/lit/ - Literature

Hardcore history podcast by dan carlin

if you prefer history books go fuck yourself.

>>6551327
Libertard ranting

Ancient History & Archaeology graduate here, if you have any questions.

If you feel you have a gap in history, it mostly depends on what you're looking for. Something I often do when I try to find decent literature on a topic is try to look up a course syllabus to the topic somewhere on the internet. I'm not an expert on WW2, but esp. regarding that field you should be very careful - your fascination is shared by many bad, careless 'historians'.

The 'hardcore history' podcast by Dan Carlin is, in my opinion, cringeworthy.
Something like Talbert's Atlas of the Classical World or Roaf's Atlas of Mesopotamia will be a good introduction to some things Ancient History. Don't be scared to maybe pick up a typical introductory college textbook.

>>6551327
>Hardcore history
I will try it, thanks.

But yes, I am mainly interested in books. I'm not opposed to podcasts and films though.

>>6551333
>Talbert's Atlas of the Classical World
thanks for the rec.

I feel seriously stupid on some issues.To wit:
What do we exactly know about the "real" jesus. What is the actual evidence, how can we trust it?
How was life in roman times, medieval times, (other than this guy was the king and everyone died at 35, i want some actual examples with proof, what was a typical day like back then, is there any statistics, socio-economical indicators)
How far does reliable history go back to?
How can people evaluate the trustworthiness of their sources?
How relevant were merchant italian city-states to our modern day neo-liberal capitalism?
Was there any proper implementation of communism at any point in history? (not just dictators ordering peasants around shouting Marx's name)
How fucking true/false are our perception of various historical figures as benevolent heroes/brutal evil figures?
I literally know nothing about russia before 1900. Same with the whole of Africa, China, india..
Why is everyone so focused on the romans/greeks when the Egyptians seem equally important?
How about matriarchal societies? were those a real thing at some point or is it just clickbait articles on shitty sites I read?
Militaristic developments. What were the great strategic battles of history? Is there a book listing and explaining the field tactics, logistics of the battles, overall strategies and various hierarchical considerations? (across the ages)


I'm barely starting this list of questions that accumulated over the years and I already feel like a moron for not knowing those answers.
History, as far as I can tell, consisted in listing one by one french kings and every year of high school some vague WW2 stuff and the cold war on top.

Can we actually extract something practical from its study (politically- Legal stuff- rectify some public misconceptions- escape from propaganda/PR?) or is it just clerical work while the next catastrophe/war comes along?

>>6551322
I only have an above average knowledge of history and I find Dan Carlin painful to listen to. He's more of a speaker than a historian, and even then he's not much of a speaker.

He's who higher plebs listen to in order to 'learn' history without actually educating themselves.

I don't read too much actual history but since I've read so much in general I have a solid base understanding of a lot of stuff. Maybe a good start would be something general that goes into a bit of detail on a broad range of topics.

How's your understanding of the development of Europe from The Celts up to now?

>>6551380
I probably am aware of the overall destiny of the francs, I have so vague knowledge of the roman empire.

It's pretty bad. I've always had high grades in history at school with no effort whatsoever but I somehow retained none of it. That bothers me since I remember physics, biology and some spanish. But history just evaporated from my brain. I recall beating everyone on an expose on the Byzantine empire but last week I had to check wikipedia to place it on a timeline.

What books did you like?

how are you supposed to read history books? I'm currently reading Livy's The War with Hannibal and he seems to be recounting a story. I don't know what i'm supposed to be getting out of it. I'm only a 100 pages in so maybe it changes later on.

>>6551379
>Jesus
We can be pretty sure he was real and was crucified and a Roman named Pilate was in charge, but the rest is stuff written by guys who would have had good reasons to spin and twist the truth.

>Roman times
Depends on who you listen to. Cicero said that being a country farmer was suffering and that the rich were exploiting the fuck out of the poor. There's probably truth to this, anybody who pushed the matter of pleb rights tended to end up dead.

