Readings and History Books
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Koiranputki
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Oh, I can imagine it....humans have had the same basic intellectual equipment for what.... 200,000 or more years... The problems, though, of dealing with the past are essentially threefold....having material to analyze; communication...understanding the language, or even the word meanings that were being conveyed...even if it is ancient Greek or Latin; ...and most significantly, the amount of material that has been lost down through the ages....either inadvertently or otherwise....
Oh, and thanks to the OP...an interesting thread...
India-
India: A History by John Keay (great semi-brief comprehensive coverage from pre-Harrapan on)
Mahabharata- one of the longest and oldest epics in the world, it superficially tells the story of the war between the Kaurava and the Pandava. Its heart is the Bhagavad Gita, the counsel of Krishna to Arjuna on the propriety of his fighting his kinsmen in the war, along with extensive theological and philosophical explanation.
Ramayana- epic story of Rama (avatar of Vishnu) and his eventual defeat of Ravana, the demon-lord of Sri Lanka
India: A History by John Keay (great semi-brief comprehensive coverage from pre-Harrapan on)
Mahabharata- one of the longest and oldest epics in the world, it superficially tells the story of the war between the Kaurava and the Pandava. Its heart is the Bhagavad Gita, the counsel of Krishna to Arjuna on the propriety of his fighting his kinsmen in the war, along with extensive theological and philosophical explanation.
Ramayana- epic story of Rama (avatar of Vishnu) and his eventual defeat of Ravana, the demon-lord of Sri Lanka
DrunkenRine
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Oh, I can imagine it....humans have had the same basic intellectual equipment for what.... 200,000 or more years... The problems, though, of dealing with the past are essentially threefold....having material to analyze; communication...understanding the language, or even the word meanings that were being conveyed...even if it is ancient Greek or Latin; ...and most significantly, the amount of material that has been lost down through the ages....either inadvertently or otherwise....
Oh, and thanks to the OP...an interesting thread...
i really thought it would be difficult to read, when i started with ancient writers. but to the contrary. you dont need to read them in latin or ancient greek. you can find a good translation into your native language and then they are pretty awesome. i can only recommend them and prefer them over any modern description of the ancient past.
if you want you can also try an introduction like:
Oswyn Murray "Early Greece"
of course one doesnt simply "believe" everything that is written in an ancient book, but with modern books its the same thing. i just find it much more immersive to read thukydides description of the peloponnesian war, one who ACTUALLY took part in the war as a general, not one who studied history 2400 years later and knows his facts from others who read others who read others and so on.
kiwimaster
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Gotta love Romance of the Three Kingdoms if you're a fan of East Asian History. Though then again, that might be more fiction than history.
Mark Edward Lewis' "The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han" is quite a solid read for anyone looking to learn more about China.
Mark Edward Lewis' "The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han" is quite a solid read for anyone looking to learn more about China.
Robin Lane Fox wrote a good and extremely scholarly, if unimaginatively titled, biography of Alexander the Great which may be of interest. Similarly, Appian's Campaigns of Alexander.
WChrisMullen
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Anything by Robin Lane Fox is good for both Greece and Rome. The Classical World is a pretty good introduction.
Bechhold
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Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Bechhold
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Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life by Alan Schom
So, I've been busy over the last week but I meant to return and talk a little bit about what I recommend on the subject and how I go about it.
Also, please remember, I say this as a kid who read Herodotus' Histories and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, etc., so I don't say this as an outsider looking in but rather as someone who has made some mistakes and wants to share the experience. In short, I think reading the "classics" on history is a pretentious waste of time. It's meant to sound impressive, to make the reader sound like he has read The Great Books of All Time and is an Incredibly Knowledgeable Person, but it doesn't really leave you with a good idea of the events and how the modern world developed.
