History Book Recommendations

Discussion in 'History' started by KevTheGooner, Sep 29, 2005.

  1. Deuteriumoxide

    May 27, 2003
    Rockville, MD
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    A brilliant, entertaining look at history and anthropology. If you haven't read this book yet, turn off your computer...no... don't tell it to shut down... just unplug it and go to the book store right now.
     
  2. Sine Pari

    Sine Pari Member

    Oct 10, 2000
    NUNYA, BIZ
    The Raid : The Son Tay Prison Rescue Mission by Benjamin F. Schemmer

    A mission I am fairly certain most of you have never heard about

     
  3. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
    I really enjoyed it. In fact, I read a good chunk of it on a beach in Dubrovnik in 2000.
     
  4. Deuteriumoxide

    May 27, 2003
    Rockville, MD
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I have heard of it, but only because it is a mission my grandfather was involved in. that should be a good read.
     
  5. Sine Pari

    Sine Pari Member

    Oct 10, 2000
    NUNYA, BIZ

    It's a great book

    And your grandpa is a great man for taking part in it
     
  6. KevTheGooner

    KevTheGooner Help that poor man!

    Dec 10, 1999
    THOF
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Andorra
    We'll still have grey area books (maybe like The Good War, or lots of biographies, say of Lincoln for example). As long as we have some sort of criteria, its a fine idea.
     
  7. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Well, the capture of most of it. ;)

    But I of all people shouldn't have made that mistake. :eek:
     
  8. needs

    needs Member

    Jan 16, 2003
    Brooklyn
    So what would the categories be for these book recommendation threads (and I'm sure this is going to replicate the problems my grad program had of splitting people into area studies concentrations)

    It seems like these would be given

    Military
    American (broadly defined to include anything in the New World?)
    European
    Ancient
    Middle Eastern?

    The problem is what to do with non-western history. It's intellectually shallow to stick them all in one category (which is what my grad school did), but would there be enough traffic in anything more than an "Other" to have it make sense.

    This of course raises the problem of where to put comparative works and other boundary crossing materials, but I would be in favor of, at the least, splitting military history off.
     
  9. ElJefe

    ElJefe Moderator
    Staff Member

    Feb 16, 1999
    Colorful Colorado
    Club:
    FC Dallas
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It is a fascinating book.
     
  10. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It's good, although some of Glenny's views irritate the crap out of me. His history of the Balkans is indeed good, although from about 1958 or so on, it really becomes a history of Yugoslavia.
     
  11. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Lucky you didn't slip up on this on FSU ;)
     
  12. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Oh, I agree, KK. I think he catches a lot of heat very similar to what Stephen Ambrose caught, i.e., high profile = low substance. Of course, Beevor never had the plagarism accusations that Ambrose had to deal with, which in fact were well founded & unfortunately (for Ambrose) tarnished his reputation quite a bit. Too bad, as a lot of his works have held up under the magnifying glass since then, and a lot of his works were excellent efforts, but I think his legacy will always be tarnished a bit.

    Ryan's work on the fall of Berlin was excellent, as was everything that Ryan did; Ryan's "The Longest Day" & "A Bridge Too Far" IMHO are two of the best books ever written about WWII. But I will look forward to reading Sir Anthony's book about the fall of Berlin, in the very near future.
     
  13. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    My dead relatives would have come after me if I had. ;)
     
  14. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    They will forgive you this time ;) BTW, 1. stop being such a stranger in FSU & 2. Love the lead 2 lines in your sig.
     
  15. Toon³

    Toon³ Member

    Dec 27, 2002
    Club:
    Newcastle United FC
    Boy is this uncomfortable. My relatives were at Stalingrad.....not on the Russian side though. :eek:
     
  16. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    It was a long time ago. Both sides fought hard for what they believed. On the front lines at Stalingrad, in spite of historians opinions on both sides, it came down to a battle re: men v: men. OKH/OKW got outfoxed for the first time during the war , amd the 6th Army men realized that the Soviet forces opposite of them were every bit their equal, and in many respects even more so; they were used to fighting on 100gs of bread and a swill of warm tea & cold vodka during the course of a day.if they even got that. German forces were used to regular supplies on a daily basis; once logistics collapsed for the Nazi, the gig was up, and the Red Army rolled on to defeat the greatest military organization the 20th century had ever known.

    The end result was clear, and a foregone conclusion, once von Manstein was not allowed to execute his planned relief/withdrawal of 6th Army, per the orders of OKW.

    In the end, the better army won, simple as that. Say what you will, and I don't dispute the American & British armies did their share in defeating Nazi Germany...but any serious scholar of WWII knows that the back of the Nazis was broken & shattered forever on the Eastern Front.
     
  17. Toon³

    Toon³ Member

    Dec 27, 2002
    Club:
    Newcastle United FC
    Agree with it all apart from the last part. My grandfather and great uncles would debate that until their last breath.
     
  18. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Well, once the Germans failed to reach Moscow in the winter of 41', it was only a question of how long it would take Russia to defeat Germany - i.e., how long Stalin was going to keep directing troops himself. By winter of 1941 so much of Soviet war production was moved beyond the Urals that the fall of Stalingrad wouldn't have mattered all that much.
     
  19. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    The motivation of an invading army is rarely as strong as that of the defenders.
    That being said, bravery didn't prevent Russians from dying in millions due to Stalin's stupidity and Zhukov's eventual imitation of the Ulysses S. Grant strategy of "we have more men - we can afford to lose a lot more".
     
  20. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    Toon_toon, it is not a debate about better men. The Eastern Front was a complete meatgrinder, it was where Europe was won, not at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, etc., but at Kharkhov, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Kherson, Kursk, etc. Men on both sides did their duty...my favorite book about the German soldier in WWII is 'The Forgotten Soldier', by Guy Sajer, a member of the Gross Deutchland Division on the Eastern Front. That book breaks down in great detail how the flower of the German Army was ground into certain defeat on the battlefields of the Eastern Front.

    Both sides had good men, toon_toon. But in the end, only one side was fighting for the preservation of their national identity. And in the end, regardless of ideology, the call to arms for Mother Russia once again proved to carry the day.
     
  21. Zenit

    Zenit Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 3, 2000
    Above the Tear Line
    Club:
    Zenit St Petersburg
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Tak tochno.
     
  22. Toon³

    Toon³ Member

    Dec 27, 2002
    Club:
    Newcastle United FC
    No man that fought in that war is better, they are all heros on every side. I was refering to the superior tactics, weapons (in some areas only) and professionalism of the Germany Army.

    However your point about the Russians being the only side for preservation of national identity is wrong in a way. The entire Prussian nation was destroyed and hundreds of years of history and tradition lost. The remaining Prussians in the German Army fought just as hard to protect these areas as the Russians at Moscow and Stalingrad.

    I hate Hitler, I hate him with a passion. He destroyed my country and my family's history.
     
  23. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Yes, that's true - but that's not at issue in Stalingrad. By the time the Germans were defending their own territory, they had no hope of winning the war; only to inflict maximum damage on the attackers.
     
  24. Toon³

    Toon³ Member

    Dec 27, 2002
    Club:
    Newcastle United FC
    That's very true.

    Could the Russians have won if Stalingrad had fallen in 1941?
     
  25. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Yes. The German military was already overstretched.
     

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