/lit/ - Literature

Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser

>In England, November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, when fireworks displays commemorate the shocking moment in 1605 when government authorities uncovered a secret plan to blow up the House of Parliament--and King James I along with it. A group of English Catholics, seeking to unseat the king and reintroduce Catholicism as the state religion, daringly placed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the Palace of Westminster. Their aim was to ignite the gunpowder at the opening of the Parliamentary session. Though the charismatic Catholic, Robert Catesby, was the group's leader, it was the devout Guy Fawkes who emerged as its most famous member, as he was the one who was captured and who revealed under torture the names of his fellow plotters. In the aftermath of their arrests, conditions grew worse for English Catholics, as legal penalties against them were stiffened and public sentiment became rabidly intolerant.

Guadalcanal Diary

>Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. An on-location news correspondent (at the time, one of only two on Guadalcanal), he lived alongside the soldiers: sleeping on the ground--only to be awoken by air raids--eating the sometimes meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II.

pop history slop especially bad of brothers

>>23363762
Reading this right now and completely do not understand why he has to shoehorn gender issues into it, being Marxist he should know damn well that things such as that have nothing to do with the history of class struggle.

Russia Against Napoleon by Dominic Lieven

>In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever seen, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and Russia had triumphed. This is the first history to explore in depth Russia's crucial role in the Napoleonic Wars, re-creating the epic battle between two empires as never before.

>>23365220
Yes... Let the anti Wickham propaganda spread

>>23365194
This. These threads suck, less useful than google/Amazon algorithm

>>23365427
Fuck off then, retard. Either larp, or shut up.

>>23365427
Amazon mostly recommends me slop I actually think this thread is much better

>>23363762

>>23365485
How about you tounge my anus you filthy kike. Also people should read anything by the Romans or the Greeks.

>The story of William Quantrill and of the Confederate bushwhackers. Accounts some of the most brutal encounters of the American Civil War -- with atrocities and war crimes being committed by both sides.

>>23363762
Started this after returning from my hiking/climbing trip through Nevada/Utah/Arizona. Follows specific historic figures across the settling of the American West. Good overview of Western U.S. history, not too detailed and well structured.

>>23363762
We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People

>From a State Department insider, the first account of our blundering efforts to rebuild Iraq--a shocking and rollicking true-life tale of Americans abroad
Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets without water or electricity?
>According to Peter Van Buren, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge--that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.
>Darkly funny while deadly serious, We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer--and readers--appalled and disillusioned but wiser.

Best Books on the Napoleonic wars and post napoleonic wars?

>>23366263
>We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
americans are such a cringy people.

>>23366409
How many of us do you really know or are you just basing assumptions of us from your bunker in Beijing?

>>23366465
cringe

>>23363762

>>23365427
Some of the books posted in these threads are fairly obscure and out of print, the prices for them used are ridiculously high.

I'm trying to find good books on Byzantine and Ottoman empire. Which historians are the reference for them? I would love something in the style of The Landmark.

>>23366493
Drink bleach Chang

>>23365220
>he hasn’t read On the Origins of the Family
>he doesn’t know class struggle begins with the oppression of women by men


Ngmi

Goldsworthy's book on Augustus is pretty good, reading the Carolingian World atm and I'd recommend it.

>>23367315
Lol not really. You aren’t well read. Flip through any bibliography of the closest history book to you, close your eyes, and finger a random book.

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, about the Troubles is good.

>>23367306
The S stands for hope, you fucking cretin.

Any recommendations for booms about Kamehameha's conquest of the Hawaiian islands?

>>23363762
Thomas E. Ricks - Fiasco. The American Military Adventure in Iraq. It's one of the most insightful critics of American invasion of Iraq I've seen, both politically and militarily.

>>23367984
Because it doesn’t, Marxism is just a resentment filled ideology by tiny dicked losers.

>>23365220
So this is just the Marxist version of "Medieval Europe bad, Dark Ages very Dark and Scary" or is it more nuanced than that?

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution - C.L.R. James

>In 1789 the West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France. The entire structure of what was arguably the most profitable colony in the world rested on the labour of half a million slaves. In 1791 the waves of unrest inspired by the French Revolution reached across the Atlantic dividing the loyalties of the white population of the island. The brutally treated slaves of Saint Domingo seized at this confusion and rose up in rebellion against masters. In thisclassic work, CLR James chronicles the only successful slave revolt in history and provides a critical portrait of their leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture

>>23363762

>>23365325

>>23367306
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEQtUmvH97Y&t=3s
"I will bathe in the ashes of their children, and wash myself clean with the tears of their parents!" said Truman, calmly.