Looking For Books on Various Subjects

[Valmy]

This is fair, actually.  Given the near-total dearth of literature on Sassanian and Parthian Persia, I presumed that the literature on the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was similarly limited.  Seems that was flawed. 

I've seen a lot of books on Alexander's campaign, but few on Bactria before. Now I'm getting two for my birthday, I think.

The Parthians left behind almost no written documents, I believe, so all we know of them comes from Romans and Indians. 

A dearth of information on the Sassanids is more puzzling.

[Valmy]

I always wanted to find a good book on Cortez and the fall of the Aztecs.  Everything I find is about how evil Europeans crushed a beautiful native culture.  Bleh.

It's not like Cortez has a great deal of stuff in his favor.

It is still rather lazy to make him and the Spanish 2-dimensional.  It is not like they built the first ever empire built on blood and steel.  Heck Spain itself had been conquered by a few of them.

I rarely see books about Julius Caesar so intellectually lazy.

[Razgovory]

I have a question for Spellus.  Well anyone can answer, but I thought he might know.  What exactly is a "clay nail".  I've read about things written on clay nails but I'm not sure exactly what they are.

[Norgy]

The clay nails were apparently embedded into walls of structures and were inscribed to attest to their foundation and to what deity the structure belonged to. It was a Sumerian practice and also used by the Egyptians in some form. 

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/i4i/photos/nail.html

[alfred russel]

I'm reading a book on Elam

Name?  Any good?

It is actually a textbook: the archeology of elam. 

That is the only book I could find on the topic. It is good for what it is.

Raz, I haven't made it that far into the book, which is arranged chronologically, and I haven't made it into the period where a full writing system was developed. But with the proto writing system in Susa, the view seems to be that Susa not so separate from Sumerian culture. But I think things may be different in later periods, as their culture was differentiated by migrations/conquest of Susa from the Iranian plateau.