I can't remember if I suggested this (and can't figure out how to search the new BigSoccer), but I am rereading Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity. Superb.
Just finished Volume 1 Shelby Foote's Civil War series. Have to say I am totally psyched to see Lincoln.
Somewhat sheepishly, I have to admit that I keep coming back to this thread to grab history book recommendations, years after they were made. Since this thread is about to fall off the front page of a mostly moribund forum, I feel obligated to necropost and keep it on life (?) support for a few more months. So I'll make some recommendations of my own. I'm pretty sure none of these appear upthread: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World The City: A Global History The Art of Political Murder (on Guatemalan violence in the 1980's) Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (There are a bunch of well-deserved recommendations for Perlstein's Nixonland upthread, but I don't recall any for his prequel) Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
I posted that one in the "What are you reading?" thread. Good book. I took a class with a guy who brought in a few of the scholars mentioned that book -- back then, the leading scholars in the field were guys who got their degrees in the 60's, and not coincidentally, their view of the Cahokian culture assumed they were basically hippy pacifists. Further research has uncovered some rather darker features of life among the mounds.
Books. Cool. Hard to top Dan Carlin Hardcore History though. The latest, about the Anabaptist Rebellion in Munster Westphalia, is amazing. http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-48---Prophets-of-Doom/Luther-Reformation-history
Paris 1919 just finished it excellent book if you are interested in how the post-war development affected the world even until the present day.
Imperial temptations and humanitarian nightmares force the United States of the late 19th Century to confront the contradictions between its revolutionary self-image and its expanding national interests. Dan Carlin on how the closing of the frontier in 1890, along with jingoism, racism, and naval advances, were used to mutate the American human rights ideal into an expansionist imperial strategy. http://ec.libsyn.com/p/3/6/2/3624c2...1ce3dae902ea1d01cf8234d9cb5f43a2&c_id=5903401 Four hours of awesome.
since it's a thread about history i see no harm in digging up an 8 year old post... i've never read zinn, but i have read harvey wasserman's history of the united states (which is prefaced by zinn) and am surprised it has received no mention here; it is much more timely now than when it was written in 1972. the caution noted above of course holds (as it must for any book, history or other) but the work is admirable and in true annales spirit makes its point more through statistics and documents than dialectic... and considers the study of history not as an end unto itself but as a basis for social action.
Almost done with this... Enjoying it very much. Short chapters! Plus I just like The Plantagenets in general
Fiasco the American military adventure in Iraq. Reserve Police battalion 101 German police unit in wartime occupied Poland.
Hello! Great recommendations from everyone, thanks. A small publisher with great books, some very technical, that I enjoy can be found at http://www.jjfpub.mb.ca/ If you don't like following links just search for "J.J. Fedorowicz"