Historical Book Recomendation Thread

Currently reading Age of Extremes, The Short 20th Century by recently deceased Hobsbawm. Very broad strokes. Haven't even gotten halfway through, but very readable. Makes some interesting observations and points out some lesser known facts - such as the totally unexpected collapse of the USSR, of which the US government had no inkling, despite subsequent claims of having worked to that very end.

I've read his first two volumes and was impressed by the work. Haven't gotten around to the Age of Empires or the Age of Extremes yet.
 
Are there any good books on pagan Lithuania? There are a few on the Northern Crusades, but they seem to just cover the Catholic and Russian perspectives.
 
Dachs is the man to ask on that. I remember him doing a tour de force of Baltic Sea stuff a few years ago. Great Northern War, Teutonic/Livonian Order, the whole deal.
Really? That's cool. I just hope there actually is information on pagan Lithuania; I get the impression they didn't leave many records, while the Christians did. Almost all of my interests are very obscure, which makes finding good info difficult.
 
Unfortunately pagans have had a lamentable tendency not to write anything down, which does rather make it hard to know much about them. This is one reason why Greece and Rome are such important civilisations - they are among the very few examples of pagan civilisations that have left extensive written records of their paganism, at least in the western world.
 
Dachs is the man to ask on that. I remember him doing a tour de force of Baltic Sea stuff a few years ago. Great Northern War, Teutonic/Livonian Order, the whole deal.
I wish I were, but I mostly know about things as they happened from the viewpoint of the crusaders. Plotinus did mention that information on Lithuanian religion and society is depressingly scanty, but even if it weren't, my only understanding of it would still be filtered through what I've read about the German Order.
 
Only insofar as there some common religious beliefs shared by Germanic and Slavic speaking peoples (including several deities). There might be some books on Lithuanian folklore, but I'm unfamiliar with that speciality.
 
Any good books that give an overview of Cold War Africa? I've started to notice how lacking my knowledge is there and feel I should probably rectify that, especially with Spring Break giving me plenty of time to do reading.
 
Try Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War
 
The Assyria discussion in the BNW forum made me interested in anything related to specific ancient Middle Eastern civs. Any suggestions?
 
The Assyria discussion in the BNW forum made me interested in anything related to specific ancient Middle Eastern civs. Any suggestions?

Well, when I first started reading about Assyria, I read a book called "The Might That Was Assyria" by H.W.F. Saggs. It was extremely informative. But it's also a bit dense. I literally never finished it. I got through the more or less political history, the early settlements, their time under the rule of others, their rise to power, administration of their empire, and their fall, but there was a whole second half of the book devoted to every day life, their social norms and interactions, etc. I never even got to that part.

I'm sure there's a more accessible book than that one, but I'm not sure it's possible to find a better source overall.

ETA: Saggs has a book called "Civilization Before Greece and Rome" that I got for free somewhere and never had a chance to read. I suspect it'll be more useful as a broad picture of Mesopotamia as a whole.
 
Anybody know anything good and fairly short on Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power?

Define short?

I came across a documentary series on Napoleon recently, but it's a couple 1h episodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tORG__mggF8

The documentary wasn't exactly that informative or went into any details (not even to the level expressed by the Wikipedia articles on the subject) but it might be what you are looking for.
 
Any opinions on Richard Hofstadter?
 
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