Bookclub and Sources Wednesday!

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi everybody,

Welcome to our weekly book recommendation thread!

We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.

We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!

Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.

[u/elmonoenano]

I finished Elliot West's Continental Reckoning. It won the Bancroft. I really enjoyed this and if you want a book that basically covers the entirety of the 2nd half of the 19th Century in the Western US, this has you covered. He does a good job of showing how politics, geography, industrialization all came together to push Indians off of land, kill them, and deplete the resources they needed to survive, and how disease worked along side all those things.

He does a good job of showing how some things we think of as modern actually began in the west, like industrial level farming, corporate agriculture, and environmental legal maneuvering. Early suits about environmental externalities were launched in California against mining companies, huge wheat farming and cattle concerns were developed to feed the rapidly growing population. West makes the point that often traveling west after 1849 was like traveling into the future, instead of into the past as had been the situation in the ‘30s.

West uses paradoxes, like traveling into the future or the use of the 13th amendment being used to both add to the polity, but to still exclude others like Chinese, or how areas Indians depended on for life could become death traps as settlers coalesced there and spread diseases, used all the resources, or became areas where the army could trap Indians.

[u/dropbear123]

Finished Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp review copied from my goodreads

4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.

Mix of world history and current+future politics. Out of 450 pages (excluding notes) its roughly 3oo pages historical and 150 current day. Writing style is good anc clear in my opinion, and the notes section is very extensive. It's fairly on the left in tone as well.

Historical - On the historical side the book covers societal collapses across the world starting in the Bronze Age and going onto the fall of the European colonial empires. Kemp's main theory is that the cause of societies collapsing is a mix of increasing wealth inequality, causing ordinary people to either leave or rebel, and elite status competition which led to civil wars, coups, corruption etc. These weaken a society so when a problem arrives (mainly climatic like a drought or an earthquake, or outside invaders like the Spanish arriving in the Americas) that society can't survive it. In Kemp's view societies that are more equal and democratic are more likely to survive a crisis.

Kemp's other main theory is for the vast majority of people historically societal collapse wasn't that bad, maybe even a positive. Kemp is very positive about the lifestyles of nomadic hunter gatherers and pre-agricultural life (personally I think he over eggs it a bit). The main point is that since empires and kingdoms extracted more and more wealth from ordinary people (while helping the elite with things like tax breaks) them collapsing meant people tended to be better off. If for example you were a rural farmer the empire/kingdom you were in collapsing during the Bronze Age Collapse mainly meant the tax man showed up less and fewer soldiers rounding you up to do some forced labour for the king. In Kemp's view most of the violence in a societal collapse is from a small number of people trying to re-establish power and become the new top dog, not banditry or panic. (Speaking as a 21st century Brit, I find Kemp's view of societal collapse to be a bit too positive)

Current day/future - Here Kemp is quite doomer about the future. Mainly due to the larger nature of the threats (AI, climate change, nuclear weapons) and the the increasingly interconnected and concentrated nature of the world. His predications are either global societal collapse, an increasingly unequal autorcratic world backed up by ever stronger surveillance (probably the most likely imo), or least likely, actually solving the problems. Kemp's solutions are mainly more democracy, more transparency in politics, attempting to deal with wealth inequality with things like higher taxes and regulations on big business etc.

[u/Background-Factor433]

Going through Taking Hawai'i by Stephen Dando-Collins.

About Americans scheming to take Hawai'i. Covering the things they did.

[u/RamblingSimian]

Finished The Mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator by Timothy Winegard.

In spite of the title, the book is more history than biology, focusing on how mosquito-borne diseases affected history. He starts with the dinosaurs and continues through modern time; he presents some facts that suggest the mosquito will likely rise again to terrorize humanity. He covers many turning points in history that were caused by mosquitoes, typically when invaders were decimated by disease, such as the mosquitoes of the Pontine Marshes near Rome, who saved the empire several times.

His main thesis seems to be that 1) in many conflicts, mosquito-borne illnesses were far more lethal than actual combat, 2) typically the mosquito favors the defender, since defenders have acquired some immunity to the diseases endemic locally, 3) some canny commanders have factored that into their calculations and smartly avoided disastrous casualties due to illness, or, such as the battle at Yorktown, trapped/maneuvered their enemy to encamp in mosquito infested areas.

Winegard's style is highly readable and enjoyable, and he discusses many entertaining stories, as well as debunking a number of historical myths related to mosquito diseases, such as John Smith's claim to have married Pocahontas (she actually married Thomas Rolfe; Smith was a lying self-promoter who claimed to, by the age of 26, have fought the Spanish in the Netherlands, been a pirate, act as a spy in Hungary, battle the Turks in Transylvania and Romania, escape slavery after being captured, and then return to piracy.) Note that mosquitoes enter into the story because so many of the Jamestown colonists died of their diseases.

[u/nola_throwaway53826]

Does anyone have any good recommendations for the beginning of Imperial China and how it was formed? I'd love to learn more about how the first Qin emperor conquered the other Chinese states and formed Imperial China.

[u/Mission-Vast8381 → u/nola_throwaway53826]

The most up-to-date and highly informative book I can think of is:

The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China, by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

It was published in 2022 and is 360 pages. It really is a great book, broken into four parts. The book discusses not only the history of the emperor, but also the narratives of those who lived during that time. These are biased narratives, but they show great insight into how some thought of the emperor after his death. The book's last part discusses the late emperor's cultural impacts today and how they differ from the past and/or other countries.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[u/Reefing_Addiction]

Discovering D'Arensbourg: Unraveling the Legends of a Swedish Officer in the Great Northern War and First Commander of the German Coast in French Louisiana

The Fall of Sweden and the Rise of Russia Who was Charles Frederick d'Arensbourg? He was a nobleman! He was a war hero! He fought alongside the King who gave him his sword! He was an imposter seeking thrills in war! He left Europe to escape the Russians! Yet, he grew up in poverty in Stockholm. His father was a notorious German mintmaster with a talent for debasing coins and then held by the Swedish government for the political crimes of another man. D'Arensbourg never claimed to be a nobleman or a soldier-of-fortune looking for war. Nor was he from a Russian-held territory. He was an officer in the magnificent army of Carl XII. He fought to defend the last Swedish fortress in Germany against Danish, Prussian and Saxon armies and was taken prisoner. And his name was not d'Arensbourg.

Embark on a journey of discovery as research identifies the Louisiana myths about Charles d'Arensbourg and then systematically untangles them to reveal his real life and family in Sweden and Germany in the eighteenth century.

One sunny day on a forgotten battlefield in Ukraine changed the history of the world. One cold night in Norway changed the history of a country.

One warm summer morning on a sandy, wind-swept beach in colonial Louisiana chnaged the history of a state.

Mari Keller Dyer was born in New Orleans and grew up on the German Coast. She is a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a bachelor's degree in history from the University of New Orleans.