carmen510
Deity
You will find good ones, but I'm afraid "objectivity" will be hard to find on a president with such an impact on American history, especially its politics.
Having said that, I thought FDR by Jean Edward Smith was pretty good.
You will find good ones, but I'm afraid "objectivity" will be hard to find on a president with such an impact on American history, especially its politics.
Having said that, I thought FDR by Jean Edward Smith was pretty good.
Bulldog Bats
King
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2013
- Messages
- 701
I will try to find it. Thanks.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
FWIW, I enjoyed the book. I echo Dachs' critique: it covers a whole lot of territory, several hundred years of political intrigue, wars, art and societies, and incest, in just a few hundred pages.
If you like it, his biography of Alexander the Great is excellent. Perhaps you will want to read that before AtA?
You mean this? Should I also read a book on the Achaemenids or does the biography cover the important parts?
History_Buff
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2001
- Messages
- 6,529
Which work are you talking about specifically?
His biography of Alexander. I can't wait for Alexander to Actium.
I realize this will probably go unanswered because of the sheer inactivity of this thread as of late, but I'm looking for comprehensive histories of Sumeria/Babylon, pre-Alexandrian Persia, and the Peloponnesian War. Something readable, please.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I was going to suggest Thucydides for the Peloponnesian War, but I guess it's not comprehensive. 
I'm trying to remember the first source I read, though (I took it out of the library in high school, I think). I'm pretty sure it was The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. I'd recommend it.
Dunno about Sumeria. Did you check out Civilization Before Greece and Rome (H.W.F. Saggs). For Babylon, he wrote "The Greatness that is Babylon."
I'm trying to remember the first source I read, though (I took it out of the library in high school, I think). I'm pretty sure it was The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. I'd recommend it.
Dunno about Sumeria. Did you check out Civilization Before Greece and Rome (H.W.F. Saggs). For Babylon, he wrote "The Greatness that is Babylon."
I did. It's mostly about the technology and culture, though.
Kagan wrote a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War that's still reasonably authoritative and very readable. He also condensed it into a single volume, which is still very good.
I would also recommend the Landmark Thucydides and the Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika, part of a series of heavily annotated English translations of classical histories. They're also excellent; the first covers the war up to 411, and the second covers the remainder of the war and then provides a political-military history of Greece in general up to about 359.
I would also recommend the Landmark Thucydides and the Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika, part of a series of heavily annotated English translations of classical histories. They're also excellent; the first covers the war up to 411, and the second covers the remainder of the war and then provides a political-military history of Greece in general up to about 359.
It's really, really hard to find good, readable classical Iranian history that's easily available and recent.
With that said! About a month ago, some guy named John Waters managed to get his book on Achaemenid Iran published, and it's easily available on Amazon. With the important caveat that I have not read it and that I have no idea whether it's good or not, you might try looking there.
You sure you didn't mean Matt Waters? Anyway, I'm considering Persian Fire, but it doesn't seem as focused on the Achaemenids as I would like.
Tom Holland is less than scholarly, but I don't think that what he says is particularly bad. It's just that he doesn't necessarily concern himself with little things like historical detail or sticking within the realms of actual history.
yeah i did clearly my mind was on pink flamingos instead
persian fire isn't terrible, apart from the ridiculous modern parallels that holland attempts to introduce, but also won't tell you a whole lot that you don't already know
There is no readily available, readable modern work on the history of the arche Seleukeia.
The one that comes closest is Samarkand to Sardis by Kuhrt and Sherwin-White, but it's not comprehensive and is chiefly an academic overview of the mechanism of government in the Seleukid domains. It's also devilishly difficult to find, especially if you're not willing to shell out a hundred-plus bucks on Amazon; many universities don't carry it, and when I read it a few years back I had to go through a research consortium.
Peter Green treats Seleukid history in Alexander to Actium and does a reasonably good job of it, although the book is, of course, primarily focused on the oikoumene as a whole and of the major Hellenistic states the Seleukid one is the one that gets short shrift in Green's pages.
There are some specialist works that have discussed parts of Seleukid history. They range from the almost absurdly narrowly focused (Nick Sekunda's book on the Seleukid infantry reforms in the 160s BC, and Aperghis' book on the Seleukid royal economy) to the semi-outdated (Bar-Kochva's work on the Seleukid military as a whole, which dates from, like, the 1970s) to works with narrow focus but breadth across the entire oikoumene (Rostovtzeff's magnum opus on economic structures in the Hellenistic period).
John Grainger has produced a biography of Seleukos I that isn't half-bad, as well as a book on the war between Antiochos III and Rome that is absolutely worth a look, and a book on the 'cities of Seleukid Syria' that's okay.
I know absolutely nothing, other than what I've read in Civilopedia. So that's good enough for me!
Yeah, I will definitely check out Grainger's books. Thanks
Similar threads
