Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Brick Testament? Reaching, here.
Brick Testament? Reaching, here.
_random_
Jewel Runner
Wait, if you're serious, that sounds cool.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I would love to read a history of environmentalism and/or ecology. One covering the industrial era to the present would be fantastic, but I would also be curious in pre-industrial environmentalism or interest in sustainability, if it even existed.
He said environmentalism, not the environment.
I think environmentalism really began in the sixties or so, with books like Silent Spring. However, a general opposition to the perceived urbanisation and industrialisation of life and a romantic attachment to simple, rustic ways of living goes back at least as far as Virgil.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Well there were earlier people than Carson. John Muir famously camped with President Theodore Roosevelt in Yosemite as part of an attempt to (successfully) win that area National Park status. And Roosevelt himself was a great preservationist who established the National Park system as we know it. Yellowstone was the first, I believe. But I think as a popular protest movement it probably began with Carson. But I also want to know if anyone before her thought about things like pollution or depletion of natural resources, for example, or if there was any attempts as creating protected areas before the 20th century for the purposes of protecting them, so not really things like "the king's forest" which would have been protected for someone else's personal use, not for the benefit of the place itself being protected.
You mean like the fear in the 17th century in France and Germany that they are going to be completly deforested, which would mean loss of vital resource, leading in some cases to attacks on metalworks?
Anyone think it's a good idea to do a full world history readthrough? It won't be totally inflexible, so I'll have time to focus on stuff that interests me, but I really want to have a full knowledge of human history. It will probably take a few years to finish.
sophie
Break My Heart
This is never going to happen. I had a professor at university who spent 3 decades reading, researching, and writing about the forestry laws of late medieval southwestern England and its impact on society in that region. Setting out to have a "full knowledge of human history", assuming it to take your entire life, let alone just "a few years" is a fools' errand and belies a) an extraordinarily narrow and biased (and Whiggish) view on history, and b) a youthful naïveté, which, while certainly admirable, may be a bit misdirected. It's like declaring you're going to learn every language in the world.
Semantics are fun, but it's pretty clear that I didn't mean "knowing every aspect of every historical period," especially because of the context. I just meant a "well-rounded" knowledge of history.
History_Buff
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2001
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Even then, you'll be reading (and re-reading, that part is important) for decades.
I just pick stuff that looks interesting and is available, and it's been a blast. Barbarian Migrations in particular, though now I feel like I need to go get a copy of Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire, since Halsall refers to his work so often.
Since then I've done a few, of which the best has probably been Battlecry of Freedom. Damn that book is fun to read.
I just pick stuff that looks interesting and is available, and it's been a blast. Barbarian Migrations in particular, though now I feel like I need to go get a copy of Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire, since Halsall refers to his work so often.
Since then I've done a few, of which the best has probably been Battlecry of Freedom. Damn that book is fun to read.
Of course I will. The point is to just get a basic overview.
sophie
Break My Heart
What does "basic overview" mean here though? Clearly you mean reading some book of "Chinese History" and another book of "Renaissance Italian History", but 1) what does that entail? Do you just mean "political history" or do you want the social. If it's Italian Renaissance are you just planning on focusing on the big 5 of Venice, Florence, Milan, Rome and Naples, which would necessarily narrow your perception of the peninsula. I mean, hell, even a singular survey of the Italian Renaissance would be pretty woefully reductionist as it wouldn't really convey the complexity of the political mechanisms at play in the period. You can make generalizations about the "rise of the signore" but 1) the rise of the De'Medici was vastly different from the rise of the Da Montefeltro and Visconti and 2) Doesn't apply to a lot of equally interesting and unique cities like Siena. To me, you would conceivably have to read separate books at the very least for Florence, Venice, Rome (especially the urban history of Rome in this period), Naples, Sicily, possibly some specialist books to cover, say, the relationship between the cities within the Papal States and the pope himself, and maybe a book or two on the art itself in this period. I'd probably also recommend at least some separate books on the mercenary invasions and the Italian Wars. And this is just to get a basic overview of Italy for the period of, say, 1420-1600 or thereabouts. And then of course there is the question of how in depth you want to get for regions. Would you read a singular history of Britain, or separate histories of the English Monarchy, Wales, Scotland and Ireland? What about the actual content of the history? Does a history of baseball or Central Asian stringed instruments factor into your "general overview"? What about the Romani or Jewish diasporae, or the development of various languages. I've read a couple books looking solely at the development of the modern Hochdeutsch, and although it did cover some aspects of other Germanic languages such as Gothic and Alemannic, it's primary focus was still one branch of one family of one superfamily of languages.
