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History books that warrant a good reading


So what you're saying is that the first history to get published is the definitive one, and all subsequent books on that topic MUST be considered "revisionist".

Clearly that's a flawed conception.

Some books to read:<P>The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes, and his Dark Sun, a history of the H-Bomb.

The Great Influenza, by John Barry. This covers an interesting view of the WWI era society. Interestingly, Barry claims that the Versailles Treaty is partly the result of Wilson getting the bug during the settlement talks.
 
Just because a book is accepted by ONE College / University, doesnt mean its right. Colleges do have debate, as in philsoophy. I have the right to say Immanuel Kant was wrong in his theories, and Hume was partially right. Why? Its my opinion based on what I have seen so far. Colleges have debate, and it WILL remain as long as people think relatively freely. Want to stop it? Stop people from thinking about those issues. (Many issues have already stopped this by people being stopped from thinking about them)
 
The Collapse of the Third Republic (1875-1940)
by William Shirer (author of the more famous Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
published 1969

comprehensive, extremely well researched

if you detest france's identity on today's world stage as much as i, this book is both satisfying and illuminating

if you don't yet recognize the dry rot and stagnant disloyalty that is france, this book will assuredly cure that sad condition
 
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Good author, nice work. Interesting perspective on the lives and personalities of real people, not figurheads.
 
I don't know if this book was already mentioned, but Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby is an excellent history book.
 
Excerpts from an Essay by Howie Zinn:

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-11/13zinn.cfm

[qoute]t would be good to remember a few things about that war as this country is about to embark on still another war. First, that you don’t "win" wars. We "won" World War I, but sowed the seeds of another world war. War is a quick fix, like crack. An exultant high - we won! - and soon you’re down again, and you need another fix, another war.[/quote]

Crap. When was the last time the North fought the South? How many times?

How many times did the US fight Spain? Japan?

I would guess his erroneous statement is predicated on his flawed understanding of the two world wars with Germany. Clearly the cause of the second war wasn't the victory in the First, but the victors, notably France and Britain. They were both greedy and stupid and cowardly. With the war won, it was certainly possible to prevent another, but they didn't try. I don't recall any recent armed conflicts between Germany, France, Russia, and England, do you?


I don't believe that. I believe firmly that if the children in other countries are the only thing the enemies of my children have to protect them, then the children in other countries can become legend without a second thought about them from me. All that matters is that my children remain safe.

Clearly this guy doesn't understand human motivation.

And that was just one essay picked randomly.
 

Nope. Nuttin erroneous there. He's hardly "flawed" lol. What is flawed is the comprehension of what he's saying.

1. You are misunderstanding what he is saying, as well as making a strawman caricature of his position on war. He he talks of people "winning" wars, he isn't exactly referring to enemy vs enemy and then fighting against the same enemy later on down the line, although this does happen very often, as it has in human history. ou are also falsely assuming that recent events haven't precluded war with major powers, which is something he mentions his textbook. Nuclear weapons are a wonderful deterrant to armed conflict among major powers, as well as economic globalization, which he does talk about in his book as a factor for change. War occures now, but increasingly less and less against major powers in modern times. He mentions this frequently. The new dimension of war, he mentions, is not power vs power in the first world, rather third vs third and first vs third. Of course we didn't fight the south again. That's not what he's implying, and he's not implying we are or likely will war with russia or france.

2. The major idea he is expressing, as well as the above, is that war sucks. You ought not rush to it if you don't have to, because even if you win, you lose. War is destructive and a waste of resources unless it follows "just war theory." He understands human nature all too well and the human propensity to romanticise war and flock to it like warhawks.


2. Your understanding of his position considering WW1 is also a large caricature--it's a strawman. He goes into great detail in his book about how the victors of the war were the problem, both post-war and during the conflict. American entrance was a German hindrance, not a help, and sans America, Germany could very well have fared much better if they just butted the hell out. If they had, it's unlikely WW2 would have occured the way it did, when it did, or how it did. Victory of the Entente WAS a problem that lead to WW2. The Victors were an extension of that already problematic victory and mindless incursion. America was crucial in that victory, despite what some like to imagine otherwise. In fact, American involvement in WW1 did make it worse for the alliance than it could have been. Germany could have secured a far better peace treaty.

