/lit/ - Literature

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany by Max Hastings. Excellent book. So good I broke the spine of my copy and had to get another one.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

>>1456252

Or you could read The Good War by Studs Terkel.

>>1456243

I'll pass. WW2 is about my least favorite period to read about.

>>1456252

I love that book, but it is still a work of fiction.

>>1456258

>I love that book, but it is still a work of fiction.

Yeah, right now it is....

A Concise History of the Middle East by Arthur Goldschmidt jr.

A History of Asia by J.A.G. Roberts

The Cambridge History of Iran (edited by W.B. Fisher)

A Concise History of the Middle East by Arthur Goldschmidt jr.

A History of China by J.A.G. Roberts

A Short History of Asia by Colin Mason

The Histories by Herodotus

The Cambridge History of Iran (edited by W.B. Fisher)

The Lemon Tree is an excellent book on Israeli-Palestinian relations in the Middle East. It's a mix of a history book and a true personal story. I highly recommend it.

>>1456278

Those look more to my taste. Will give them a look. Thanks!

Richard Hofstadter's "The American Political Tradition"
Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States
both god tier

>>1456313

Awesome books if you're an Anti-US communist. Zinn was a shit who tries to make major movements out of minor things.

Daniel Boorstin is where it's at.

>>1456226

Any particular period or perspective you'd like to read about?

What version of the Decline did you read? The abridged?

>>1456278

> A Concise History of the Middle East by Arthur Goldschmidt jr.

Too much textbookesque? Unless the OP has some particular interest about the subject, I don't think it'd be an enjoyable read. Plus, the partisanship of the authors in the I/P conflict, especially in regards to the behaviour of the US Administrations in the last 20 years provokes some sort of uneasiness in the reader.

> A History of China by J.A.G. Roberts

Again: textbooky, too dry.

> A Short History of Asia by Colin Mason

Never read.

>The Histories by Herodotus

The OP should know this is a quite intimidating book. If he struggled with Gibbon, I think he'd enjoy something different from this.

Protip: unless you're a scholar, the only way to attack Herodotus is through Andrea L. Purvis' The Landmark Herodotus.

>The Cambridge History of Iran (edited by W.B. Fisher)

C'mon. OP said he'd prefer "something a bit shorter". Do you want to make him never touch a history book again? I never read this and never will. It's a reference book.

>>1456291
>The Lemon Tree is an excellent book on Israeli-Palestinian relations in the Middle East. It's a mix of a history book and a true personal story. I highly recommend it.

Very readable Israel-bashing. It may be an excellent book, but it's not a history book. It's a very smart and well-written diatribe.

>>1457208 (cont.)

>>1456313
> Richard Hofstadter's "The American Political Tradition"
>Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States
> both god tier

Richard Hofstadter's style is adorable. His interpretations are often questionable; his tendency to myth-busting and to exaggerate the weaknesses of his targets can be very annoying; but Tradition is still a very interesting and challenging reading. Certainly not balanced or neutral, but that's a different issue.

That second book is a fairy-tale. The deranged fantasies of a fanatic. It's worth reading if you're interested in the worst that was produced by the radical marxist historiography of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Plus, boring as shit.

If you want a marxist historian of the past century, try someone like A. J. P. Taylor. Zinn is garbage. I have nothing against engagée history, but let's not confound it with charlatanism and political propaganda.

OP: provide more detail. Or else just read the last Niall Ferguson.

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward N. Luttwak

>>1457208
>partisanship

Not really. I think it's more that they try to evaluate what modern problems came from what causes, and the conclusions they draw might seem to be "partisan" but also make sense.
Are Goldschmidt and Davidson overly critical of Zionism? Perhaps, but only about as much as it needs to be criticized, with little unnecessary vitriol or hatred for one side or the other.
Besides, even though I had A Concise History of the Middle East as a textbook it was one of those textbooks I really didn't get a "textbookesque" feel from. It was more like a fireside conversation with the author(s).

>A Short History of Asia by Colin Mason

>Never read.

It's one of the shorter and more accessible books nonfiction works out there imo.

A History of Arctic Exploration: Discovery, Adventure and Endurance at the Top of the World by Juha Nurminen and Matti Lainema

A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia by Thomas Keneally

A Military History of Sovereign Hawaii by Neil Bernard Dukas

A Concise History of Modern India by Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf

The Making of Modern Japan by Marius B. Jansen

Blood and Iron: From Bismarck to Hitler the Von Moltke Family's Impact on German History by Otto Friedrich

John Adams by David McCullough

United Arab Emirates: A Modern History

The Arms of Kruppe

The Penguin History of Europe is a good series.

>>1457405
This.

>not difficult or long

DK History of the World

bump

I have the entire Durant collection, you mad.

Tony Judt's "Postwar"
Can't remember the author, but this one's called "1848: Year of Revolution"

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is a good and broad history of the American Civil War. McPherson writes well and it isn't too dry either.

>>1457925
McPherson is pretty good. Another great Civil War book i would recommended is "The South vs. The South" by William w. Freehling. Very good overview of the battle chronology of the Civil War with a very interesting thesis. Very well written as well.

The Prize by Daniel Yergin is a great summary of the history of the oil industry.

A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

>>1458603

Oh, and The Wages of Destruction. Brilliant analysis of Nazi Germany's economics.

