I'm starting to gain more interest in fresh start NESes; I've mainly enjoyed historical or a-historical NESes because I'm far more familiar with the subject matter, whereas I know very little about prehistory, ancient history, and the general development of civilization. I feel like this is a knowledge gap that should be corrected. Are there any books that my fellow NESers would recommend on the subject matter generally covered in fresh starts?
I know das and I had talked about this when he was planning his 1000BCE NES, I don't know if his memory is any better than mine but here's some books in no particular order and assuming a university level library:
1) The Amarna Letters by William Moran (though you should be able to get older translations on full text). Primary source ~1350BCE of diplomacy between Egypt and its various vassals. Don't need to read all of them, just a couple to get a feel for the stylistic feel and content of ancient diplomacy.
2) Hallo, William W. and K. Lawson Younger, Jr., eds. The Context of Scripture. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Anthology of Ancient Near Eastern Texts, again, just pick a couple of random selections to get a feel for the time period.
3) For religion, anything by Mircea Eliade. Start with his wikipedia page for an overview of his thought. I think for your purposes "The Sacred and Profane" and "Shamanism" would be the two most appropriate. I haven't read it, but I would assume "History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries" would be another solid. Eliade's weaknesses as a scholar, he overgeneralizes and isn't good with the details which make specialists hard, don't really matter since in a fresh start you do want the overgeneralization framework which you can use to construct your alternate culture. While it goes against my natural instincts, for NESers I actually recommend NOT reading the Christian Old Testament for the simple fact that you tend to read it as Christian literature as opposed to Ancient Near Eastern Literature which will screw you up in developing early religions.
4) Amarna diplomacy : the beginnings of international relations, edited by Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, c2000. An anthology of scholarly essays, browse the table of contents to find essays that sound like they might be helpful.
5) It wouldn't hurt to pick up something on ancient magic, depending on your fresh start culture it could be a huge part of life. You just have to be careful here to avoid the New Age Neo-Pagan crap and stick with either primary source or solid scholars. Daniel Ogden is a good author to start with (I imagine his sourcebook would be particularly helpful to get the "feel"), if you go to his amazon author page amazon gives you other author recommendations on the right, I can personally vouch for most of those on the list, the first five in particular (Graf, Meyer, Sarah Iles Johnson, Betz, Collins).
6) The Art of War in the Western World by Archer Jones has been one of my foundational texts on how I approach war since the start of my NESing career. He officially starts with the Ancient Greeks, but the categories he establishes can be modified for earlier use I am sure.
7) Dachs might be able to shed more light, but perhaps "The origins of war: from the Stone Age to Alexander the Great" by Ferrill would be a decent overview. It has been a while since I looked at it so I would have to recheck it to make sure.
8) On the topic of Warfare, Sennacherib's prism is an interesting primary source. Should be available online since its a pretty famous text.
9) I haven't gone through to see everything it has but in a similar vein I would assume Fordham University's Ancient History Sourcebook (
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/asbook.asp) would have some interesting primary sources. Again, just hit some samples to get a feel for the time.
To summarize what I've heard from friends of mine who are alumni, it's basically a giant sleepover for nerds. You live in a dorm room for two weeks or so, and get to go to lectures/workshops/different events held by professors or authors, experts in various fields, and generally hang out.
I have to be vetted by some form of applications process, but the teacher in question told me I was a "perfect candidate" so I'm very excited.
I went to Governor School East for drama back in the day as a rising junior. If my memory serves, it was a six week program. I know the "artsy" people's experience was different from the "academic" students, for me drama took pretty much the whole day so I didn't really do any of the extracurricular stuff. It was a long time ago, so I am not saying it hasn't changed, but prepare to have a lot of avant garde/post-modern stuff thrown at you (this might have been more noticeable in the arts, though talking to the academics it sounded like the same there as well). In addition to your "main" concentration, you had two other integrated classes, I remember one talked about "big questions" (what is knowledge, is there a god, what is beauty) and the other I don't really remember but think it had to do with our place in society. Some of the things I remember being shown/read include Documentary on My Lai; Run Lola Run; Slingblade, Allegory of the Cave (Plato); Documentary on Milgram experiment; Blade Runner. I remember really enjoying it at the time, though looking back I bet 80% of us probably sounded like pretentious jackwads, kind of like a freshman level philosophy class.