There's nothing false about this essay. War usually begets war. That is his point. ALmost every year througout AMerican History ,the United States has been in a war or pseudo-war with another nation. Almost. Most wars lead to wars later on down the line. You are making a false connection, because you are assuming he's talking bout fighting the same enemy all the time. He's not.




He understands it, but not from your point of view.
 
His second Pagraph that you unjustly misinterpreted is based on two major ethical concepts:

1. Utilitarianism
2. Just War Deontology.

The fact that you consider other lives, even if they outnumber your own, less valuable to your own ends shows your morally banrupt nature. You only consider people within your own "monkeysphere" as persons worthy enough. A war which does more harm overall is bad and is rightly a scourge, as he calls it.

As you allude to by the connotations of what you write, you obviously don't comprehend that his statement is not about human nature, rather about normative ethics. You project IS over OUGHT and also have a selfish morality in which all that matters is what YOU want or need, not what actually serves greater utility.

 
He doesn't understand it. We didn't fight the same enemy in WWII as we fought in WWII. Many of the same people, but not the same enemy. One was an imperialist monarchy, a residuum from the governmental forms left over from the middle ages. The other was a fascist dictatorship, one of the normal mutations of modern socialist theory.

Imperial monarchies rarely engaged in wholesale genocide and mass political purges. Dictatorships based on socialism always use mass murder as a tool, from the French Revolution to Rwanda.


So, who were we fighting between 1865 and 1898? Who were we fighting between 1919 and 1939? His assertion that wars lead to other wars later is a bunch of happy horsepucky for socialist babe in college still in swaddling clothes, is all. The defeat of the Barbary Coast pirates did not lead to the War of 1812, which did not lead to the Mexican American war.

Events after the MA war, notably the annexation of California, it's early statehood forced by it's sudden population rise following the discovery of gold forced the failure of the Missouri Compromise and lead to the Civil War, but that certainly wasn't an inevitable result of the Mexican American War.

After the Civil War, we had minor border skirmishes with Mexican criminal elements, and the continued internal conflicts with the Indians, but neither were direct results of the Civil War. Nor was the Spanish American War a result of the Civil War, the conflict with Mexico, or the indians.

The reason we got involved in the First World War was Wilson's interference, nothing more. And we'd have stayed out of WWII if the enemy had left us alone.


What's this nonsense? There's no such thing as a "just war". All wars have two sides, the agressor and the defender. Wars are about survival, not justice. Not one war has ever been started except for human greed. That's it. Even the stupid war Al Queda started was because towelheads still living in the thirteenth century wanted control of land they didn't own. And that war's been carried over into Iraq, now.


See what I mean about how useless Zinn is? If that's what he's claiming, he's nothing more than a run of the mill Blame-America-Firsters. The reason the Germans didn't get a decent peace treaty is because Wilson got sick at a crucial point in the negotiations, probably with the Spanish Flu, and the stupid French and Brits were able to push their reparations through. But Zinn has to blame the US, because that's what those people do.

Did you ever stop to wonder why people like Zinn are so anti-American?
 
You are so ridiculously strawmanning the concept Keep beating it senseless. It's easy to critique something when you cherry pick selections out of context. That must have taken a skilled degree of you. Beating that strawman and all--really builds up a sweat. You are misunderstanding what he's saying to the point in which you can't even address it, which is probably the root of your Strawmanning. The connotations of what he's saying has nothing to do with a specific war leading to another war. He is talking about the unnecessary warhawk mentality that has plagued the United States since the early 19th century.

His argument is against the unjust use of war, not any and all war. For some reason, you cannot comprehend that. YOu choose to focus on socialist red herrings instead of actual content.

