Grand unified books thread

[Oexmelin]

Written by Eric Schnakenbourg.

And today, I just found out we will be presenting on the same panel at a conference next year...

[The Brain]

Written by Eric Schnakenbourg.

And today, I just found out we will be presenting on the same panel at a conference next year...

Say hi from me.

[grumbler]

I did a kind of "30 years later" reading of Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution and was rather surprised by how much i had forgotten or misremembered from my original reading of it.  It is still a great book, though no longer, perhaps, at the forefront of research on the topic.

Schama's conviction that the revolution was unnecessary (not just the terror; the revolution itself) permeates the book, and leaves me unconvinced, but his  level of detail, and the unwinding of various stories is top-notch.  I had forgotten, for instance, that the whole "four generations of nobility" decree for the french army officers (less the technical branches like artillery) was essentially a jobs program for the poor country nobles being pushed out of power and jobs everywhere else in the Ancien Regime.  I had also forgotten the masterful way he told the story, so that the reader is constantly left with the feeling that things could still turn out okay, even knowing what was to come.

If there is a major fault in the book, it is that he does not make chronology clear (despite the title).  He skips around the life, death, and undeath of Mirabeau pretty willy-nilly, until the reader doesn't understand that Mirabeau designed his policies for the time, and not the time for his policies.

Anyway, I think it is a great read for anyone interested in the topic, provided that they set aside the time to read a 1,000 page book.

[Oexmelin]

Yes, it's not really a chronicle.

If you want a perspective from someone much more interested in social history (and with different politics from Schama), you can grab Peter McPhee's Liberty or Death. It's follows chronology a lot more - and has the benefit of encompassing most of the recent research. 

Of Schama, I prefer the Embarassment of Riches and Dead Certainties.

[The Brain]

Finished Russell's A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics & Pagans, minus the part about modern witchcraft which doesn't interest me. Fairly OK short book, but it's more about witch trials and witch persecutions than actual witchcraft. I understand that the sources are what they are, but IMHO he should have delved deeper into evidence left by actual practices. Even if traditional folk magic isn't considered witchcraft in this sense (which isn't unreasonable), in a world where witchcraft is thought of as real by a large part of the population surely a number of people were inspired to try it out.

[Razgovory]

You could try Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages.

[Malthus]

Just finished The Three Body Problem, a hard science fiction trilogy by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin.

I really enjoyed it - it's classic mind bending hard science fiction. It won the Hugo in 2015.

The work reminded me a lot of the novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapelton.

Now, the series has its problems. The characters are paper-thin and the plot has more holes than a colander. If that bothers you, you won't enjoy the series.

On the other hand, if you can get past that - it has tons of iconic science fiction concepts sure to be referenced in the years to come (the "Dark Forest" notion for example, as a complete answer to the Fermi paradox).

[The Brain]

Just finished The Three Body Problem,

I think I've seen the movie.

[Syt]

Is there a recommended book about the battle of Guadalcanal?

[Habbaku]

Reading Simon Winder's latest, Lotharingia, which follows his Germania and Danubia. Has all the goofball anecdotes so far (~100 pages) that one would expect of such a history-rich area of the world. So far, my favorite is the random location--a la Richard III--of various king's tombs buried under random things.

[crazy canuck]

Reading Simon Winder's latest, Lotharingia, which follows his Germania and Danubia. Has all the goofball anecdotes so far (~100 pages) that one would expect of such a history-rich area of the world. So far, my favorite is the random location--a la Richard III--of various king's tombs buried under random things.

I was thinking about starting that series of books - do they come with the Habbs seal of approval?

[Habbaku]

They 100% do. I will warn, of course, that they are not proper histories, per se, but are a pedant's delight. If you want a heap of narratively strung-together anecdotes, fun turns of phrase, excellent humor, and a properly English appreciation for everything non-English (he's even got a soft spot for the Habsburgs), you will have a tough time selecting for a better series.

At the same time as providing the above, he also knows when to get serious, when to point out just how melancholic some of the history of the areas he researches truly is, but never dwells too long on the tragedy of it all lest the sadness drag the entire book down.

[crazy canuck]

Excellent, thank you.  Just the thing I am looking for.   

[grumbler]

Is there a recommended book about the battle of Guadalcanal?

Obviously, Guadalcanal Diary.  Well-written first-person stuff. 

The War with Japan : The Period of Balance, May 1942-October 1943 by H.P. Willmott is THE analytical (vice descriptive) high-level look at Guadalcanal and how it fit into US and Japanese strategies during the length of the campaign.

Richard Frank's Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle is kinda long in the tooth but the best descriptive account, I think.

James Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal doesn't doesn't cover the Japanese very much but has a lot of rich detail about the USN and how and why it fought the naval battles off Guadalcanal the way it did.  This is a much better book than his earlier, less intellectually rigorous books.

[Syt]

Thanks.