>>1458624

I second this suggestion.

Also, in the same vein, Bankrupting the enemy by Edward S Miller, which is kind of a counterpart for Japan. Not as enjoyable to the non-academic reader as Wages of Destruction though.

Hopefully this thread stays alive till tomorrow, want to add more.

Frances Yates - Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

Mike Dash - Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny

Red Plenty is also a good book, but it has elements of fiction in it.

Legacy of Ashes to learn about the CIA.

The Cigarette Century is another great read.

Anybody have a good recommendation for a broader history of man? As in, something that goes from ancient civilizations all the way up until modern(-ish) times?

I remember somebody mentioning a book that traces something through history, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe religion, maybe property rights, maybe tobacco. Don't remember. But whatever it was, it apparently gave a great history lesson.

Empire - Niall Ferguson
Citizens - Simon Schama

>>1457317
>Goldschmidt and Davidson overly critical of Zionism? Perhaps
> not partisan
I think it's evident - and consensual - that their POV in the conflict isn't neutral. That, however, is for the most part a matter of judgement; and Goldschmidt puts his case with enough force. In my view, that never made the book less satisfactory. But in the last edition, I think Goldschmidt allowed his passions to cloud his judgment, especially in regards to the assessment of the Clinton/Bush administrations and the last Likud/Kadima governments - here, and only here, is where I feel he leaves history behind and becomes a partisan. Still an excellent book, my go-to reference book when it comes to the middle-east, but to me that's a serious enough defect to be noted in the shortest of the reviews.

>textbooky
Perhaps. I agree it's not the formulaic, dry textbook. I just have doubts - hence why I used the interrogation point. You, as an academic reader, were in a different position than the OP would be. It's not easy to get this type of general survey book to capture the imagination of the reader, unless some interest for the subject exists a priori.
Some more suggestions:
Again, The Wages of Destruction and Bankrupting the Enemy are excellent books. In the second one, economic and financial numbers are used in great detail - it's a tour de fource on systematizing all the existent hard data about this subject - so that may be too much minutia for the generic reader; plus, the narrative is centred on the Roosevelt administration and the author fails to address Japan's perspective - that would be tremendously helpful to address the thesis that the financial war on Japan was the driver to the 1941 events is more implicit than explicit.

Niall Ferguson books cannot be too highly commended. Ditto for AJP Taylor. They're the two most formidable narrators of the past century.

continuation from >>1460557

Niall Ferguson books cannot be too highly commended. Ditto for AJP Taylor. They're the two most formidable narrators of the past century.
It seems that there are a fair amount of suggestions from the cannon, so let me think of some recent/out of the mainstream books:

If the OP has any interest in history of ideas, there are two relatively recent books that are quite iconoclastic and worth a reading: The Last Utopy by Samuel Moyn and The Relentless Revolution: a History of Capitalism by Joyce Appleby. I disagree markedly with some aspects of Appleby's thesis but it's one of the most thought-provoking books of the last few years.

Staying on topic, Roads to Modernity by Himmelfarb should be a compulsory reading for anyone interested in the necessarily fiery debate about the history of modern political ideas.

Talking about revisionist historiography, Pio Moa's Myths of the Civil War (and to a lesser extent his other books in the Spanish Civil War) is an excellent if you disregard the tendency of the author to go for the polemical effect quite often.

Blessed days of anasthesia: How anasthetics changed the world by Stephanie Snow is a delightful read.

City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London by Vic Gatrell should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the "behind closed doors" genre or in the 18th/19th centuries history. One of the most fun, witty and surprising history books of the last few decades.

Cars for comrades: the history of the soviet auto-mobile is an intelligent and amusing enterprise written with charming and elegant style. Maybe a bit too exhaustive in some aspects, but the study of the boundaries between the insurgent car culture and the fall of the regime is brilliant.

Iron Kingdom (The Rise and Fall of Prussia) ~ Christopher Clark

Marie Antionette ~ Antonia Fraser

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire ~ Lawrence James.

Gibbon's Decline of the Roman Empire I really didn't care for. He let his Anti-Irish Catholic viewpoint dominate his exegesis. Since your picture is of the Ottoman Empire I'll recommend The Ottoman Empire 1700-1922 by Quatert.

Crap, didn't notice I wrote for so long, I'll cut a couple of suggestions.

continuing >>1460559

Sir Robert Peel: Life and Legacy by Richard Gaunt was the most enjoyable biography I read in the last couple of years.

Ronald Reagan's biography by John Patrick Diggins (don't recall subtitle now) is probably the best biography of a POTUS I've ever read.

Btw, as a final recommendation, A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes is an essential book to understand the communist revolution and the last 120 years.

>>1456226

John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice
CV Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation

The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather. Excellent survey of the downfall of the empire by a world-class academic.

>John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice

Great suggestion. It's popular history, it's almost an apologia, but it's a great book that can capture a wide audience - and bring tears to the eyes of those who love Venice as much as the author.

>CV Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War

From Wedgwood, read William the Silent instead.

For the Thirty Years War , go to Europe’s Tragedy: a History of the Thjirty Years War by Peter Wilson.

The Battle for Spain is the best history of the Spanish Civil War, bar none.

Twelve Days is a great summary of the Hungarian Revolution.