Flying Squirrel Entertainment
The Lounge => Historical Discussion => Topic started by: Colonel Howe on January 12, 2015, 10:49:28 pm
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This is a thread to name and recommend your favorite history books. Also, feel free to ask if anyone knows any good books about certain topics or time periods to expand your knowledge.
I would recommend the books:
Shelby Foote's 3-volume narrative history of the American Civil War. The man is a great writer and the books read like novels, not droning content.
Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts. A full, 1-volume biography of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Roberts is English but goes to great lengths to fight the old resentment of his British contemporaries that Napoleon was a mass-murdering, offensive maniac on par with Hitler. Great book that gives great insight and provides much needed context of one of history's greatest conquerors and statesmen
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I recently bought Nigel Rodger's Roman Empire, and it's good. It has illustrations that do well at helping explain the time periods throughout Rome's history, even for someone like me who's already read books about it in the past but only had iffy sources on the internet and my own imagination to illustrate what things would have looked like. I guess it could be good for younger historians, I suppose, but all the well it's not bad. I also bought Torsten Jacobsen's The Gothic War: Justinian's Campaign to Reclaim Italy, and though I haven't gotten much into it yet, it's definitely... bizarre. I mean, informative, I guess, but it's just... eh... it has this feeling of fabricatedness or as if the author just found tidbits of what could be fact and put it into a book. The chapter "The First Siege of Rome" was hard to stop reading, though, but right after that it's been a pain to read any more of.
There were these two great looking books about Charlemagne and Constantine that were at Barnes & Noble but I didn't feel like spending the money at the time and I forgot to write down the names of them so I doubt I'll be reading them any time soon.
I am looking for some suggestions on books detailing the industrial revolution, if anyone has any.
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Gotta say Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is one of my favourite historical books. An excellent first hand account of the Spanish Civil War.
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Gotta say Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is one of my favourite historical books. An excellent first hand account of the Spanish Civil War.
I also know it ,it is a quite good book :)
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John Julius Norwich's Byzantium Trilogy is hands down the best series I have ever read about the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire. Well sourced, easy to read and incredibly detailed. Every Emperor from Diocletian to Constantine XI is described.
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Antony Beevor's books: Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, the Fall of Berlin 1945, and the Spanish Civil War are some good shite
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Antony Beevor's books: Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, the Fall of Berlin 1945, and the Spanish Civil War are some good shite
+1 to Antony