What history book are you reading or planning to read?/ The history bookreview thread

[athanaric]

And some German books (presumably of less interest for the most ), one about the house and family in ancient Greece and one with new studies about early and high medieval fortifications.

Do post them. Some of us are actually fluent in German.

If anyone could recommend a book about Pre-Alexander Middle East (Assyria, Babylon...), I'd be grateful

Try A History of the Ancient Near East by Mark van de Mieroop. It's a good introduction and has been recommended to me and my fellow students by another expert on the field.

[TheLastDays]

Thanks, I'm going to see if I find it at the library... I can't really afford to buy expensive books at the moment ;)

[Moros]

Try A History of the Ancient Near East by Mark van de Mieroop. It's a good introduction and has been recommended to me and my fellow students by another expert on the field.

Yes indeed I've heard good things about that book as well. It was also in the recommended bibliography list from my classes on ancient Mesopotamia. Though that may also be the case because the guy is Belgian and got his bachelor over here. Chauvinism, chauvinism everything is chauvinism.

Edit: books in other languages, especially the well spread ones can always be suggested as well. Translations of them often exist as well and a good historian should be able - or willing to learn - to read more than one language anyway.

[TheLastDays]

Very true... if you wanna study a subject, like for example theology, you'll find a lot of books in German for example... I'm of course lucky with that but you know what I mean...

[Moros]

Very true... if you wanna study a subject, like for example theology, you'll find a lot of books in German for example... I'm of course lucky with that but you know what I mean...

German might very well be the second language in numbers of writings when it comes to archaeology and history of a lot of places. Though of course it does depend on the region, literature on the ancient Iberians for example is mostly Spanish and Portuguese I think. English might be the most well spread language and all, but having at least two other big languages really helps a man's research possibilities (German, French, Italian,...).

[gamegeek2]

The Rise of the West by William McNeill. Old, interesting to see 50+ year old perspectives on world history.

[DeathFinger]

I'm reading a lot of articles those last times, but the last book I read was :Baratin, C, Les provinces orientales de l'empire parthe, Lyon 2009, a thesis in French on the Eastern borders of the Parthian Empire.

And the last book in English (^^) was Karttunen, K, Indian in the Hellenistic World, Helsinki 1997. A very good one if you're interesting in this area not only for the political facts.

[TheLastDays]

I have now started to slowly read "A History of the Japanese People From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era" - Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

I'll post my opinions on it when I'm done, which might take a while because it's more of a "reading side project".

[geala]

Do post them. Some of us are actually fluent in German.

....

Ok, your risk.

- Haus und Familie im antiken Griechenland, Winfried Schmitz, 2007: a short introduction into the structures of the family, education, inheritance law in Athens, Sparta and the Hellenistic times, lots of information about continuative literature.


I will start to read tomorrow:

- War in the Hellenistic World, Angelos Chaniotis, 2005 (I started the book a year ago but for some reasons stopped after a third)

- Krieg, Handel und Piraterie: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des hellenistischen Rhodos, Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, 2002


BTW, this thread was already very helpful for me, just ordered the book about Pyrrhus.

[Nirvanish]

Today I just started The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, so far it seems pretty good.