Readings and History Books

adricv

adricv

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 4, 2009
Messages
7
Hello,

I'm an avid player of Civ5G&K (once IV and III). One of the things I love the most about this game, besides the gameplay, is the history. Seeing characters come to life on screen is thrilling, let alone being able to declare war on them, or trade or denounce.

I love history and I love reading - there really should be a recommended book list for people wanting to find out more about specific topics, leaders or civilizations. I couldn't find any in the forums so I figured I might as well start it here and add people's contributions as they come in, like a centralised repository of introductory and in-depth reading material about different aspects of the game for people who want to find out more. I'm deeply curious about Polynesia and Kamehameha, for instance, and I'd love a good introductory book without necessarily being a textbook, something accessible.

Let me know what you think!

--

American


George Washington

Arabian


Harun al-Rashid

Austrian

Maria Theresa

Aztec

Montezuma

Babylon

Nebuchadnezzar II

Byzantine


Theodora

Carthage


Dido

Celts


Boudicca

Chinese



Wu Zetian

Danish

Harald Bluetooth

Dutch

William I (of Orange)

Egyptian

Ramesses II

English


Elizabeth I

Ethiopia

Haile Selassie


French


Napoleon Bonaparte


German


Otto von Bismarck


Greek


Alexander


Hun

Attilla

Incan


Pachacuti

Indian

Gandhi

Iroquois

Hiawatha

Japanese


Oda Nobunaga

Korean

Sejong

Maya


Pacal

Mongolian

Genghis Khan


Ottomans

Suleiman the Magnificent

Persian


Darius

Polynesia


Kamehameha

Roman


Augustus/Caesar


Fiction


Russian

Catherine


Siamese

Ramkhamhaeng

Songhai

Askia

Spanish


Isabella

Sweden

Gustavus Adolphus

City States

Cultured

Brussels

Florence


Kathmandu

Kuala Lumpur

Milan

Monaco

Prague

Warsaw

Yerevan

Maritime

Cape Town

Jakarta

Manila

Mombasa

Quebec City

Ragusa

Rio de Janeiro


Sydney

Venice


Mercantile

Antwerp

Cahokia


Colombo

Genoa

Hong Kong

Marrakech

Singapore


Tyre

Zanzibar

Zurich

Militaristic

Almaty

Belgrade

Budapest

Hanoi

Sidon

Valletta

Religious

Geneva

Jerusalem

La Venta

Lhasa

Vatican City

Wittenberg

General

Ancient World


Medieval Era


Renaissance Era


New World

 
Eagle Pursuit said:
Celts:

Thomas Cahill - How the Irish Saved Civilization
Click to expand...
That's a pretty ballsy title and blurb for the Irish!

From my understanding, Constantinople safeguarded Hellenism and Roman culture for centuries after Rome fell. By 1453 and the inevitable fall of the city, so many scholars had fled Byzantium into Western Europe that they helped the Renaissance along with their old texts and teachings.

For that matter, the Islamic Caliphates favoured a naturalistic falasafiya for a long time and their science thrived on the shoulders of Hellenist science until al-Ghazali put an end to it by predicating a more spiritualist and less naturalist philosophy of Islam (I need to look up some books for that, I read a handful of very good ones on the history of Islamic philosophy).

I'd be curious to read and hear more about Ireland and the Celts' influence on that process.
 
adricv said:
That's a pretty ballsy title and blurb for the Irish!

From my understanding, Constantinople safeguarded Hellenism and Roman culture for centuries after Rome fell. By 1453 and the inevitable fall of the city, so many scholars had fled Byzantium into Western Europe that they helped the Renaissance along with their old texts and teachings.

For that matter, the Islamic Caliphates favoured a naturalistic falasafiya for a long time and their science thrived on the shoulders of Hellenist science until al-Ghazali put an end to it by predicating a more spiritualist and less naturalist philosophy of Islam (I need to look up some books for that, I read a handful of very good ones on the history of Islamic philosophy).

I'd be curious to read and hear more about Ireland and the Celts' influence on that process.
Click to expand...

By civilization, he means Christianity. During the "migrations period" after the fall of Rome, Christianity backslid quite a bit in parts of Europe over-run by Germanic tribes. Ireland became a literal and figurative island of Christians in a sea of pagans, far away from Rome or Constantinople. The book depicts the efforts of Irish monks to preserve a somewhat non-orthodox version of Christianity and respread it, bringing religion and civilization to the uncouth barbarians from the east.

It's worth reading, even if you don't buy into the title statement.
 
Ha, of course you should read Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire... this covers both Rome and Byzantium.

While this isn't totally related to Rome and Augustus, the biography of Julius Caesar, titled Caesar, by Adrian Goldsworthy was pretty interesting. You can learn a bit about Augustus when he was going by Octavian.
 
I got a copy of 'The Last two Million Years' for cheap from a used book store. While I am sure some of the scholarship is outdated, as it's 30 years old, I still think it was worth reading.

This was a book produced under the Reader's Digest label.

We had it as a kid, but I never read it back then - too dry for my tastes then.

Just mentioning it, as you can get it used for pretty cheap
 
I would suggest these books: Augustus-The life and times of Rome's first Emperor by Anthony Everitt, Rubicon by Tom Holland, Persian Fire by Tom Holland, The Rise of Rome by Anthony Everitt, Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, The Annals of Imperial by Tacitus, and The Aeneid by Virgil
 
An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I.

It's an old book, but very good.
 
justinianI said:
An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I.

It's an old book, but very good.
Click to expand...

That is awesome, thank you! I'll pick it up on Amazon if I can.
 
For Bismarck: Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany.
Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a history of both Britain and the United States so it can go under both headings.
 
Russia:
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

Anything by Massie is a must have his two book on the naval race between Germany and England and then WWI naval front is a masterpiece.
 
For Ancient Greece, Athens in particular the book Lords of the Sea by John Hale is a very interesting read. For the city state of Florence I would suggest The House of the Medici by Christopher Hippert and for Venice I would recommend City of Fortune: House Venice ruled the Seas by Roger Crowly.
 
Inca:
Last Days of the Inca - Kim MacQuarrie

Japan: (About first european contact with Japan) interest to Brits, Dutch, Japanese and Portuguese, and anyone who has read/seen James Clavells 'Shogun')
Samurai William - Giles Milton
 
For Alexander, I'd recommend Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green.

It gives you an idea of how far ambition can carry you, sometimes into madness. When you demand worship from your own generals, and compare your own exploits to those of Hercules, something might just be amiss.
 
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