Good historically related books in general you have read.

[russia almighty]

The Palmer Raids 1919-1920 An attempt to suppress dissent by Edwin P. Hoyt

Kinda old since it was published back in 1969 BUT not only does it cover the said raids it also gives an in depth view into the 1st Red Scare .

[Cyclops]

There's an interesting book by some fella I think he's from Turkey somewhere, called Inquiries.

The original is in Greek funnily enough but there's plenty of English translations around.

Its a bit gossipy and sensational at times, and he jumps around all over the place with his narrative but there's something very original in his style.

[Horst Nordfink]

The Classical World - Robin Lan Fox
A history of Homeric Greece to the Roman Empire under Hadrian. I'm still not finished it yet but I am enjoying it thoroughly.

Rubicon - Tom Holland
A brilliant book for someone who wants an accesable account of the last century of the Roman Republic, from the Gracchi to Augustus.

Anything by Adrian Goldsworthy.
I have yet to read a poor book written by him. His biograhy of Julius Caesar is one of the greatest biographies I have read. I recommend him thoroughly.

[Mediolanicus]

Rubicon is certainly somewhere at the top of my list too.

De Oude Belgen by Ugo Janssens
= "The ancient Belgians", a book about the Celto-Germanic Belgae tribes in modern day Belgium, North-France and Southern England and Ireland.
It looks at the Roman sources (De Belle Gallico by Caesar and the De Origine et situ Germanorum by Tacitus) and compares them to archeological finds.
Very interesting and a must have for all the Dutch-speaking people here on the forum.

Tulipomania - Mike Dash
About the sudden urge to buy and speculate with Tulips in 17th century Holland and the massive inflation that followed.

The Tartar Khan's Englishman - Gabriel Ronay
The Mongols used an English outlaw as a spy and diplomatic envoy.
This book seeks out who it was and learns us more about the Mongol-empire of the 13th century and the Mongol way of life.

Montaillou - Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
A pioneering work of microhistory of a little French village, which was one of the last bastions of the Albigensian heresy. The inquisition described the every day life of the commoners in every detail.


And if you want some historically correct fiction
Imperium - Robert Harris
About the Cicero's road to Consulship.

[Horst Nordfink]

I enjoyed Imperium too. I would enjoy a follow-on book.

[HFox]

Clive of India: The Life and Death of a British Emperor
by robert harvey
very informative, well written and nicely paced work.

[phoenixemperor]

Last book I finished: God's War - A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman. At about 920 pages, it was somewhat of an epic read, but if you want a detailed narrative history of the period, definitely worth it.

Reading now: The great Arab conquests : how the spread of Islam changed the world we live in by Hugh Kennedy

Nemesis : the battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings

[mAIOR]

Crusades by Thomas F. Madden - surprisingly good!!! I wasn't expecting much from it but it is very very good.

German Campaigns of WWII by Chris Bishop and Adam Warner - very tourough very informative, very accurate.

The Illustrated book of Heraldry by Stephen Slater - a bit more focused on a particular theme but it is very good on the subject.

Chronicles of war by Paul Brewer - what has to be one of the best books (if not the best) I've ever read. It covers the history of war-reporters from 1854 to the present day! It's very, very good because it's based on the reports from war journalists who watched the conflicts wich makes this book an history of war-journalism. It may not go into many details but the major info is there and it covers a broad period very accuratly!

I'll post more if I remember...


Cheers...

[Geoffrey S]

Too many. Recently read standout books were:

- Inside the Kremlin during the Yom Kippur War - Viktor Levonovič Israėljan. Fascinating and rare look behind the scenes of the Kremlin without the usual self-justification and bias, came across it for a paper. Very refreshing.
- Via Peking back to Manchester: Britain, the Industrial Revolution, and China - Peer Vries. Hopefully a person we'll be hearing more of. An insightful comparison of England and China on the eve of the nineteenth century, as a prelude to more extensive work which he should be releasing this year. An excellent balance to the Pomeranz classic The Great Divergence and very useful for a new look at where the West started pulling out ahead of the rest.
- Global capitalism: its fall and rise in the twentieth century - Jeffry Frieden. Relatively short, easily understandable account of the changing economic situation throughout the twentieth century. Not a substitute for more technical accounts, but an essential companion to keep at least some feeling of context amongst all the technical terms.
- Arabia Felix from the Time of the Queen of Sheba: Eighth Century B.C. to First Century A.D. - Jean-François Breton. Want to know more about South Arabia in the time of EB? A very interesting read, though it shows quite clearly how little is actually known precisely, and that further reading should certainly not limit itself to English accounts. A very helpful start.