>Medieval times
Not as bad as you'd think apparently. The wars were generally laughably small compared to those waged in the classical era and the church brought charity and education across Europe. You still have people in power exploiting the people below them, but most places seem to have been generally liveable. Even poor farmers didn't work all year round and since feudal rulers were local they were more invested in the well-being of their subjects. I think that that system does have a strength, it's harder to take the skin off of a guy's back if you have to look him in the face every day.

The dying at 35 thing is mostly a load of crap, unless you lived in a filthy and overpopulated city (which to be fair, was a lot of them) you weren't going to die in middle age. Child mortality influences that, but some cities were absolutely disgusting by modern standards though. Pre-revolution Paris was absolutely filthy, there were districts where the air was considered poisonous by those not used to it.

Plague and nearby wars notwithstanding medieval life was decent.

>reliable history
Greeks were mostly solid with their history, except every now and then you get something funny like a mention of Atlantis or an invading army supposedly numbering in the millions.

>trustworthiness
Cross-referencing is good, if lots of different sources say Julius Caesar existed, we can be pretty sure he did. Also, think of if they would have had reasons to lie or embellish. For example, historians on either side of a war will generally give you somewhat conflicting accounts in terms of numbers and army performance.

>Italian city-states
If I remember right they were where Christians started to work around Christian laws and open up banks and allow usury to become commonplace. This greatly shifted the balance of power in Europe since it allowed some people to accumulate enormous fortunes, and there are probably other less stupid reasons I don't know.

>Proper Communism
Cuba has more doctors per capita than anywhere in the world and keep in mind what Russia was like before Lenin and after Stalin. They went from backwards potato farmers to a global superpower and the first ones into space (With stolen German technology, but lets give them this one :)

>Historical Figures
The historic Dracula is probably one of the most underrated rulers and human beings in human history. He was a populist who cared for his people and fought bravely to defend them from foreign domination. He's something of a hero in Romania now.

>>6551395
A good book which gave solid coverage of a lot of stuff that I remember from my school library was Illustrated History of Europe: A Unique Portrait of Europe's Common History, edited by Frederic Delouche.

I have no idea how available that one is though. Maybe read some direct sources based on what you're interested in. For example you can readily find the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar if you're looking for insight into Rome.

>>6551406
>Greeks were mostly solid with their history,
how would we even know?
What does the intellectual process of eliminating lies from propaganda from fiction from misconception even look like?
The 'they have no reason to lie" does not even constitute a proof I would think. How do we know different events took place but a victorious group of people burned other sources?

That would be like people from the future with no knowledge of our current digital technologies looking at CGI films and deciding there was really a superman living circa 2015.

>>6551416
>History of Europe: A Unique Portrait of Europe's Common History
fucking thanks man. There's a $0.70 copy of it on amazon right now.

>>6551399
I had no idea there was a particular way of reading a history book. But now that you raised the issue, that makes me wonder as well. Can anyone answer?

Also, keep the book suggestions coming, I am neatly noting down all of it.

>>6551399
That's because you're reading a very old history book, if you want a more factual, non-bias history then read a modern one.

>>6551379
>Pre 1900
>Russia
Illiterate farmers who were thoroughly bullied by mongolians and various others until around the beginning of the 16th century when rulers started calling themselves Tsar's and the territory they controlled 'The Third Rome', due to it's Byzantine heritage. This heritage is Saint Cyril bringing Christianity and literacy to the southern Slavs, hence the name of their alphabet, Cyrillic.

A Tsar named Peter the Great expanded Russia's territory, shaping it into The Russian Empire and making it a strong European power.

Then his descendants continued to rule until Nicholas the Second was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and was murdered along with his family in the early 20th century.

>Africa
In the North various Kingdoms were formed and much of Africa had plenty of contact with the Middle East, whose religion and culture spread far into the continent.

North African Moors conquered a large part of the Spanish peninsula for a long time and North African Pirates terrorized the Mediterranean by taking slaves, disrupting trade and raiding seaside towns.

Arabs also took lots of slaves from Eastern Africa in what is possibly the most brutal slave trade in history. The survivability of African slaves taken by the Arabs was awful.

