The Austrian-Hungarian Empire (most esp. the last days of)
Yeahsure wrote:"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara.
Possibly the best historically-based novel on the Gettysburg battle I've ever read.
Yeahsure wrote:"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara.
Possibly the best historically-based novel on the Gettysburg battle I've ever read.
buffybot_in_beirut wrote:Addendum... How could I have forgotten...
All books by Ryszard Kapuscinski. My personal favourite is one of his lesser known works, Another Day of Life, which is back in print, re-published in 2001 (though written in 1976).
buffybot_in_beirut wrote:I had a love-hate relationship with history in high school. Loved the subject, but hated the teachers and syllabus for their view that only stuff that happened at least 100 (and preferably 1000) years ago is "history." If I want to know what happened yesterday, I read the newspaper. If I want to know what happened a week ago, I study history.
So I have a strong preference for contemporary history books, ideally ones that are enjoyable and "easy" to read, mix in a fair bit of good journalism, and border on travel literature.
I am a few thousand miles away from my bookshelf at home, but some titles that I remember include:
Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Rajiv Chandrasekaran)
Easy read, chapters of varying quality, good for some (sad) laughts - Iraq is depressing enough.
Penta wrote:As was he, of course. :) He might have seen different things, had different perspective.
mapandcompass wrote:I've been reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia to ye Peter O'Toole fans) and it has been really truly excellent. I've plowed through ~350 pages in the last 4 days. Some highlights:
- Shooting Turks
- Dehydration
- Executions by pistol
- Camel riding
- Malnutrition
- Blowing up trains
- Climbing in and out of broken wells
- Dysentary
- Boils
Caliban wrote:An excellent choice. I have a number of books by and about him.I recommend "TE Lawrence by his friends". Puts the man into the perspective of his time.
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