Going back a bit further I can certainly recommend:
- Thundering Zeus: the making of Hellenistic Bactria - Frank Holt. Great look-in at numismatics and not only the rise of an independent Hellenistic Bactria, but also how we know what we know.
- The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy - Kenneth Pomeranz. Essential reading in the debate of the rise of the West. I don't agree with the conclusions of Pomeranz, but it provides a lot of food for thought.
- De historische Mohammed: de Mekkaanse verhalen and De historische Mohammed: de verhalen uit Medina - Johannes J.G. Jansen. A refreshing take on the days of Mohammed and the early Islam. Be warned, not for the politically faint at heart, but all the more interesting for it.
- The Middle East and Central Asia: an anthropological approach - Dale F. Eickelman. Gives a clear view of its subject matter and provides a useful context for further research into the area. Read in combination with A Concise History of the Middle East (very useful for a broad overview of early to early-modern history, but no more than that and a worthlessly biased apologist work on the flaws of Islam and its adherents) by Arthur Goldschmidt it provides a solid base of information.
- A duel of giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the origins of the Franco-Prussian War - David Wetzel. Great account of the build-up of the Franco-Prussian War and the courts responsible for the clash. Marvelously written in the style of old-fashioned diplomatic historical works it's very informative of the characters of the period.

[Mediolanicus]

I enjoyed Imperium too. I would enjoy a follow-on book.

It is said that he's writing a trilogy about Cicero.
In any case, a follow-on is forthcoming!

[Bellum]

I'm currently reading Caesars commentaries from the Gutenberg project. It's really good and easy to get into, which suprised me. I think there are some errors in this version, though. Seems to move into present tense sometimes.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Needs not be an error per se: J.C. might've made some use of the praesens historicum.

[Cyclops]

There's something about works by actual ghistorical players: they are not to be trusted any more than other historians, but the fact they were there has to count for something. I recall enjoying Mes Reveries by de Saxe (the 18th century french marshal) but the detail slips my mind: it was chiefly interesting that he wrote it before his career had really begun and its fascinating to see how he aplied the principles of his work.

The Classical World - Robin Lan Fox
A history of Homeric Greece to the Roman Empire under Hadrian. I'm still not finished it yet but I am enjoying it thoroughly

Is it more about the classical eras in Hellas and Roma (ie from the rise of the city state to the rise of the principate)?

Very solid accomplished review of the period. He likes the gay aspects of ancient Greece and gives a somewhat excited acount of the prevalence on man-boy and military love.

That issue aside he gives a balanced account AFAIK and some quite masterful summaries.

[LestaT]

I prefer historical fictions so my all time favorite is Simon Scarrow's The Eagle Series..

Currently looking for good book during Crusades era. Just read Robyn Young Crusades (the first book).

Any other suggestions ?

[Gaius Scribonius Curio]

The Eagles series is very entertaining. Something in the same vein is Conn Iggulden's series about Rome (Gods of War). A really good series, but not necessarily up everyone's alley, is The Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCollough. Fantastic!

[BerkeleyBoi]

The Search for Modern China: Jonathan D. Spence

One of the best books ever written about China's history from the end of the Ming Dynasty to 1999.

[Cyclops]

A couple of the older authors do some fine historical fiction.

Dumas' Three Musketeers is a smashing yarn and has some juicy historical characters thrown in (IIRC the names of all the musketeers were actual noms-de-guerre of french soldiers albeit from the 1680's). There's plenty of other great material, Chico the Jester/Queen Margot etc about Henri IV. The books are stuffed with brilliant thumbnail portraits of pivotal political figures, none finer than Richelieu. The bit parts of Cromwell, William the Silent, Villiers (Duke of Buckingham) Charles (Stewart) II and so on are rather dramatic but not unsympathetic. Plus D'Artagnan bangs the maid even while he's on with the handmaiden!

Sir Walter Scott wrote yards and yards of books of historical fiction, mostly about Scotland. He footnotes his work extensively, and tells you when he changed the facts. The prose is heavy as a suet pudding but there's some decent writing amongst it all. I learnt heaps about Scottish history through him, it made the straight histories much more comprehensible.

