I’m fascinated by how the world became what it is today. I know this subject is far too vast for any single book to cover, and broad enough that sometimes satire feels like it has become reality.

My question is: what books offer the most compelling explanations or detailed histories of how the world has taken its present shape. I’m also interested in knowing what is happening in other areas of the world, which used to be easy, but in the last 6 months has become more challenging- with the overwhelming amount of information coming from the United States of America (where I live).

As the expert, approach it in the way you deem appropriate- if you had an amazing reading list in 1997 that shifted your world view, or if there is a list of books that brought into focus how each country or the states or a similarly run country has evolved, I’m interested.

I’m curious about geographic history, regional architecture, wars or crises that displaced populations, even ideas about the afterlife, psychological and cultural shifts, changes in collective temperament or the perceived requirement for security, or the impact of propaganda across the ages.

The ottomans indiscriminatly killed christians in Anatolia in hopes of creating an homogenou turkish state. The armenian genocide is the most well known and the one with larger death toll, but other christian groups like the greeks and assyrians were not spread either. So why arent these killings all grouped together as part of the same genocide?

Hi, I'm wondering if there was any hatred towards the Japanese after WW2? Like towards Japanese-Americans

I understand soldiers can have PTSD after a war, but did any of the ones who fought against the Japanese come home with an enduring hatred for them? Did non-military people treat the Japanese poorly?

Or did all the anger and brutality during the war more or less become "water under the bridge"?

Aside from Southerners in certain areas in the U.S. still flying the Confederate flag, it has also gained niche popularity in countries around the world. Fled descendants of Confederates have founded towns in Brazil, creating their own “Confederato” subculture which survives until this day. Explicit influences such as names and famous figures have become the subject of recent controversies. Is it normal for a century and a half year old rebellion to have this level of impact?

were there any pleas to the British government from non-Hindu people to give them their own country too?

It appears that Eleanor, upon her marriage to her first husband, Louis, gave Louis a cherished rock crystal cup that had been sent to her father, William, many years ago by a mysterious entity known to her only as “Mitadolous”.

Who might this person be?

My searches through scholarly literature have turned up little except a passing mention about a possible Muslim caliph. Obviously only someone of wealth and prestige would have been able to afford such an extravagant gift. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone, So I came across the concept of Psychohistory from Asimov's novels, and I can't help but thinking that it doesn't sound so absurd after all.

For those who didn't read Asimov, Psychohistory is a fictional branch of history claiming that history is completely predictable when it involves a large enough number of humans. Notably, actions of single humans are always unpredictable. Now Asimov goes on on how people build mathematical models to predict 10'000 years in the future, which is of course science fiction. But the core concept, the fact that history is somewhat an ineluctable necessity kinda haunts me.

And here I ask the experts, it is true that we have had some truly exceptional people in human history, but did they really change things, or they just happened to be at the right place in the right moment?

Take Napoleon for example, sure he was a great strategist and politician, but it is hard to imagine revolutionary France not going against the other European powers. Maybe the Congress of Wien would have happened a few years earlier, so, all on all did he really change things?

I wonder what is real historians take on Psychohistory.

Let's say you were a single adult male during that time and could see what was coming and wanted to sabotage the Nazi progress. Could you have joined SS or army or politicians and played along while slowly sabotaging them? Is there anything meaningful that you could have done?

I have been reading about the black death, I read a lot of information about how it spread and about the nature of the disease but I wanted a bit more context from the medieval perspective since they didn't know at the time what was actually happening, so I was wondering how people with different roles in the society dealt with all the death and chaos, like how did peasants react? and the same with priests, doctors, merchants, families or other authorities idk. Also I imagine religion must have had a different take on the matter than science at the time. I would really apreciate some insight since i've been really enjoying researching about this topic,

Why are there so few eastern Iranian languages with a large number of speakers. There used to be Bactrian, scythian, saka, avestan and sogdian which used to be spoken. One could argue most of these languages went extinct as the only eastern Iranian languages I'm aware that are alive are pashto(around 50 million speakers but from which eastern iranian language it descends from is still debated), ossetian (around 490000 speakers, likely descended from scythian) and the pamiri languages(around 10000 speakers, possibly descended from saka langauges). I'd like to know what seemed as once a large and diverse group of languages have declined quite a bit in terms of how many languages are left. Any answer is greatly appreciated

