Grand unified books thread

[mongers]

Mainly for Oex, but my aunt got me a very belated Amazon gift card and this is what came in the mail today:

Malthus's aunt also got a gift today.

[Sheilbh]

Anyone know any decent books about India before the British?

[Malthus]

Anyone know any decent books about India before the British?

No, but I wish I did. Sadly, from what little I've seen, histories of India prior to colonialism are scarce and tend to be textbook-y.

[The Brain]

Anyone know any decent books about India before the British?

No but shout if you find one.

[The Brain]

Anyone know any good book on supply in WW2? How different countries supplied their troops and stuff? Similarities and differences in methods, priorities, volumes?

[garbon]

I liked The Mughal Throne by Abraham Eraly though it has been several years since I read it. Covers 1525-1707.

[jimmy olsen]

Truly the past is a different country.

This story comes from one of the French fabliaux of the late twelfth century.

A fisherman has married a young wife, whom he satisfies sexually, in the words of the poem:   A young and well-fed healthy wife Wants frequent fucking all her life.  

She claims that she loves him because he supports her and buys her things; he says it's only for the sake of sex.  

 
... I earn Your love by working for your pleasure. Never for finery or treasure Do women love their lords the way They do for screwing's what I say.   (Note how different this is from a contemporary scenario, in which a wife would be much more likely to protest that she loves her husband for the great sex, while he would accuse her of wanting him only as a meal ticket.)

The fisherman finds a dead body in the water one day – a priest who had drowned while escaping from a jealous husband – and decides to test his wife. He cuts off the penis and takes it to his wife, claiming that it is his, cut off when he was attacked by three knights.

She immediately says to him:   God shorten all your days on earth. I hate you. Now your body's worth Nothing. ...

  She makes ready to leave the house, but he calls her back and tells her God has miraculously restored him. She says:   Today you frightened me no end. I never had such a fright before,   while embracing him, and holding his penis, just to be sure.14

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (Kindle Locations 456-458). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

[Savonarola]

I came across one of my dad's old textbooks, English Political Thought in the 19^th Century by C Brinton.  My father was a history major (which is one of the major reasons I have a degree in electrical engineering .)  The book was first published in 1932 and was still regarded as a standard treatise on the subject in the late 60s (it's out of print today).  It goes through and provides a mini-biography and overview of the writings of each thinker.  The thinkers range from rabble rousers like Cobbett, to statesman like Disraeli, to philosophers like Bentham and Mill to wild cards like Newman () and Coleridge.  Curiously there's almost no mention of the empire; James Kidd is presented as its only proponent.  (In the preface the author laments not including Kipling as a representative of the Imperial point of view.  (He also laments being critical of the relationship between Harriett Taylor and John Stuart Mill; even though he still can't find anything likable in Taylor.))  The other thing I found curious is that how many of the thinkers were influenced by religion (even Mill wrote a book on metaphysics); finding justification for such divergent views as laissez-faire capitalism and Christian socialism in their faiths.

With the publications of Darwin some eugenics slipped into thought of the period.  The most amusing view I found (I forget the thinker who was influenced by this) is that the Teutonic peoples were superior to the Latin people of the Mediterranean, which is why they had conquered the Roman empire.  The most purely Teutonic (and therefore the best) people were, of course, the English.  However this Teutonic superiority not universal for the Franks were every bit as degenerate and weak as the people they conquered (suck it frogs  ).

[The Minsky Moment]

Truly the past is a different country.

The French medieval countryside was not known for its variety of entertainment and shopping options.
Got to have some way to pass the time.

[Gups]

Anyone know any decent books about India before the British?

City of Djinns by Dalrymple is very good, part travel book part history (of Delhi)

John Keays has done a reasonable one volume history of India

Obviously both cover pre and post British rule

There was a well-received book on Ashoka a few years ago.

[The Minsky Moment]

I read the Keay book - spreads itself very thin covering so much ground but worked quite nicely for someone (like me) with very little prior knowledge.

[Valmy]

It is probably indicative of some kind of mental illness that even now, 10 years after I started doing it, I still find myself checking George RR Martin's Not A Blog everyday just to see. Something that has only born fruit once in all this time.

[CountDeMoney]

Truly the past is a different country.

Most verily, 'tis true; it is but a numbering clock.  Assmunch.

[Ed Anger]

It is probably indicative of some kind of mental illness that even now, 10 years after I started doing it, I still find myself checking George RR Martin's Not A Blog everyday just to see. Something that has only born fruit once in all this time.

Sucker

[Valmy]

Sucker

I know.