>China
They actually had a more or less samey time of things for an exceptionally long time. Plenty of wars and technological and philosophical innovations and such but before the 20th century and their contact with western colonialism they ran things more or less the same way. Europeans eventually taking a keen interest in them was very bad for China and led to the instability that put them on the path to a painful revolution.

>India
I honestly know next to nothing about India before the British showed up and don't particularly care to learn.

>Egyptians
I suppose that since they were the one's who ended up subjugated they're considered less influential/important/interesting.

I just personally find Greece and Rome more interesting and relevant to study. Egypt had a powerful influence on their time, but I don't think they had anywhere near as much lasting impact as the Roman's and Greeks, who we still take ideas from now.

>Matriarchal societies
There were plenty of remarkable leaders throughout history who were women, but I don't know about any matriarchal societies. Elizabeth of Britain and Isabella of Spain were certainly remarkable people though. China also had some woman rulers throughout its history.

>militaristic developments
I don't know of any big book that covers everything but the big stuff is probably:

Egypt -> Greeks vs Persians -> Rome vs Carthage -> Barbarians vs Late Rome -> Charlemagne vs Europe -> Franks vs Arabs -> British vs French -> Mongols vs World -> development of guns/cannon -> Frederick the Great and Prussia (Frederick wrote on the subject of war, good stuff) -> Napoleon vs Europe -> World Wars -> Modern Warfare

*Gorilla Warfare all throughout might be worth a look also

>>6551482
that's interesting, thanks.
Care to list a top 5 books?

>>6551434
There has to be a bit of faith, sure, but with our better judgement and existing knowledge we can get a decent picture of the time.

Things like accounts of individuals are hard since the writer might have hated their gets/blindly loved them, but wider history is easier.

As for victorious people, well we just have to take into account that they won. I don't think that there are any major conflicts which we absolutely don't know existed so I don't think any very major events could have been completely erased from history or falsified.

As we go further back sources get less trustworthy, for sure though.

>>6551448
>$0.70
Damn, maybe I should start buying books again.

>>6551514
>top 5 books
On history?

For warfare I'd say Caesar and Frederick the Great are both very good. Caesar for ancient stuff and Frederick for something more modern. Frederick was a very interesting man, I'd say that he literally had his greatness beaten into him by his authoritarian father. I read that as a kid he was once beaten for wearing gloves when it got cold.

Illustrated History of Europe is great for a general overview of Europe which gives you a base to build on.

As for more specific stuff it's hard to choose since history is so broad, but Simon Schama is very good. His stuff on The French Revolution in particular I like.

The French Revolution is probably one of the most important things you can study to get an idea of why the world is the way it is, since it's arguably the birth of modern politics. It's amazing to see how such idealism and optimism went completely mad to the point where the revolution practically ate itself.

Schama's History of Britain is also good stuff.

Just don't go believing in the holohoax OP
That is full retard mode from a history standpoint

>>6551555
Haha! Great Post!

Well tripped, friend.

History is very diverse, you will need to be more specific. It's good that you have found an interest in WW2. You should pursue what interests you, but I highly recommend being open minded to different sorts of history, you might be surprised.

A historical book I really liked was "North Korea: Another Country" by Bruce Cummings. I suppose North Korea isn't really that relevant to history, but it was interesting nonetheless to read a serious account of their history given how the media rarely takes them seriously and they've attained meme country status.

