So, What Do You Get Out Of History ?

[Syt]

[Eddie Teach]

You are constantly misspelling "than" as "then".

He frequently leaves out prepositions or other short words too. That's a lot more confusing IMO.

[FunkMonk]

Whats the problem than?

[Valmy]

The words of old white men.

Enough about listening to your Grandpa.  What do you get out of History?

[garbon]

The words of old white men.

Enough about listening to your Grandpa.  What do you get out of History?

My grandfathers are dead.

[Razgovory]

I think you took that to literally, Yi.

What gave it away? 

Saying someone is dumber then Marty is like saying someone is "as dumb as a stump".  It's a figure of speech.  A hyperbole.  It's physically impossible to be that dumb.

It makes you look bad when you make spelling errors in the post in which you call someone dumb.

And nobody cares.

[The Minsky Moment]

Speaking of which, the Romans vs. Barbarians thread and my reading of wikipedia entries about the fall of Rome made me realise that (1) I am largely ignorant of the period (in Polish history education, this is covered by essentially mentioning the year of abdication of Romulus Augustulus and that this is the beginning of middle ages. End of story) and (2) this was a very interesting period. So could anyone recommend a good book on that?

I reviewed a half dozen or so a few years back but that post might have been lost in one of the crashes.
I'm a fan of Walter Goffart: "Barbarians and Romans" has a narrow inquiry - the nature of the property settlements in the transition to Barbarian rule, but it is a true classic work of history and should appeal to a lawyer.  His broader history of the period, Barbarian Tides, has some organizational issues, but there is a lot of useful stuff in there.  I also liked Julia Smith's Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, but it is more social and cultural history, and I would skim quickly over the jargon-filled introduction.  Chris Wickam, Peter Heather, and Patrick Geary have written quite a bit on this period and you can learn quite a bit from their works.  Bryan Ward-Perkins is a counter-revisionist (i.e. hard fall of Rome) - his "Fall of Rome" analyzes the massive decline in material culture and is well argued.   Peter Brown and Judith Herrin have books covering the role of early Christianity. 

[mongers]

Speaking of which, the Romans vs. Barbarians thread and my reading of wikipedia entries about the fall of Rome made me realise that (1) I am largely ignorant of the period (in Polish history education, this is covered by essentially mentioning the year of abdication of Romulus Augustulus and that this is the beginning of middle ages. End of story) and (2) this was a very interesting period. So could anyone recommend a good book on that?

I reviewed a half dozen or so a few years back but that post might have been lost in one of the crashes.
I'm a fan of Walter Goffart: "Barbarians and Romans" has a narrow inquiry - the nature of the property settlements in the transition to Barbarian rule, but it is a true classic work of history and should appeal to a lawyer.  His broader history of the period, Barbarian Tides, has some organizational issues, but there is a lot of useful stuff in there.  I also liked Julia Smith's Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, but it is more social and cultural history, and I would skim quickly over the jargon-filled introduction.  Chris Wickam, Peter Heather, and Patrick Geary have written quite a bit on this period and you can learn quite a bit from their works.  Bryan Ward-Perkins is a counter-revisionist (i.e. hard fall of Rome) - his "Fall of Rome" analyzes the massive decline in material culture and is well argued.   Peter Brown and Judith Herrin have books covering the role of early Christianity.

It wasn't so long ago, somewhere in this thread:
http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,1521.msg70654.html#msg70654