff right - but it tends to be frivolous, while treading virtually the same ground as everybody else who's ever written about the Late Republic. It incorporates precisely zero secondary literature, and the analysis is all Holland (except for the part where generations of Eton schoolboys have been coming up with the same conclusions). It's like Norwich for the first century BC.
So it's not an awful book to start out with. It's certainly much better than Persian Fire, which is basically Herodotos' The Histories with less literary merit and more ridiculous characterizations of the Iranian invasions as jihad/crusade-style holy wars.
My policy on these has been that I'm contributing to both the local economy and a good cause and I can still give the book back to be resold if it's rubbish. I will certainly be doing that with Niall Ferguson's Virtual History, which was not a good book.
Bowsling
Deity
That tends to be the case with Niall Ferguson, as Masada informed me so effectively in the Great Depression thread.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
The Late Roman Republic strikes me as the best documented and most discussed part of ancient history. Therefore, a generalist book strikes me as fairly unnecessary (books that focus on various topics in depth are certainly still worthwhile, though).
I could not agree more, and would add that the period has been so overdone that it has become uncommonly boring, akin to the Second World War.
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