History graduate here - mostly 1500-1600ish as a starting point, but progressively more informed the closer to present, 20th century would probably be my specialty.
>>6551379
>How far does reliable history go back to?
History is never reliable, memories lie and events can be interpreted differently. But you probably have more accurate sources from the past 100-200 years. It's why I prefer more recent history.
>How can people evaluate the trustworthiness of their sources?
There are large swathes of literature on this topic, we mostly divide things into primary and secondary sources - primary being from the time and secondary being written later. Always treat any source with skepticism - while being open minded - if that makes sense.
>Was there any proper implementation of communism at any point in history?
I don't think you'll ever get an accurate answer, it's highly debated. Only Marx himself could say so, but in my opinion it has never happened.
>How fucking true/false are our perception of various historical figures as benevolent heroes/brutal evil figures?
No such thing as good and evil, most people in the past are probably bad by modern tastes though. But like I said...
>I literally know nothing about russia before 1900. Same with the whole of Africa, China, india..
I'd encourage you to go to your local library and start reading then! What do you want to know?
>Why is everyone so focused on the romans/greeks when the Egyptians seem equally important?
Egypt has A LOT of work on it, but Eurocentrism is probably at play.
>Can we actually extract something practical from its study
Understanding the past will protect you from the nonsense being spouted by people who appeal to history for their own ends. It helps you understand the world today and why things are why they are.

>The premiere issue of Blazing Combat reached newsstands in mid-1965, during a troop-escalation period years before American public sentiment would turn against the Vietnam War. Publisher James Warren said that, from the beginning, wholesale magazine distributors cautioned him that the magazine's anti-war stance presented a sales obstacle. As Warren recalled in a 1999 interview, "[H]ere is my distributor, saying, 'Uh oh! Wait until our wholesalers — many of them belonging to the American Legion — see this!' They found out very fast that it was anti-war".[2]

Warren said the second issue's Vietnam-set story "Landscape", by writer Goodwin and artist Orlando, solidified wholesalers' stance against the magazine. As comics historian Richard Arndt describes,

The story concerns an old Vietnamese farmer who finally understands the true economics of war. ... According to Warren, the American Legion began a quiet campaign among distributors, many of whom belonged to the organization, to let the magazine sit on distributor shelves rather than be sent to the buying public. There were also problems from the armed forces (at the time a major purchaser of B&W comic magazines) ... began to refuse to sell Blazing Combat on their bases or PXs, due to its perceived 'anti-war' stance".[3]

>>6551602
Oh and to elaborate on the last answer with an example.
If you wanted to understand something like the EU, you wouldn't get very far without understanding the history of Europe, with the French revolution being the bare minimum starting point. The amount of actors and states involved put Game of Thrones to utter shame. History combined with politics and a whole continent of multiple ethnic groups and nationalities is messy business.

I know people hate reddit but /r/AskHistorians is absolutely fantastic for beginners. I did a History degree and still find myself browsing it weekly. There's an incredible amount of strange questions and interesting diversions that would keep someone without an intense background interested.

>>6551634
people who hate reddit are stupid. I too browse that subreddit and it's really interesting.

>>6551322
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is.. fun

>>6551634
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq

Good list of basic questions, all answered by experts.

>>6551333
>The 'hardcore history' podcast by Dan Carlin is, in my opinion, cringeworthy.
I've been listening to his podcasts regarding world war one and the mongols recently, why is it cringeworthy? Or do you mean cringeworthy as in, how he presents the information? (Dramatic tone of voice, etc)

>>6551634
I went there once and all the questions were stuff like "How pro-LGBT were the romans" or "Did x like y?"

It was terrible

>>6551685
So don't read those and check out the literally tens of thousands of threads about every subject you can imagine.

>>6551675
As someone who loves him, I can definitely say that some people will hate his presentation of material. There are drinking games based on how many times he is going to use a Boxing analogy, say 'folks' , mention nazi germany etc.

>>6551689
Ah yes, great threads such as "Did chicken wings used to be very cheap before the popularization of Buffalo wings?"

Should I buy this book? I read reviews which said that the author was very biased towards the turks and painted the byzantines in a bad way.

Any other recommendations for books about the fall of constantinople?

>>6551695
Fuck, I didn't realize the other two hundred threads from the last week were invalidated by one idiotic question.

There were literally dozens of other questions on the same page about a number of interesting subjects.

If you think an internet forum should be judged by the worst of its content I don't know how you spend more than two seconds on this board.

>>6551705
What I'm trying to say is that reddit is cancerous plebbitry.

>>6551708
AskHistorians is actually a really well-moderated forum full of PHDs who take time out of their days to help beginners. You thinking it's shit because it's on a certain website, when you're currently posting on a place one click from /b/, is idiotic.