1. Every year since this country's inception, the United States has either been at war with (officially) or in a pseudo-war with someone.). The United States is a nation that is heavily invested in continual military action.

 
Last edited:
Edit: Germany prior and during WW1 was a monarchy and a militaristic oligargchy hiding under pseudo-democracy. There is little difference, however, between an absolute monarch, and authoritarian oligarchy, and a dictatorship.
 
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
His argument is against the unjust use of war, not any and all war. For some reason, you cannot comprehend that. YOu choose to focus on socialist red herrings instead of actual content.
Click to expand...

There's no such thing as a "just" war. One of the two sides is wrong. Usually that's the side that started the war, though there are possible exceptions. Was the American revolution started by the English or by the colonists, for example?
He didn't say they were either. More strawmanning.


Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
He didn't say they were either. More Strawmanning.
Click to expand...

He didn't say they were either what?

Lets cut to the chase. Wars happen. To claim that the termination of each war is automatically the initiation of preparation for the next war is to demonstrate a lack of comprehension of human nature that boggles the mind.

The only country I know of that's never had much war in it's history is Canada, and that's because they've never had to defend themselves. Who else? Mexico got invaded by the French, other than that, they've been picking fights with the big kid on the block for some reason or other.

The Soviet Union? They made a deal to split Poland up with Hitler, and kept it after the war. They're the reason Afghanistan is such a mess today.

England? France? Germany? All those other european countries? Until WWII, those ratholes squabbled more than ten coyotes gathered round a dead skunk. All the rest of the countries of the world, the same.

War is the state of mankind. To single the United States out when we've not fought one war of aggression is an amazing distortion of history. Yes. I said "not one". Zinn is nothing but a propagandist and a revisionist, and his works are definitely to be read only when one is studying disinformation techniques.


No. I'm not stupid enough to make such a comment. I'm honest enough.




You should try arguing your points, defining your terms, establishing your positions before you burn your hayfield and forget that the creek ran dry.


Oh. I'm a veteran. Why didn't I feel honored that the country I served was being called a war-monger? Must be something wrong with me. Not.

Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
And no, they weren't screwed at the peace conference only because Wilson was sick.
Click to expand...

No, but it sure didn't help any. They were mainly screwed at the peace conference because their Navy had turned commie and deserted, their army was defeated, and they had no resources left, leaving them with no means to resume hostilities and thus no leverage at the bargaining table.

Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
1. America had no business in the war and only made it worse for Germany by even getting invovled.
Click to expand...

That's the first intelligent thing you've said. Who thought that up for you?


And it looks like you started doing your own thinking again. You probably shouldn't do that on your own until you get your training wheels back from the shop. That was the most absurd thing I've ever read about the end of WWI.

The hostility of the Germans after the war to the peace treaty was enhanced because the Kaiser lied to them throughout about the course of the war. The sudden loss came as a terrible shock and the word "betrayal" never stopped echoing through the Weimar Republic.

The leaders elected to head the Republic were either royalists wishing for a return of the Hohenzollern monarchy or others seeking the end of the republic for their own ends.

The Weimar government inflated the internal currency horrendously to erase internal debt, wreaking havoc on an already war ravaged nation. This was blamed on reparations, it was blamed on jews, it was blamed on the international community.

The reparations were too harsh, and did arouse legitimate in Germany, especially since Germans didn't actually start the war. The war started in Austria. And don't lecture me about von Moltke's plan to rapidly immobilize France so Germany could have a single front facing Russia. I obviously already know about it.

The strict limits on re-armament in the Treaty of Versailles offended, rightly so, the German people, who resented the permanent second-class status it implied.

That's just a few of the things wrong with the Treaty of Versaille and the post war attitude of the victors. Do I need to go into the opportunities to avoid the second war the West refused to take? Key crisis points include the re-militarization of the Rhineland, the Anschluss of Austria, and the Munich Accords that surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hilter.

