Grand unified books thread

[The Brain]

Today I received The Great War Dawning: Germany and its Army at the start of World War 1, by Buchholz et al, from Verlag Militaria. Looks nice, including some cool facsimile loose diagrams and maps. "This will become the seminal English language book on the German army as it entered World War 1". Hopefully it's as good as it thinks it is.

[grumbler]

Today I received The Great War Dawning: Germany and its Army at the start of World War 1, by Buchholz et al, from Verlag Militaria. Looks nice, including some cool facsimile loose diagrams and maps. "This will become the seminal English language book on the German army as it entered World War 1". Hopefully it's as good as it thinks it is.

Yeah, it's got an obnoxious publisher's description, but the authors likely had nothing to do with writing that.  $97 for 550 pages with no plates and just a couple of fold-out maps is more than I'll pay, but I'll be interested to read your impressions.

Someone's trying to sell it on Abebooks for twice the cover price when it's still available from Amazon at cover price. 

[The Brain]

Today I received The Great War Dawning: Germany and its Army at the start of World War 1, by Buchholz et al, from Verlag Militaria. Looks nice, including some cool facsimile loose diagrams and maps. "This will become the seminal English language book on the German army as it entered World War 1". Hopefully it's as good as it thinks it is.

Yeah, it's got an obnoxious publisher's description, but the authors likely had nothing to do with writing that.  $97 for 550 pages with no plates and just a couple of fold-out maps is more than I'll pay, but I'll be interested to read your impressions.

Someone's trying to sell it on Abebooks for twice the cover price when it's still available from Amazon at cover price. 

There are 80 high quality plates.

[grumbler]

I've been reading a fair bit of Craig Schaefer lately on Kindle Unlimited.  I originally got drawn in by his Revanche Cycle, four books recommended by a friend as "the best dark fantasy since Song of Ice and Fire."  It's very good, if you like your dark fantasy dark, indeed.  I also decided to get one of his Urban Fantasy books, Ghosts of Gotham.  Also very good.  I figured that I was on a roll, so tried another book by him.  Not good.  In fact, it looks from the descriptions that I've read all of his books that I would want to read.  Witches versus werewolves is not my thing.

But I would recommend the five books I named.

[grumbler]

Today I received The Great War Dawning: Germany and its Army at the start of World War 1, by Buchholz et al, from Verlag Militaria. Looks nice, including some cool facsimile loose diagrams and maps. "This will become the seminal English language book on the German army as it entered World War 1". Hopefully it's as good as it thinks it is.

Yeah, it's got an obnoxious publisher's description, but the authors likely had nothing to do with writing that.  $97 for 550 pages with no plates and just a couple of fold-out maps is more than I'll pay, but I'll be interested to read your impressions.

Someone's trying to sell it on Abebooks for twice the cover price when it's still available from Amazon at cover price. 

There are 80 high quality plates.

Ah, then the price is understandable.

[The Brain]

I'm reading The Western Front Companion: The Complete Guide to How the Armies Fought for Four Devastating Years 1914-1918, by Adkin. He's done similiar books on Waterloo and I think others. I like it a lot. It's a very generous book, big format, more than 500 pages, lots of text and images (in color). It describes all the different aspects of war on the Western Front, with focus on the British and shorter descriptions of other forces. It is NOT a history of the Western Front. AFACT it's reasonably factually correct. Since it describes "everything", unless you're a Western Front expert you're bound to learn something about the less famous parts. For instance I learned a lot about mounted cavalry actions post-1914, something that often gets cut from general histories of the war.

[Sheilbh]

Anyone know any good books about revolutionary and republican China?

I've got loads of novels from the period (both European and Chinese) which make it sound really interesting. But would be interested in non-fiction.

[Savonarola]

I've been reading my "Norton Anthology of British Literature" that I got in college.  I recently got to Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queen."  The entire second book was abridged except for the final canto which features The Bower of Bliss.  At the time (the 90s) scholarship was divided on whether The Bower of Bliss represented artifice and fakery; or if it was a critique on the idolatry and lustfulness Spenser saw as endemic in Ireland and the Americas.  I thought that it could be both if Spenser had foreseen Las Vegas.

[Savonarola]

I just came upon "Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe in the Norton Anthology.  Marlowe's major tragedies (Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta) all deal with the theme of men who try to exceed human limits (in knowledge, power and money respectively.)  In Doctor Faustus's case he sells his soul to the devil so that Mephistopheles will be his servant for 24 years, giving him nearly limitless power and he uses that power to do nothing in particular. 

I've never read Goethe's Faust, but I'm led to believe that he's a Byronic hero of the Romantic age; a man who defies all convention to live on his own terms.  Marlowe's Faust is a hero for the Generation X 90's Slacker Age; a man who has limitless power, but choses to do nothing. 

[mongers]

I bought various old maps from a 2nd hand bookshop, does that count for this thread?

After all you can 'read' them, I particularly the older One in to the mile OS maps, just the right scale for my exploring and some don't have contour lines, rather the hills are represented by a semi-3D artistic shading. 

[Maladict]

I bought various old maps from a 2nd hand bookshop, does that count for this thread?

After all you can 'read' them, I particularly the older One in to the mile OS maps, just the right scale for my exploring and some don't have contour lines, rather the hills are represented by a semi-3D artistic shading. 

It would be more of a pamphlet than a book, but sure it counts. It's been a while since I read an atlas cover to cover, but then again I don't finish every book I start either.

[Syt]

I realized something the other day.

I like historical non-fiction books.
I generally like historical drama series and movies (even if not historically accurate).
Same with games.
I like reading literary classics from past periods.

But I don't generally like the idea of reading historic fiction, like novels about ancient Rome or such.

[The Brain]

To me one of the joys of history is that it did happen and isn't made up (disclaimer for messerschmidts: I know that not everything claimed by historians is true).

[Syt]

True, but that doesn't bother me in some media. E.g. I enjoy I, Claudius, though it is quite fictional in its account (e.g. supporting the lie that the Battle of Teutoburg Forest happened ).

[Sheilbh]

I realized something the other day.

I like historical non-fiction books.
I generally like historical drama series and movies (even if not historically accurate).
Same with games.
I like reading literary classics from past periods.

But I don't generally like the idea of reading historic fiction, like novels about ancient Rome or such.

Yeah. I do like some historical fiction but having said that, thinking about it I'm not particularly interested in the Bernard Cornwell sort of novel that is about history - if that makes sense.

I think I'd basically split my historical fiction consumption in two - "literary"/high-brow writers who write the past. So Hilary Mantel (I love A Place of Greater Safety), Mary Renault, Wu Ming/Luther Blissett (Q novels basically), Colm Toibin writing about Henry James, or Alan Hollinghurst writing novels spanning the entire 20th century.

And historical crime fiction The past is just a setting and generally the characters are basically modern - so SJ Sansom, the Falco novels etc. Some are still a little alienating/try to have characters of the past - An Instance of the Fingerpost comes to mind.