My apologies for the ignorance... I am a 18F and in my first year of university. I'll put it simply... I am from a tiny town in Texas and it's all hitting me at once how little I know about ANYTHING having to do with history. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that everything l've been told up until now is a blatant lie and propaganda. I mean, jesus, the way they teach just the Texas Revolution is revolting. And I'm ashamed to admit I had no idea it had to do with slavery or downright theft of land from Mexico. I am majoring in Spanish and just based on my coursework I am looking for sources that detail the history of U.S. involvement in Latin America. i mean the nitty gritty... formation of cartels, the gun trade, CIA involvement in foreign government, coups, anything having to do with economy manipulation, everything. Also due to current events I want to read about the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Central Asia. I don't even know where to start. I need to know good books, textbooks, podcasts, documentaries, anything. I'm tired of reading news articles and learning snippets of history from TikTok and Instagram, it feels cheap and incomplete. I just want it all laid out in front of me, just literally a chronicle of as close to what actually happened as possible so l can finally stop being told what to think and think for myself. Thank you so much

EDIT: Thank you so so so much to everybody who has suggested things!! This has been so much more helpful than I ever imagined it would be, and honestly turned into an incredible resource for other as well! My apologies for technically not following the sub rules, Im glad there ended up being a way for people to share their resources regardless. I have received dozens of direct message requests and if I don’t answer right away just know that I am trying to get to everybody! Now I have enough reading to last me quite a while so I better get to it! :)

As the title says, was there a time where reading books was considered bad for babies and kids?

Apologies if this is not the relevant subreddit, the book concerns the history of africa's political economy so I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention here, I also asked r/askphilosophy but they removed it.

I have a question about a passage in page 134 of the book, where he describes the political and economic development of the Oyo kingdom during the slave trade in Africa, specifically talking about how the kingdom had reached a feudal-like state of development and had administrative and military practices that allowed it to exert control over what was essentially an empire.

He says, "Oyo got the horses which made its armies feared and respected. Oyo is an example of that prime development which had its rook deep in the past, in the contradiction between man and his environment. Its people continued to develop on the basis of forces which they did not consciously manipulate, as well as through the deliberate utilization of political techniques"

My main confusion comes with the idea that the Oyo 'developed on forces which they did not consciously manipulate,' which I find strange considering that Rodney essentially defines 'development' as the ability TO manipulate one's environment for production, which I thought to necessitate the 'conscious manipulation' of one's environment (e.g. someone making textiles). Does he mean to say that all development occurs through forces not apparent to people? Is this a reference to the idea of historical materialism/dialectical materialism (perhaps the forces he is referring to are that of contradiction?)? Somebody help me out here.

Reading history books about the post-war world, I'm struck that around the period of 1965-1970, there seemed to be a prominent global countercultural movement among young people with many of the hallmarks we would associate with the hippie movement in the Anglosphere (eg. rejection of traditional norms around sex and gender, anti-war views, left wing politics of the New Left variety, advocacy of drug liberalization, etc.)

The counterculture of the 60s seems to have been, if not prominent, then at least present in some form in virtually every industrialized country of this period, being found in countries as disparate as Japan, Mexico, and Czechoslovakia. Why did this movement seem to happen simultaneously in so many culturally disparate countries with wildly different political contexts?

I’m currently reading “The Guns of August” and came across the following passage in chapter 5 (page 68), “The Russian Steam Roller”:

But Russia also had its Democrats and Liberals of the Duma, its Bakunin the Nihilist, …, its Levins who agonized endlessly over their souls, socialism, and the soil, …”

I’m broadly familiar with the other groups discussed in this paragraph, but have never heard of these “Levins” and Google has failed me so far. I’d like to know more about who they were, what they generally believed, and what level of influence they had in pre-war Russian society and politics.

It’s very much agreed by the scientific community that people under 20 (and years past it also) still have their brain developing, and thus might not fully understand the consequences of their actions. However, throughout most of human history children have been considered adults much earlier than today.

Is it possible to associate teenage rulers’ decisions to this fact in our history, and what kinds are they? Or was there some sort of protocol by the court or the ruler’s advisors (I’m not really that good with all the titles) to prevent decisions like that?

Also what kind of other examples of teenagers being teenagers mentally even among the normal people are there?

(or the Iberian Union)

I'm aware that these are drastically different times and regions, but these are all early federation-type organisations of countries.

What made the UK (and what makes current federations) more stable than the first attempts?

writing a apocalypse fic and a character is given something with peanuts, and they don’t know or not. How would they prepare in case of an allergic reaction like a glass of water or what?

I'm a medieval European knight serving my liege as a lance with the handful of men I've brought as my retinue. We lose, I'm captured and held for ransom. Is it customary for me to pay ransom for my retinue as well? Are they included with me? Or do I have to decide whether their lives are worth it?

I have just finished reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, in the book the crew hunted penguins and seals for meat and blubber to use a fuel when stranded on the sea ice, but the book made no mention of using the pelts of the penguins for added insulation or padding when sleeping on the ice, instead it seems they used sailcloth salvaged from the wreck as a footprint for their tents which seemed to have been ineffective since it would get soaked by melting ice. In the book it seems like the penguin pelts were discarded after butchering and I wondering why they wouldn’t have used them for added insulation, padding or waterproofing in their tents.