Of course he falls into the pattern of his own era: rejecting presbyteriansism as too radical, and Catholicism as an anachronistic dead end, he's a high church episcopalian, but with a lot of sympathy for the passionate and intriguing Scots characters of all persuasions.

His caricatures of "foreigners" like the Irishmen, Spanish, French and Dutch tend to the ridiculous (although he sketches a chilling portrait of Louis XII the spider king of France). He has a complex and sometimes surreptitiously antipathetic feeling toward England. For example in Ivanhoe he describes the Saxons as good hearted but brutish swine, and the Normans as arrogant and cold hearted but beautifully cultured, and observes that the English have combined the qualities of the two. He surely means the best qualities (good hearts/good manners) but it occured to me there's a touch of bleak humour there and it could be he meant the worst qualities (rude and bad hearted).

[General Aetius]

Three musketeers by Dumas, though somewhat unhistorical, are good but you should also read the sequels- twenty years after, the vicomte de bragalonne(sorry for spelling), Louise de la valliere and the man in the iron mask.

I also enjoy sir Walter scott's historical fiction and when I was younger I enjoyed G A Henty's books.

if you're looking for real history than Tacitus' books-Germania, and annals, and Cicero's commentaries, letters and other stuff are quite interesting.

general aetius

[Watchman]

My most recent reading:

Viking: Weapons and Warfare by J. Kim Siddorn - a book on diverse Viking war gear by a veteran re-enactor. Includes interesting insights into how they actually behave in mass combat (withing the confines imposed by re-enactement safety consideration, natch) and accounts of some pretty nifty tests made with first-rate lab equipement on the resiliency of armour and shields.

The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust by Heather Pringle - a fascinating study on the Ahnenerbe, the SS think tank conceived by Himmler to "research" ancient history and adapt their findings to the use of the Nazi cause. Exhaustively researched. Contains strange, colourful and often crackpot personalities, lunatic ideas and theories (the "World Ice Theory" has to be the nuttiest thing I've read for a while), Nazi nastiness (many of the human experiments in the camps were carried out by Ahnenerbe scientists after the outfit branched off to applied sciences), and a lot of interesting period detail. Also traces the innocent enough history of the concept of "Aryans" in European parlance before it mutated into its toxic German ultranationalist form.
...and I got this one as a Christmas present. Oughta tell a bit about my family...

That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France - The History of a Love-Hate Relationship by Robert & Isabelle Tombs - "The French and the Britsh from the Sun King to the present", as the opening page sums it up. A hefty account of the turbulent history between the two great powers, how they and their inhabitants saw each other, what they learned from each other, and why. Lucid and well articulated, gave me at least a considerable amount of new insight to many important events and developements in European history.

[Horst Nordfink]

That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France - The History of a Love-Hate Relationship by Robert & Isabelle Tombs - "The French and the Britsh from the Sun King to the present", as the opening page sums it up. A hefty account of the turbulent history between the two great powers, how they and their inhabitants saw each other, what they learned from each other, and why. Lucid and well articulated, gave me at least a considerable amount of new insight to many important events and developements in European history.

I wouldn't mind reading that one.

[Watchman]

Cost me a mere 27€ at the bookstore that one, so I figure it oughta be easy enough to find.
(It comes with the bonus of an often rather witty and sarcastic tone. )

[Horst Nordfink]

£20 is rather pricey for a book!

[Watchman]

It's 700 pages plus references etc., though (I said hefty, no? ). And Vikings was 43€...

[Horst Nordfink]

Paper must be expensive in Finland! That Sweet Enemy is £10 and Vikings is £12 when I looked them up on Amazon.co.uk.

Think I might buy That Sweet Enemy though.

[Watchman]

Paper industry's actually one of our bigger businesses, but I don't think the thing was printed here...
Beats me where the wicked stores conjure the overhead from. (The back of the book incidentally quotes a nominal price of UK£ 14.99, for what it's worth.)

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
Are custom duties applied to books? Is shipping expensive?

Whenever I buy a book or game online I have to pay more than its price to shipping!
.

[Horst Nordfink]

Paper industry's actually one of our bigger businesses, but I don't think the thing was printed here...
Beats me where the wicked stores conjure the overhead from. (The back of the book incidentally quotes a nominal price of UK£ 14.99, for what it's worth.)

I should've known that! I work for a chemical company that makes bleaching agent for paper and we sell LOADS to a company in Finalnd.