Grand unified books thread

[Josephus]

Reading the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, which is a 90th anniversary edition containing essays from the past 90 years. REally cool contemporary stuff on Lenin, Hitler, The Cold War...etc.

[CountDeMoney]

Man, it's weird reading about fighting raging through towns I've been to and/or traveled through.

Clearly you've never been to continental Europe.

lol

[garbon]

Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad

Nice for background only the early years of the Caliphate. However for a book that has a subtitl3 about the sunni-shia split it doesn't fare well. Ends roughly with the rise of the Umayyads.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System

It's basically exactly what it says. It goes through the history of searching for extrasolar planets, the methods used, and the potential future.

Tim should definitely read this book.

[Kleves]

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. George B. McClellan: colossal douche.

[dps]

Man, it's weird reading about fighting raging through towns I've been to and/or traveled through.

Clearly you've never been to continental Europe.

Or Boston, Trenton, Nashville, San Antonio, and too many other places in the US to mention.

[Razgovory]

What were people saying about Hitler and Lenin when they first came to power.  Terrific dancer?  Well manicured little beard?  The type of face you want to carve into every piece of stone and paint on every piece of paper in your country?

[jimmy olsen]

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. George B. McClellan: colossal douche.

That's a great book!

[Josephus]

What were people saying about Hitler and Lenin when they first came to power.  Terrific dancer?  Well manicured little beard?  The type of face you want to carve into every piece of stone and paint on every piece of paper in your country?

Buy Foreign Affairs.  The answer's a little too deep for a Languish sound bite.

[Kleves]

That's a great book!

It is. I had just forgotten how much of a tool McClellan was. And am I the only one who has a hard time disliking Burnside?

[HisMajestyBOB]

What were people saying about Hitler and Lenin when they first came to power.  Terrific dancer?  Well manicured little beard?  The type of face you want to carve into every piece of stone and paint on every piece of paper in your country?

Buy Foreign Affairs.  The answer's a little too deep for a Languish sound bite.

I gotta download that edition on to my kindle.
I'm glad I didn't cancel my subscription.

I also have to start using that 100 years of National Geographic stuff I have. I read a few articles from pre-WWI and during it, but articles during the Russian Revolution would be pretty cool. During WWI is not quite as interesting as you'd expect, though it does make sense - it's hard to talk about the significance of, say, Gallipolli when you don't have hindsight.

[Ideologue]

"Churchill's Master Stroke Promises Swift End to War."

[Razgovory]

It is. I had just forgotten how much of a tool McClellan was. And am I the only one who has a hard time disliking Burnside?

Burnside was a decent guy.  He knew he wasn't competent to run the entire army of the Potomac and to his credit tried to avoid the commission.  He wasn't a totally incompetent solider though, and suffered a lot of bad luck.  He did know his strengths and he probably would have served better as a mid ranking military bureaucrat rather then front line commander.

[FunkMonk]

"Churchill's Master Stroke Promises Swift End to War."

[Josephus]

"New state of Poland created. Will never be taken seriously."