Grand unified books thread

[mongers]

Arnhem:The Battle for the Bridges, 1944' by Anthony Beevor, very good for it's narrative history elements.

Can't comment on his conclusions about the strategy and the operational matters, as I've no real knowledge of military matters.

I will say, once again Montgomery is shameful, but perhaps not as duplicitous as Browning and Horrocks is shown in a bad light.

Eisenhower seems a remote, almost disinterested figure, most of the rest of the US generals get a pass, with Gavin's leadership of the 82nd being first class.

edit:
For someone like me, the film 'A Bridge To Far' is a bit of a distraction, hard to read about Urquhart involvement without seeing the heroic Sean Connery or for that matter Anthony Hopkins leading the defence of the northern bridge end enclave.

[The Brain]

Today I received Uniforms and Flags of the Imperial Austrian Army 1683-1720, by Hall and Boeri, and Austria's Wars of Emergence 1683-1797, by Hochedlinger. Nice. I've read Duffy's excellent books on the Austrian army of the Seven Years War, but I've been looking for solid info on the earlier period.

Finished both. The first does what it says on the tin, I have no reason to doubt the colors. The second is a nice description of Austrian administration, diplomacy, military, and wars of the period. I'm not an expert on Austria so cannot say how correct it is, but it seemed plausible.

[Eddie Teach]

Today I received Uniforms and Flags of the Imperial Austrian Army 1683-1720,

You people are weird.

[mongers]

'Bury My Heart At W.H.Smith's' by Brian Aldiss, - an entertaining read about writing, being an author, dealing with publishers, agents and literary events, Some nice details about working in 1950s Oxford bookshops and the eccentrics, academic and others that he encountered there.

Amusing anecdote "Sharing a jacuzzi with Doris Lessing represents the peak of my somewhat obscure literary career."

Nice story about John Betjeman regularly turning up at the bookshop in a battered van to sell boxes of old books to the proprietor, sometimes because he needed a new set of tyres.

[Syt]

A bit further into A New History of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny. It's about 1000 small print pages, divided into 4 parts (Antiquity, Middle Ages, early modern, modern). Each part is two subparts: history of thinkers, and the contents of their works. I think it's an excellent overview of this admittedly broad subject.

But.

While I think it helps get a first overview/summary, it's also incredibly compressed. The second subpart of each part is divided into chapters that summarize one aspect of philosophy of the time. Here's 20 pages about metaphysics, 22 pages on soul and mind, 21 pages about epistemology, 20 pages about physics, 23 pages about ethics, 19 pages about logic ... you get the idea. It feels incredible dense to cram e.g. the thoughts about the soul from pre-Socratics to Augustine into 20-odd pages. For the most part it makes me rather want to pick up the original texts plus commentaries (and yes, a bunch of them are on their way courtesy of Amazon).

I'm not sure if I will finish the book at this point (it doesn't help that I'm still working my way through Philosophize This which provides a similar overview, but more conversationally and accessibly. I might instead use its extensive bibliography and lists of recommended books from the appendix as a guide.

[Sheilbh]

Might give it a go. The only similar book I've read is Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy which is great - he has a real voice and biases which I like though I am aware it has a lot of issues especially around pre-modern thinkers.

Separately it love In Our Time on Radio 4 but it might be worth having a look at their back catalogue on philosophy:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01f0vzr
Because if there's a concept or philosopher that you think is worth expanding on this might give a little bit of background/detail?

[Syt]

To be fair, in the introduction he writes that he's conceptualized the book so that people can pick the parts they want from it, so only the history of philosophers, or only the ideas, or a mix etc.

I'm still in the "soaking it all up" phase, though I tend to veer towards ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy at the moment.

[Zanza]

My nephew has started reading comics a lot recently.  Stuff like Asterix or Lucky Luke. Next on the list is Prince Valiant. I own a really beautiful digitally remastered print edition and have started reading that again. 

[Syt]

I recall there was a rerelease of it not long ago?

I did pick up the box collection of Gaiman's Sandman comics last year and am still reading my way through it.

[Zanza]

I recall there was a rerelease of it not long ago?

https://www.bocola.de/eisenherz.html

[The Brain]

Finished The Lion From The North: The Swedish Army During The Thirty Years War, by von Essen, 2 volumes. A good modern overview. The first volume covers the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, and the second the post-1632 Swedish army. The second volume also briefly describes the navy, and the Swedish military in North America and Africa.

[Admiral Yi]

When was the Swedish military in Africa?

[Syt]

When was the Swedish military in Africa?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Gold_Coast ?

[Admiral Yi]

Huh.

as in, I had never heard of that.

[Razgovory]

Finished SPQR.  Frankly I was expecting more given all the hype.  Decent book and it did fill in a lot of knowledge gaps about early Rome.

They say that SPQR means the "Senate and Roman people", but that's just a lie that classicalists propagate to cover up the existence of the secret masters. If you study Latin you learn that it actually means "Sporker".  Like Big Tech, Big Spork has terrifying power.  They run pretty much every cafeteria in the world, including the cafeteria in the US capitol.  It is history's biggest secret.