OP: if you can cheat region locks, the BBC have some great free history documentaries on iPlayer every week.

is it really that hard to go to the library and pick up a book, read the back, and see if it interests you? this is what studying is

>>6551700
>the Clash of Islam and The West

Just read Runciman's book (The Fall of Constantinople 1453). If you want more detail, see if you can get pic related from a library.

>>6551717
A surprising number of the 'experts' there are undergraduates or other history enthusiasts who just know how to cite sources.

>>6551731
>Just read Runciman's book (The Fall of Constantinople 1453). If you want more detail, see if you can get pic related from a library.
Ok thanks for the recommendation. Gonna read Runciman's book.

Have you read any history books by the Lapierre/Collins duo? I was thinking of picking up O Jerusalem, because I know next to nothing about the Israel Palestine conflict.

>>6551694
Oh yes, I know, I was mainly wondering about if the information he presented was flawed. His injunction like statements how one should care about millions of people dying is also quite irritating at times, but ah well.

>>6551379
>Militaristic developments. What were the great strategic battles of history? Is there a book listing and explaining the field tactics, logistics of the battles, overall strategies and various hierarchical considerations? (across the ages)

Military history graduate here.

Two books to introduce you to the subject, without prior knowledge, is John Keegan's 'A History of Warfare' and Stephen Morillo and Michael F. Pavkovic's 'What is Military History?'

The former will give you a nice narrative overview, from ancient Sumerian tribes to Gulf I (slightly dated book, but the fundamentals have not changed). It is enjoyable to read, not least as Keegan's an excellent historical writer as well as historian, and has a vast, authoritative reading list for you to find out more on specific periods or subjects.

The latter is useful largely from an academic point of view. It is primarily concerned with the conceptual framework of military history - the various historiographical issues (i.e. how the history is written and formulated), its relationship with other related disciplines, and, perhaps most usefully, an overview of various debates and controversies within the field that have occurred over the past century. It also has a curated reading list.

Those are your introductions to the subject, and were on the reading list for myself and others as a first year undergraduate. Both of these will discuss strategy, tactics, logistics and organisation, although there are certainly other books focusing on these (depending on the period) that will give you a more detailed survey of the aforementioned aspects of warfare.

As for a military history Bible, you'll eventually want to work up to Clausewitz's 'On War' (in the original German for extra patrician points). Don't listen to plebs irl who will harp on about Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' (although it's part of the historiographical canon) as being the only book you need read on the subject.

Anyone know of any good, free history books?

I don't understand how normal people can be happy without having any understanding of history, even the basics sometimes.

To me that's like finding yourself in a room and having no idea how the hell you got there but just sitting down and getting on with it anyway.

Sometimes i just like to ask people i know when they think cars were invented, it's hilarious to hear answers ranging from 1000 years ago to 50 years ago. Sometimes i ask when the Roman empire existed and i get answers like 10,000 years ago. If you ask them how civilisation got to this point they usually have absolutely no idea.

>>6551970
For 100% free and legitimate books the Gutenberg library is my go-to source.

Here's there history section:

https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:History_Bookshelf

>>6551978
Thanks. Any particular ones you'd recommend?

>>6551991
Well, if you were to read everything in the classical antiquity section you'd almost certainly be the most cultured person you know by the time you're done.

But that's a lot to deal with, so maybe something easier first, like a biography.

Do any of the biographies interest you? I've always kind of had a thing for Rome but their range is impressive.

>>6551379
Military strategy really stopped developing after Alexander the Great developed flanking and hammer&anvil strategems. Even modern warfare and combined arms haven't changed the paradigm much.

Just read a proper account of his campaigns and you can wax philosophical with even the most autistic Clausewitz devotees.

