Either in general, or segment early middle late. I'm not looking for high level expertise here, but rather an informative and enjoyable read for the casual reader. Preferably with a minimum of what is now considered to be outdated and inaccurate.
Either in general, or segment early middle late. I'm not looking for high level expertise here, but rather an informative and enjoyable read for the casual reader. Preferably with a minimum of what is now considered to be outdated and inaccurate.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Easy, Dachs did his homework. Then he picked an audience where he could for sure be "the man" aka CFC. Creating the brand of "being the man" immediately spawned an arms race, he continues to do enough homework to remain "the man", while folks like Owen go Justin Gatlin and break his old world records while he keeps powering forward.
Meanwhile, to maintain the trophy's very existence and attention that comes with the knowledge, Dachs makes sure to shame anyone he perceives a faker, resulting in all the people who fall for the appearance of intelligence rather than the substance of it will fall for his own self-grown cult. It's a popular hip-hop technique, which is a pop-culture you will notice all our young historians are wise to. But note that faker is relative to the bar he sets, which is why CFC is his forum. One of the largest non-expert bodies of history lovers. Aka people who will sing his praise.
Shaming his opposition, lame in of itself, has a cool result in this case though. It ups the ante of what's needed to remain the man. He picked a good enough audience that his competition will be successful in outing him to us non-experts if he goes Niall Ferguson on us and relies too hard on his position as The Man, and doesn't do his real work.
This means to keep the title he has to do real work that has started at some point to translate to real life success and expertise in the actual field of history. And it also brings to our attention just how for-real history is, and why we shouldn't fake it, and should respect it.
The downside of shaming those less expert is that it discourages people from studying history because no amount is enough to someone you look up to will insult you for learning too little and asserting what you've learned. So while those motivated to compete compete harder, others who would have contributed real stuff drop out entirely.
So the cool thing about Dachs is that he's actual for real about it, and doesn't settle for just looking like the man, even if he adds style on top of substance. The style bit works though--people like me didn't pay much heed until others joined his cult and sang his praises. "I wish I had dachs' brain" said one. I was like "really? him?" then I was like, hmm. A year later, because he's true to his game, I was like, damn, this guy deserves his praise, and now I pay him a lot of attention.
Dachs knew his game and is winning it. You're asking how to win in Dachs game, but you don't want to train for it. You want to look like an expert, but you don't want to be an expert. After all, if you are an actually expert, it means you've sacrificed your expertise in all other unstudied areas because you had to pick and choose.
(Pro-tip, notice how Dachs has defiantly made a case for his animé avatar as cool and respectable and not for teenage posers. His willingness to own that part of him, publicly, relates to why he's willing to actually read for hours and hours knowing no one will ever give him credit for 97% of the work he devotes his life to.)
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I just summed up The Prince in 1% the space, made it relevant to your interests, and you found that boring? How are you going to get through those 6-7 books you assembled?
Oooch. That's...actually kind of tough. The only period of Roman history on which I'd consider myself anything like up to date is late antiquity, and that's been in considerable flux lately. I can't imagine how divergent the Usual Narrative might be from some of the better scholarship in other periods.
One could do a lot worse than the history series that Oxford and Cambridge put out. Those books generally contain well-edited series of thematic articles on a given subject written by experts, and they're usually divided by a periodization that most people can easily understand. The problem with the Oxbridge books is that they most often show up in university libraries; I don't know much about pricing or availability to the general public, but I remember seeing the Oxford Companion to Roman Studies at over $100 on Amazon.
There are a smattering of less expensive books that cover the entirety of Rome's history, but they don't tend to balance accessibility and scholarship very well. I wasn't incredibly impressed by Mary Boatwright et al., The Romans: From Village to Empire, but that book does have the merit of covering more or less everything. I wouldn't quibble with many of the facts in it, necessarily - more with the interpretations. But that's common to virtually all pop-history.
Ha. Guy Halsall? He wrote Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568. It's pretty comprehensive and up-to-date for the western part of the Empire during that time period, but it doesn't cover the first millennium of Roman history at all.
They have an ostensible point.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
only looked it up cuz you have a history of misusing words. I'm not sure ostensible is a worthwhile achievement. Especially in history. Hence why I mentioned our friend, the ostensible expert, Niall up there
.
Attachments
I remember my summer semester in London where I tackled Gibbon--that ultimately proved to be a good learning experience on evaluating the ideas presented in classic works, but not that great or even correct from a modern perspective. Same thing with Guns of August. I'd like to think I've picked up enough modern historiography to be able to identify the flaws in these accounts but I know it's not perfect.
Man, wouldn't it be great if we could lure him back here as a regular poster?
sophie
Break My Heart
I also quite like Peter Brown's Body and Society which, although a bit dated (first published 1989) gives a fairly decent and highly readable account of Roman-Christian society and perceptions about the self in Late Antiquity.
While Dachs does know a great deal, he has his gaps, just like any of us. Try asking him about Classical Indian History or Early Modern French History, for example. It's also important to remember that Dachs has been spending asstons of time reading mostly history books for the past 8 or 9 years. To compare, if you were spending the same amount of time practicing a language, that would make you a highly fluent speaker, and if you spent that time learning an instrument you would be on the level of an average session player. It's all about that 10,000 hours.
I would know ten languages if I studied that long.
I don't think that the books you listed for Renaissance Italy are that much. I'd think they could all be read in under a month, if not sooner.
Wrymouth3
Emperor
That is not how that works Mouthwash.
I assumed he meant it would be enough time for him to invent a way to revert the human brain to have an infant-like ability to learn languages.
He also just flexes for five minutes a day to get rippling, bulging muscles. No need for special diets or weight lifting.
Azurian
The Azurian
Any good historical books about American robber barons like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbuilt etc?
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Seconded the request for books on those folks. Add Henry Ford to the list.
Hey, "asstons of time for the last eight or nine years." Assuming I could get proper immersion, why couldn't I learn multiple languages?
Ron Chernow, the guy who wrote the big biographies of Washington and Hamilton also wrote books about The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Which both got some book awards.
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