My point is that it's silly to seek out a "general knowledge of history" because no such thing exists. History can be as narrow, obscure, and niche as you can possibly imagine, and placing value judgments on what and what doesn't constitute "general history" just narrows your view on the subject as a whole.
Rather than creating an ontology or methodology for studying history, the best thing you can do is just figure out what interests you and study that. You'll gain far deeper knowledge by getting invested in a topic and researching it extensively (if even for only a couple months) than you will by reading one survey text for each arbitrarily predetermined "region".
tl;dr: pursue what you're interested in, history is about more than just collecting trivia to spout off at others.
Oy, everyone has to start somewhere. He isn't going to find out about niche topics, specific events/ideas, or stuff like that right off the bat. There isn't anything wrong with a general overview to start narrowing down an interest area, especially one you have never encountered before.
The only general world history book I've ever really come in contact with is After Tamerlane. I read it forever ago and I'm not sure how well it holds up now, but I liked it when I read it.
The only general world history book I've ever really come in contact with is After Tamerlane. I read it forever ago and I'm not sure how well it holds up now, but I liked it when I read it.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Yeah, this is an unusually hostile reaction. Maybe "full knowledge of history" was a bad way to phrase it, but I can't see anything wrong with attempting to at least have passing familiarity with as much of the world's history as possible. You won't be an expert, but you'll at least have some idea what others are talking about. A historian might need to specialize in Medieval forestry laws, an amateur just needs to know generally what's happening at various points throughout.
One caveat, of course, is you could easily end up with an erroneous interpretation of history. I wouldn't recommend reading Edward Gibbons to learn about the fall of the Roman Empire. I also wouldn't recommend starting with Peter Heather. At the same time, many parts of history do not have a broad consensus even on the basics of what was going on, so a single view could give you a distorted picture. However, if you accept that, do your homework first to find the better authors and do your homework after to find the criticisms of that author, you'll at least have some idea of what's going on. For example, I haven't read Heather's work, but I at least have some idea of what he argues, the traditional Barbarian migration theories, and that this isn't completely settled. But just from reading Halsall's work, I learned quite a bit about late Roman society, Barbarian society, etc. On the other hand, if someone were to start talking about the Song dynasty in China, I would probably give them blank stares because I don't even know enough to have a conversation.
One caveat, of course, is you could easily end up with an erroneous interpretation of history. I wouldn't recommend reading Edward Gibbons to learn about the fall of the Roman Empire. I also wouldn't recommend starting with Peter Heather. At the same time, many parts of history do not have a broad consensus even on the basics of what was going on, so a single view could give you a distorted picture. However, if you accept that, do your homework first to find the better authors and do your homework after to find the criticisms of that author, you'll at least have some idea of what's going on. For example, I haven't read Heather's work, but I at least have some idea of what he argues, the traditional Barbarian migration theories, and that this isn't completely settled. But just from reading Halsall's work, I learned quite a bit about late Roman society, Barbarian society, etc. On the other hand, if someone were to start talking about the Song dynasty in China, I would probably give them blank stares because I don't even know enough to have a conversation.
For all of its history, or for specific chunks?
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Mouthwash accuses Owen of not getting semantic meaning of "all of human history", after Owen says the best you can do is get Whiggish, showing Owen knew exactly what Mouthwash meant.
It's my own learning of just the tiniest bit of history (aka Whiggish + sorry-we'-re-not-sorry-but-we-are-sorry-anyway post-Whiggish Whig history) that allows me to navigate that.
It's my own learning of just the tiniest bit of history (aka Whiggish + sorry-we'-re-not-sorry-but-we-are-sorry-anyway post-Whiggish Whig history) that allows me to navigate that.
Spoiler :
How do you explain Dachs, then? Gamma mutation?
I don't really know how to "do my homework," but I know plenty of intelligent people, on this site and others, which can get good ideas from. And yes, I know not to stop at just one book. I've assembled 6-7 books on ancient Egypt alone, and then I'll move on to the ancient Near East (Israelites, Phoenicians, Mesopotamia, etc).
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