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History books that warrant a good reading

Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes
 
If you like the convoluted politics surrounding WW I, Cataclsym by David Stevenson is excellent.

For Weimar Germany between ww I and the rise of Hitler in the 1930's Before The Deluge by Otto Freidrich offers some good anecdotes about cultural and social life in Germany during the Republic.
 
Picaro said:
If you like the convoluted politics surrounding WW I, Cataclsym by David Stevenson is excellent.

For Weimar Germany between ww I and the rise of Hitler in the 1930's Before The Deluge by Otto Freidrich offers some good anecdotes about cultural and social life in Germany during the Republic.
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My reading list has been weak on thos era. Thanx for the tip these are going on my list.
 
You're welcome. Mine is, too, which is why I started with the two I mentioned. It's a very involved subject, and I still go back and reread quite a bit from Stevenson's book. There's a new one out on WW I, but I don't have or recall the name of it, but in any case the above two keep me busy for now.

Stevenson's book came out in 2004, at least here in the U.S., maybe earlier overseas, so it is fairly up to date scholarship wise. Freidmans' is older, but since it's not as dependent on the kind of sources war and political scholarship need, it's still valuable.
 
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'Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB'
V.K. Vinogradov, J.F. Pogonyi, and N.V. Teptzov
Russian edition - Zvonnitsa Publishing House 2000
English edition - Chaucer Press 2005 | 395 pp.| Plates

A collection of hitherto top-secret material from the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service debunks the myths surrounding the last days of Hitler and Goebbels, and tells the story of what happened to their corpses, destroyed on the instructions of the KGB of the Soviet Union in 1970.

The book is based on records of interrogations and on statements written by General Field Marshal Schörner, Hitler's personal security chief SS Gruppenführer H. Rattenhuber, Head of the central defense region of Berlin General Wilhelm Mohnke, the Führer's doctor Professor Werner Haase, Chancellor's bodyguard Harry Mengershausen, intelligence officer K. Janke, and numerous other German witnesses incarcerated in Russia as POW's. Also included is the full text of Martin Bormann's diary, and dozens of previously unreleased plates. Many declassified KGB documents are here published for the first time.

Records of secret operations by the SMERSH, the Soviet Security Service in the search for Hitler, Goebbels, and other high-ranking Nazis.

Records of the interrogations of members of the Führer's innermost circle.

Material(s) from Russian forensic experts.
 
The History of Middle Earth is a gripping account of the life of people, Hobbits, and Elves of Middle Earth. Good Read.

Howard Zinn’s book Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal
 
BodiSatva said:
The History of Middle Earth is a gripping account of the life of people, Hobbits, and Elves of Middle Earth. Good Read.
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You're joking, right?? Right?!

You're joking. You must be joking.
 
"Treason" by Ann Coulter. A liberal couldn't possibly show their face after reading this beauty.
 
ptsdkid said:
"Treason" by Ann Coulter. A liberal couldn't possibly show their face after reading this beauty.
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What? Highly partisan crap? But, seriously, who'd read that as a history book?
 
Good books on American Revolutionary era:

1776 by David McCullough

Thomas Jefferson by RB Berstein

General George Washington by Edward Lengel

Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis

James Madison and the Future of Limited Government by John Samples
 
It's not a history book, but I enjoyed "John Adams" by David McCullough
Link
 
"Age of Extremes" by Eric Hobsbawn is good for it's sheer sense of perspective. It really gets across the notion of how small the liberal world has been (liberal in the broad, liberal-democratic sense) since her emergence in the 19th century. He's often needlessly pro-Communist though, quite annoying.

Otherwise, general works tend to be a bit trite. Really it makes more sense (if you really want to understand an historical phenomenon) is to read lots of various books/articles on the same narrow topic.
 
People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

A great book about everything bad in western history.
 
liberals don't read.
A.C.[/QUOTE]
:confused: :confused: :confused:

Huh??
 
History of the Jews

Rubicon

The Fate of Africa

Steal This Vote

The Guns of August

A Distant Mirror

Bound For Canaan
 
ptsdkid said:
"Treason" by Ann Coulter. A liberal couldn't possibly show their face after reading this beauty.
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I really would trust a person who says this...

ann_coulter.jpg


And this...

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

And this...

"When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men. Now we're up against absolutely insane savages."

Now who in the world would listen to this insane, racist, fundamentalist biotch?
 
Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" and "Jerusalem"
 
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
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.
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A fairly decent social history type book on Post-WW I Germany is Otto Freidrich's Before The Deluge. It has lots of interesting anecdotes and personal histories woven into general historical events during the rise of the Far Right and Adolph Hitler's eventual triumph over the other factions.

Never mind ... I've already mentioned this book before ... duh ... I should only post on a couple of boards, so my failing memory can keep up with what I've posted where ....

Nah! I should revel in 'geriatricism'! :>P

Kill The Under-30's!
 
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A Shopkeeper's Millennium

A book about the influence of the Second Great Awakening in Rochester, NY and how it reformulated American economic structures. A very good book for anyone who is interested in American religious history.
 
One of my old favorites is A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age, by William Manchester.
Another is the massive, comprehensive five-volume series entitled A History of Women in the West.
The Volumes outline, respectively, the following periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, the Nineteenth Century, and the Twentieth Century.
My favorite is Volume III: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes.

I also like, very much, Roman History; Edward Gibbon's History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire gives a good overview; there are many other good books that focus on particular characters or time periods in the History of Roman Civilization.

I like anything about the Tudor Dynasty, particularly between the mid-1400s and the early 1600s (this time period encompasses Henry VIII and his six wives, his daughters "Bloody" Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, and his unfortunate niece Queen Mary of Scots).
This was an era when women were at the forefront of history, major players on the global stage (before sinking back into patriarchal obscurity for another three centuries). As such, it interests me, not because I don't find men interesting, but because I don't find war interesting, and the history of men is the history of war. This, by contrast, was a time period of little conquest or acquisition, but rather of prolonged peace, diplomacy, enlightenment, and social, economic, humanitarian, and religious reform.
 
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