Cskin Posted May 30, 2003 Share Posted May 30, 2003 I'm kind of partial to American History, especially during wartime. Being from Va, Lynchburg to be exact, I've always held a special interest in the Civil War.... and more importantly the units that fought from Va. I just read the new book about WWII and the Omaha Beach Invasion. The 29th Division, 116th Infantry.... Company's A-D. The same 29th originating from Stonewall's divisions during the Civil War... which would become known as the "Stonewallers of Va.". These were all companies made up of central Virginia men, Company A being the first 6 landing craft to touch sand on Omaha Beach (Dog Green). In the first 10 minutes of battle, the little town of Bedford Va (Pop. 3000 in 44) lost 19 men, and 29 of the 34 men sent to battle from that town and surrounding county were either killed or wounded. Imagine the thoughts of Western Union operator after receiving 9 death notices in one afternoon. Company B was made up mostly of men from Lynchburg, and they lost 16 men on Omaha beach..... and Roanoke lost 18 in Normandy. Bedford is where the first National Memorial honoring Operation Overlord is located, for no other reason than because Bedford suffered the highest loss of life per capita during the war. The book..... "The Bedford Boys"..... and for the life of me I can't remember the author. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phat Hog Posted May 30, 2003 Share Posted May 30, 2003 Originally posted by Kilmer17 Start with ancient Rome and/or Greece. It lays the foundation for so much 'recent' history. Got to agree with Kilmer on this one.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo Posted May 30, 2003 Share Posted May 30, 2003 Cskin, the author of "The Bedford Boys" is Alex Kershaw. It's No. 1 on my "to read" list. Still waiting for it to become available at my library. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romo Posted May 30, 2003 Share Posted May 30, 2003 Yomar, If you have only read very little to no history and are just starting to get into it I would suggest trying to find something that interests you personally. Perhaps some local history or a background on your culture, whatever that may be, or depending on what your job is you may be interested in some sort of business or technoligical history. You can study just about anything when it comes to history. One of my professors at school is a huge NASCAR fan so he read and researched auto racing history for fun on the side of his more serious work. I personally have been reading alot of books on the American Civil War recently. Before that it was Irish History. I find the Early Cold War-McCarthy era interesting. I think World War 1 is very underappreciated by most people and its fascinating stuff. Got to see some cool WW1 stuff in Belgium when I was there. Im not a huge fan of social history but some of it can be very good. Roman and Greek history is good too. Ive always been into Mongolian history as well. Right now though I think the 19th Century is perhaps the most interesting thing to look at. If I knew more about your personally and your background I could be more precise on suggestions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NavyDave Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 As a kid I loved reading so history of Rome and Greece was a starting point including their mythologies. Then it was on to American history prior to the current revisionist stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yomar Posted May 31, 2003 Author Share Posted May 31, 2003 Anyone know a good book on Alexander the Great? Romo sits to pee, I'm still somewhat new to it, I've been reading mostly history the last few years. I'm kind of all over the place, its a dilemma because there is so much to choose from, but in a good way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdmiralWaugh Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Strategy by Captain BH Liddell Hart gives a good introductory explanation of certain "indirect" elements of warfare strategies in the past ranging from Hannibal to Bellisarius to Napoleon and I thought it was pretty good. Victory at High Tide about the amazing Inchon landing was awesome too. In fact, those of Western schools consider Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian Wars to be the seminal work of the field. It definitely is good, and a must read if going into the field. But if you get tired of all the Western stuff, definitely, go from Alexander the Great to stuff on the Khmer Empire and ancient China. Thai history is frankly amazing and you learn a lot about people from it, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catullus Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 I'm slightly biased, but if you want to get a good understanding of Western history, start with Greece, from about 500 BC (last of the Persian Wars, first of the Peloponnesian onwards) onwards. The Peloponnesian Wars, the first great democracy-versus-dictatorship battle I can think of, is possible the most fascinating conflict in history. And, (spoiler warning, although the first page of any book on the subject will tell you what happened), the democrats lost. And arguably deserved to, after massacring whole cities' worth of former allies' women and children. But the fact that they came so close to victory, after sending two of the largest armadas to that day off after a minor, self-indulgent target and having them destroyed utterly, is the first real evidence of the amazing economic power of capitalist democracy. There's honour, nobility, betrayal, revolution, appalling decisions made out of panic and subversion of the "constitution" (the illegal mass execution of the military command and the subsequent, after realising the catastrophic nature of the mistake, prosecution of the prosecutors). There's grand defeat and rebirth, of ideals and power. And then there's Rome... If you want a place to start with more modern history, Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" is a beautiful read. Combines history, political science and basic economics into a powerful argument that's also highly accessible. Well worth it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ax Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Well no one can say that the people here aren't well read. Except for maybe me. As a youngster, 6-12yrs old, I loved to read. Since then, I usually wait for the movie. Or the documentary. But when I do read, now as I did then, it's not so much about the history of the wars, or eras, or nations themselves. I tend to be more interested in the individual within the story. Heroes and leaders. Famous and infamous. Don't remember the authors but I remember reading biographies about Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Babe Ruth and Jim Thorpe. Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Sgt. York. All when I was young, so I know they were not the in depth books written for adults. But they were what inspired me. All of history, whatever the subject, is filled with stories of people who became heroes and great leaders. Some willing, some not. They still inspire me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Om Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Interesting question, Yomar. "History" is a pretty broad brush. I won't try to recommend specific non-fiction works ... there are simply so many good ones to choose from. If you have a particular period in mind, a quick scan of your local library's shelves will offer up any number of worthy choices. By the way, all Westerners should have a grasp of Greece and Rome. If you're looking for a spark, though, to get you really hungry to seek out even more history, Kurp has a very nice approach. The historical novel is a great way to bring history to life, usually in a way that scholarly texts don't. And you may find that reading them whets your appetite to dig a bit deeper into a particular era ... and/or opens doors and makes connections you never knew were there. Michener is a great way to go ... I consider The Source a simply indispensable read for anyone ... especially today. It'll paint a picture of the Middle East, from the days of Ur up through the formation of Israel in '48, that you could not get in a year of poring over non-fiction tomes. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is a fabulous historical novel as well, and simply an amazing read. You wouldn't think an expansive, 12th-century British tale of the architectural evolution of church-building, and convoluted royal intrigue, and blooldshed, and sex, and all that good stuff would make you go back and read it again every 2 or 3 years, but it will. And by the way ... the Archbishop of Canterbury rocked. I've also recommended Gates of Fire before, by an author's name which escapes me at the moment. Do a search of Gates of Fire and Thermopylae on Google, though, and you'll find it sure. The Spartans have largely been lost to history. I know I didn't really appreciate them before stumbling on this book. Unreal. Anyway ... a word of unsolicited advice to anyone thinking of embarking on a historical study spree, fiction OR non ... you may want to warn your loved ones that you've found another way to spend a WHOLE lot of time ... like Extremeskins wasn't enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romo Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Yomar, A good way to find good books is to read the Footnotes/Endnotes and Bibliography of other books you have read on a similar topic. I havnt read any books just about Alexander the Great. I do have a very good textbook on Ancient Greek history that deals with Alexander as well. Its textbook format so it may not be the most exciting or most indepth but its a good overview and its easier to read then most texts. Its A History of Ancient Greece by Nancy Demand published by McGraw-Hill in 1996. Not sure if they have a newer edition. In that book the author recomends the following books in regard to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great: Ancient and Modern Perspectives by J. Roisman (1995); Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (1988) by A. B. Bosworth; Alexander the Great (1974) by Peter Green and Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army(1978) by D. W Engels. I think the first one is more regarding the ancient sources, by that I mean looking at what was written about Alexander by his contemporaries. So that might be a little dry for someone who isnt doing a reserach paper on the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlanta Skins Fan Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Yomar, A great and very readable survey of world history is A History of Knowledge: The Pivotal Events, People, and Achievements of World History, by Charles Van Doren. Van Doren is the same Columbia professor who got caught up in the "Quiz Show" scandals of the 1950s, but he seems to have redeemed himself with this amazing survey published in 1991. This cheap ($10.47) and fairly slim (448 pages) survey treats history not as a massive collection of facts and events, but rather as a drama of ideas -- ideas in development and ideas in conflict. By distilling what would otherwise be overwhelming (all of the particulars of world history) to such idea-based threads, Van Doren in essence turns history into a drama of competing conceptions of humanity and civilization. There are thousands of books that can take you deeper into any one subject of history. But I haven't seen any single volume that distills so much, so thoroughly. It's especially helpful to give you an understanding of periods and cultures about which you have little initial interest -- and you may find yourself more interested in them as a result of reading a few pages of Van Doren's breezy review. Separately, on the subject of American history, I'd recommend anything on the development of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, with a particular focus on Jefferson's life, thoughts on government, and his specific contributions to the "American experiment" (such as his Declaration of Independence). It's very important to get an understanding of *why* our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written as they were, even on a sentence by sentence basis. The Bill of Rights is particularly fascinating and powerful: this might be the most condensed treatise on the proper limits of government ever written. You have entire