These turning points towards war each could have been altered by the decision made by a single man. So what's this nonsense about how nation's moves to war are inevitable? It's nonsense.



Nazism is fascism which is a bastardized form of centralized economic control in which private parties are alleged to own the businesses even though the state makes all decisions regard that business.

Socialism is a form of lunacy in which no one owns the business but the state makes all the decisions regarding it. The myth of socialism is that the "workers" own it, but anything owned by all is owned by none.

The practical differences between socialism and nazism are...

..
..
hmmm...socialism has more dead bodies...
..
..
socialism's ruined more countries..
..
..
socialism's been around longer..
..
..
well, a lot of jews are socialists, and not too many nazis are jews.

Anything else?

I'm happy to be a capitalist.
 
Any book by Howard Zinn or James Loewen.
I keep "Declarations of Independence", and "Lies my Teacher Told Me" close by to use as references when shooting down either Dems or Repubs that tend to think that their side has no evil or ignorant people.
 
VAUGE.



Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass they make their way across the universe"


thanks m8.

the best

thanks
mikeey
 
Theodore Roosevelt would never come in to help the Uk if it was not for the
Japs giving u guys a doing,no probs about that.Mind U i dont think he would
have moved in to Iraq,he was a canny guy to save your troops more than

BUSH.

what a fooking bam he is Bush i mean.

mikeey
 
An excellent book is "A Short History of the US Working Class" by Paul Le Blanc

Sorry, but it would be considered to have a socialist bias.
 
"Our Oriental Heritage." Will Durant.

Where does our Western Culture come from?

It comes from the East!
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Socialism is a form of lunacy in which no one owns the business but the state makes all the decisions regarding it. The myth of socialism is that the "workers" own it, but anything owned by all is owned by none.
Click to expand...

Depends on what type of socialism you're talking about. I prefer to call "socialists" who want only govt. to own things "crap socialism" i. e. Stalinism or "socialism in one country" or any other names it goes by. Though govt. ownership on the scales of total ownership has often plagued the socialist movement.

All people would own the property publicly according to the cores of socialism. Many (such as myself) want no govt. either, we are called communists.
 

[sarcasm]And its so unbiased![/sarcasm]

Yes I'm sure all of us Liberals are illiterate... Thats a real smart conclusion. You completely ignore the fact that perhaps liberals don't read books by pundits, which are notorious for being inaccurate. Perhaps you should rephrase your argument to say "liberals don't read politically biased materials."

Enjoy.
 
A good book--well, a few of them: I am recently working on a text called "The Third Reich."

The Hitler Myth is also good. Scarecrow might like that one if he is into pre WW2 germany.
 
lets teach WBB some english, shall we?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

as above ...

onomatopoeia - a word which resembles sound i.e crash, bang, hiss, crack

alliteration - a chain of words starting with the same letter(often used for advertising) i.e tetly teabags tingle tastebuds

oxymoron - where contradictory terms are combined i.e deafening silence, mournful optimist

metaphor - A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another i.e a sea of troubles,
all the worlds a stage(shakespeare)

simile - A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as i.e how like the winter hath my absence been or So are you to my thoughts as food to life(shakespeare)

personification - where an item/object/creature has been given human characteristics i.e i sat looking at my watch which was growling back at me fiercely

juxtaposition - the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side(or close together) i.e it is the result of the juxtaposition of contrasting colors

hyperbole - a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect i.e i could eat a horse, this book weighs a tonne




feel free to add to this list, up ye WBB.
__________________
"Celtic, like Barcelona, are more than a football club. Our clubs are a symbol of a culture and community that has not always been made welcome in their respective countries." - Xavi

teach WBB here!


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#2 12-22-2005, 01:11 AM
 
A few favorites of mine would include:

THE CIVIL WAR Trilogy by Shelby Foote and eNEMY AT THE GATES by William Craig as well as I RODE WITH STONEWALL by Hnery Kyd Douglas.
 
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