>>6551379
>What do we exactly know about the "real" jesus. What is the actual evidence, how can we trust it?
this isnt any. Gospals are earliest accounts.
>How far does reliable history go back to?
that a study of history. There are many types of sources.
>How relevant were merchant italian city-states to our modern day neo-liberal capitalism?
they were mercantile states. Read The Ascent of Money. Netherlands is where capatalism (the joint stockcompany) really begins
>Why is everyone so focused on the romans/greeks when the Egyptians seem equally important?
less literate. Most egyptain use of writing was religious or bureaucratic. Greeks wrote a shit tonne down
>How about matriarchal societies? were those a real thing at some point or is it just clickbait articles on shitty sites I read?
100% feminist meme

Most info in this thread is wrong to the point that I don't want to be an asshole by correcting it. I would literally disregard nearly everything you read in this thread. Just looking at random replies to this post >>6551379 is making my sphincter tighten.

I genuinely don't understand why people answer questions if they don't know the answer or if they're only guessing. Why bother?

>>6553333
name an incorrect answer. Most of them seem alright

I have a keen interest in the industrial revolution. I'd recommend Eric Hobsbawm.

>>6551379

God I can't answer these in full, but will try.

I think the dead at 35 thing comes from infant mortality. As many as 4/5 children died before adulthood, but once you made it there (and usually had developed resistance to all of the common diseases, you could expect to live to about 65 or so.

Well, as many as 1/3 of all people in the empire were slaves - which is pretty bad, though often not as bad as first thought - slaves could have many roles, could eventually buy their freedom, could own things, and so on. It wasn't like in the American South.

I think (and this is very debated still) the consensus is that the Roman Empire underwent a period of very mild (by our standards) growth - but even that growth that was pretty unprecedented until the modern era. I think the economy doubled in size every 200 years or so? I think it was still within malthusian constraights, so all that growth might have just gone into higher population, though.

There has never really been any good implementation of communism. Although some nations have been communist/very left wing for a while with some sort of successes (for instance the GDR, India post 1950s, some latin american countries. Perhaps even China. Note I say limited success, in that it did alright/possibly better than capitalism might have done in that particular context, rather than it 'working,' really.

HITLER WAS RIGHTTTT

Nah, I mean, I often find the old school interpretations to be more right that the current left wing interpretations. So I think it makes more sense to blame Germany for ww1 than to talk about it being the fault of some system or another. On the other hand, I do think the US was primarily responsible for starting the cold war (though it probably would have begun anyway.)

In terms of reliable history, it really depends. For economic history, I think people find it very hard to get reliable statistics before the victorian period, which is part of the reason why people still aren't sure when the industrial revolution really began to take off.

>>6551338
Don't try what he suggested.

>>6555435
>>6553598
Thanks

>>6555435
>>6555597
You guys got books to rec?

>>6551322
I'd recommend heading to a store that sells used college textbooks and picking up some cheap World and European history textbooks. You won't get an indepth understanding of specific occurrences, but with history its important to see the big picture before focusing in on specific time periods.

From there you can start reading about specific things, but more importantly you should start staying up to date on modern day news and politics, and understand how history influences modern day events. I read The Economist, but Reuters and Al Jazeera are pretty good free alternatives. Russia Today is unreliable as hell, but interesting to read because it always projects an anti west, and contrasting point of view compared to most news sources.

>>6555714
I read the economist as well, it's biased as fuck (neo-liberal, stance on specific issues like the euro, homosexuality, Iraq war) but it's very honest about it and pretty consistent. Of all the biased media out there (all of them?) I find their particular brand of propaganda bearable. Not because I agree with it but because of the more analytic frame they try to place themselves in. I cannot stand Time, newsweek, Fox, CNN, Guardian, NY times etc..

What do you think about escaping the constant push for agendas, propaganda and authorial views in the media? It's really fucking annoying.

>>6555725
I don't think you can really escape the constant pushing of agendas, but as a reader if you realize that everything you read has a slant on it you can read articles from multiple sources that in a way balance each other out. Basically one has to always be skeptical about everything they read, and always go the extra mile as far as reading multiple sources and forming an independent opinion.

To OP, keep in mind too that textbooks and whatever sources you use are subject to historical revisionism to some degree. Most textbooks will be left leaning, and you always have to view individual authors on a case by case basis.