It's one thing if you want to watch how the study of history has changed over the centuries (or even decades, recently). In that case, seeing the very different approach taken by ancient authors to more modern voices is instructive. Leaving aside the stylistic and language barriers (and even for works in English, there are still some) for a moment, classic works aren't going to give you a better insight into the facts than a modern work. Some of these books were pushing a particular narrative of the time that colors the work (i.e. Gibbon and his whole deal with Christianity). Some do not have access to all the facts (picking on Gibbon again here, his understanding of the "barbarians" is terribly wrong, modern scholars like Chris Wickham and Guy Halsall are far better to consult on the subject; same analogy can be drawn for Tuchman and Strachan). Some works are simply not as rigorous as a good modern work or make assumptions that have turned out to be false (here's where I want to compare Tuchman on the opening German war plans of WW1 and Strachan). I can ramble on, but I think you guys get the picture.
The problem for a new reader of history taking the first plunge into history is that he is not fully aware of the overall historiography (how we think about history). He's not aware of how the scholarship has changed over the last few decades. So the new reader picks up a "classic" and may have a pleasurable time reading the work, but ends up with a bunch of obsolete and false assumptions, incomplete facts, and with an unconscious bias towards the subject matter.
By contrast, solid modern works include sections on comparing theories and comments on the historiography, so at least the reader is aware of its existence. Good modern scholarship will be up-to-date on factual evidence and at least not contain flagrantly incorrect assumptions made decades ago. That's not to say it's perfect--it isn't, there will still be things that are fixed in future research, but at least you aren't starting from a place that is known to be wrong.
Also, please remember, I say this as a kid who read Herodotus' Histories and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, etc., so I don't say this as an outsider looking in but rather as someone who has made some mistakes and wants to share the experience. In short, I think reading the "classics" on history is a pretentious waste of time. It's meant to sound impressive, to make the reader sound like he has read The Great Books of All Time and is an Incredibly Knowledgeable Person, but it doesn't really leave you with a good idea of the events and how the modern world developed.
It's one thing if you want to watch how the study of history has changed over the centuries (or even decades, recently). In that case, seeing the very different approach taken by ancient authors to more modern voices is instructive. Leaving aside the stylistic and language barriers (and even for works in English, there are still some) for a moment, classic works aren't going to give you a better insight into the facts than a modern work. Some of these books were pushing a particular narrative of the time that colors the work (i.e. Gibbon and his whole deal with Christianity). Some do not have access to all the facts (picking on Gibbon again here, his understanding of the "barbarians" is terribly wrong, modern scholars like Chris Wickham and Guy Halsall are far better to consult on the subject; same analogy can be drawn for Tuchman and Strachan). Some works are simply not as rigorous as a good modern work or make assumptions that have turned out to be false (here's where I want to compare Tuchman on the opening German war plans of WW1 and Strachan). I can ramble on, but I think you guys get the picture.
The problem for a new reader of history taking the first plunge into history is that he is not fully aware of the overall historiography (how we think about history). He's not aware of how the scholarship has changed over the last few decades. So the new reader picks up a "classic" and may have a pleasurable time reading the work, but ends up with a bunch of obsolete and false assumptions, incomplete facts, and with an unconscious bias towards the subject matter.
By contrast, solid modern works include sections on comparing theories and comments on the historiography, so at least the reader is aware of its existence. Good modern scholarship will be up-to-date on factual evidence and at least not contain flagrantly incorrect assumptions made decades ago. That's not to say it's perfect--it isn't, there will still be things that are fixed in future research, but at least you aren't starting from a place that is known to be wrong.
I would say that you're approaching it the wrong way: 'classic' works of history should not be read by laymen as history books (although historians can find them useful); they should be read as literature. Sallust and Tacitus - just off the top of my head - write in beautiful prose, and they and others such as Suetonius and Plutarch create vivid, compelling characters and speeches from historical events - read a modern book to learn what happened, then enjoy the classics almost as if they were fictional.
EDIT: just seen Kyrou Anabasis mentioned above - as a work of history, that one doesn't even pretend to be serious.
EDIT: just seen Kyrou Anabasis mentioned above - as a work of history, that one doesn't even pretend to be serious.
I agree with you, just didn't communicate it clearly. My bad.
But yes, I'm trying to emphasize the distinction between literature v. modern scholarship, and how the excited kid studying history for the first time mistakes one for the other.