amendments containing a single short sentence, which, when closely examined, have titanic power. Spend a couple of months examining these documents and why they were developed as they were, and you will have an understanding of the true brilliance of the American experiment -- and how horribly far we've strayed from those founding principles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phantom Posted June 1, 2003 Share Posted June 1, 2003 "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Spear. Spear was an architecht who was so brilliant he became armaments minister. Supposedly the only high ranking Nazi with a conscience. Only Nazi who admitted to his crimes at Nuremburg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riggins44 Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War II interest me the most. Had family that fought in all 3, plus live minutes from Yorktown and Williamsburg. Have been told interesting stories about family exploits, especially in Civil War. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarhog Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I'm partial to early American History....as a kid, my Dad had me reading many of Bruce Caton's civil war novels.....really tough to get through some of them due to their length, but great books. Of recent read, I'd highly recommend two books 'Son of the Morning Star' about Custer, and a wonderful Lewis and Clark history called 'Undaunted Courage'. I've recommended Scharra's 'Killer Angels' previously here, and still find it a compelling novel (about Gettysburg). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fansince62 Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 have to agree with Kilmer and the Admiral........ vis ASF's point...be sure to balance any excessive extrapolations with biographies/histories on how the Founding father's actually put the principle's into play (i.e., how they lived their lives); what they were actually responding to (before wondering too far afield); the arguments that occurred as principle moved to parchment (there was anything but a homogenous point-of-view on the whys and wherefores); read the Federalist Papers and a good historical analysis of the competing intererests that reached compromise in that crucial document; understand that the form of many federal processes we accept today as "givens" actually evolved through the interplay of circumstance; oh...and many of the Founding Fathers were profoundly brilliant at spreading the most malicious lies to gain political advantage (go back and read some of Jefferson's epistles on Hamilton's philandering; or, review the deteriorating relationship between Adams and Jefferson).......something that, in other eras, some seem to find very disturbing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 oh...and many of the Founding Fathers were profoundly brilliant at spreading the most malicious lies to gain political advantage (go back and read some of Jefferson's epistles on Hamilton's philandering; or, review the deteriorating relationship between Adams and Jefferson).......something that, in other eras, some seem to find very disturbing I'm reading a book right now called "Founding Borthers" which is all about these relationships. It's fascinating stuff. The Burr/Hamilton duel, for example, which ended in Hamilton's death and Burr's political ruin was a direct result of this aforementioned malice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorEastNCFan Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I must say that I'm a buff about military history. Most of my reading has been the Civil War and Vietnam era stuff. My family is pretty big into the civil war, so I've listened to many stories growing up. A book that I read recently that had local interest and was a good read was "Ironclad of the Roanoke". It was an account of the Ram Albemarle and it's actions in the battle of Plymouth and the naval battle that occurred in the Roanoke River and Albemarle sound. Outside of the Monitor/Virginia battle, it was probably one of the greatest naval battles of the civil war. The Vietnam reading became of interest because of my father's involvement in the conflict. I had an interest since early high school and did alot of reading on the subject. Two novels that stand out to me are "The Battle of Hue", the battle that took place in Hue City during the Tet offensive. I really liked that book because my father actually took part in that. The other book was "The Tunnels of Cu Chi". That gave a pretty good account from both the American and Viet Cong side. It was also of interest because my father did some tunnel ratting while he was there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romo Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Originally posted by Henry I'm reading a book right now called "Founding Borthers" which is all about these relationships. It's fascinating stuff. The Burr/Hamilton duel, for example, which ended in Hamilton's death and Burr's political ruin was a direct result of this aforementioned malice. Henry if you are interested in Aaron Burr I recently read a very good book that deals in part with Burr. It is more centered about the exploration of the west looking at Lewis and Clark as well as Zebulon Pike's 2 expeditions but it dies in Burr's attempted conspiracy to form his own Western Empire. It is called Jefferson and the Gun-Men: How the West Was Almost Lost by M. R. Montgomery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Originally posted by Romo sits to pee Henry if you are interested in Aaron Burr I recently read a very good book that deals in part with Burr. It is more centered about the exploration of the west looking at Lewis and Clark as well as Zebulon Pike's 2 expeditions but it dies in Burr's attempted conspiracy to form his own Western Empire. It is called Jefferson and the Gun-Men: How the West Was Almost Lost by M. R. Montgomery. You know, before I read this 'Founding Brothers' all I knew about Burr was that he was the guy who killed Hamilton, and I knew that because of the milk commercial from a few years ago. Turns out he was quite the opportunist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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