#217 - Andrew M. Riggsby - Caesar in Gaul and Rome

Author or Editor: Andrew M. Riggsby
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0-292-71303-7
Pages: 271
Size: 2,66MB

This book is a study of what is—in many senses—an already well-known historical event: Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, or Gallic War.1 To think of texts as events is certainly in line with various historicist tendencies in the field of Classics in general, but it is also an approach that has come to be seen as particularly appropriate to this work.2 For one thing, the direct evidence for De Bello Gallico is incomparably better than that for the Gallic War fought in the 50’s b.c.3 We have the former actually before us (though not its prior composition nor its subsequent circulation). Slightly less obviously, however, we have much better controls for the War than for the War.

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#216 - David Christian - Maps of Time

Author or Editor: David Christian
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0-520-90163-0
Pages: 642
Size: 31,3MB

Maps of Time unites natural history and human history in a single, grand, and intelligible narrative. This is a great achievement, analogous to the way in which Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century united the heavens and the earth under uniform laws of motion; it is even more closely comparable to Darwin's nineteenth-century achievement of uniting the human species and other forms of life within a single evolutionary process.

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#211 - Thomas L.Friedman - The World Is Flat

Author or Editor: Thomas L.Friedman
Publisher: Farrar
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0 374 29288 4
Pages: 332
Size: 1,64MB

Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that anyone has gone.

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#204 - Robert Niemi - History in the Media: Film and Television

Author or Editor: Robert Niemi
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2006
Pages: 501
Size: 4,3MB

From 1981 to 2005, thirteen of the twenty-five Oscar winners for Best Picture have been movies based in history. Over the same period, 32 of the 100 films nominated for Best Picture have had their basis in historical events. Both statistics testify to the continuing power and prestige of history as source material in the film business. Likewise, when members of a viewing audience see the familiar phrase, “based on a true story,” flash on the screen during the opening credit sequence, they tend to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the movie they are about to watch will deliver more significance than a pure fiction and will therefore require a heightened level of attentive engagement and respect. The irony is rich: in a constantly accelerating culture of consumption that fosters short attention spans and shorter memories, historical subject matter somehow continues to hold strong sway over filmmakers and moviegoers.

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#179 - Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel

Author or Editor: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Norton
Published: 1997
Pages: 480
Size: 3.51MB

THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren't; as you will see, the answers to the question don't involve human racial differences at all. The book's emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as possible.

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#171 - David Raub Snyder - Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht

Author or Editor: David Raub Snyder
Publisher: University of Nebraska
Published: 2007
Pages: 288
Size: 0.95MB

With few exceptions, scholars have portrayed National Socialist Germany’s military judiciary (Wehrmachtjustiz) as a monolithic entity, an organization that must be wholly condemned or wholly praised. The apologists, led by former Wehrmacht jurist Erich Schwinge, depict Nazi Germany’s military judiciary as a haven for non-Nazi jurists and even as a center of resistance to Adolf Hitler

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#89 - Peter N. Stearns - Western Civilization in World History

Author or Editor: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003
Pages: 138

This is a book about Western civilization and how to fit it into thinking about world history. During the past 15 years American educators, and sometimes the general public, have been treated to vigorous debates about the merits of teaching Western civ versus those involved in the newer subject of world history. The debates continue today, as we will briefly detail below. Typically, they proceed in an either–or fashion: one must either be devoted to the special virtues of Western civilization or one must embrace the world history vision, and there is not much in between. Correspondingly, we lack materials that would help students in a Western civ class think about a world history framework, or those in world history to spend just a moment on issues specific to Western civ. This book seeks to provide this kind of intermediary, by suggesting the kind of analysis essential to thinking about Western civilization in a world history context.

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#77 - Eric Hobsbawm - Age of Extremes

Author or Editor: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Abacus
Published: 1994
Pages: 627

Hobsbawm has written extensively on many subjects as one of Britain's most prominent historians. As a Marxist historiographer he has focused on analysis of the "dual revolution" (the political French revolution and the industrial British revolution). He sees their effect as a driving force behind the predominant trend towards liberal capitalism today. Another recurring theme in his work has been social banditry, a phenomenon that Hobsbawm has tried to place within the confines of relevant societal and historical context thus countering the traditional view of it being a spontaneous and unpredictable form of primitive rebellion.

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#46 - William Weir - 50 Weapons that Changed Warfare

Author or Editor: William Weir
Publisher: Book-mart Press
Published: 2005
Pages: 261

For the last few thousand years, wars have been fought with weapons. For long stretches of time, they have been fought with the same, or similar, weapons. For example, flintlock smoothbore muskets were the basic infantry weapons for more than a century. When, in the early 19th century, they were replaced by percussion smoothbore muskets, soldiers got a more reliable weapon, but they didn’t have to change their tactics. A little later, they were given percussion rifled muskets. The musket looked almost the same. It had a percussion lock, and it was a muzzle-loader. About the only difference was the rifling grooves in the barrel. Generals didn’t see why they should change their tactics. That’s why the American Civil War is the bloodiest war in our history.

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#45 - William Weir - 50 Battles That Changed the World

Author or Editor: William Weir
Publisher: Book-mart Press
Published: 2001
Pages: 320

Any attempt to list the 50 most important battles in all history is necessarily subjective. To list them in order of importance is an even greater exercise of chutzpah. Nevertheless, people have been listing decisive battles since Sir Edward Creasy, a lawyer who taught history, a century-and-a-half ago. Other compilers include General J.F.C. Fuller, a professional soldier; Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, who was gassed and injured early in his career and had to leave the army—he then became a journalist, and Fletcher Pratt, who was a writer by trade. Each brings a distinctive flavor to the enterprise. Fuller is very strong on battles that were fought on land. He's less interested in sea power and far less interested in air power. Liddell Hart emphasizes his strategic theory—the superiority of the indirect approach. He, and to some extent Fuller, preaches the gospel of small, highly trained armies rather than the mass armies we've had in every major war since those of the French Revolution. Pratt's The Battles that Changed History has the distinct tang of salty air, although most of the early battles it covers were fought on land. Pratt also has the most openly Occidental orientation.

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#35 - Michael Burgan - Empire of the Mongolians

Author or Editor: Michael Burgan
Publisher: Facts On File, Inc.
Published: 2005
Pages: 128

Of all the nomadic warriors of central Asia, the fiercest were the Mongols. In the 13th century, starting in their homeland of Mongolia, just north of China, the Mongols spread out to the south and west. Under the leadership of Chinggis Khan (c. 1162–1227) and his descendants, the Mongols quickly built an empire that stretched from Korea to eastern Europe— the largest continuous area of land ever controlled by one ruling family.
This empire soon split into four mini-empires. The last major rulers with ties to the old Mongol empire were the Mughals of northern India, who first governed in the 16th century. They traced family ties to Chinggis Khan and the later Turko-Mongol ruler Timur (1336–1405), more commonly known in English as Tamerlane.

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#32 - Suraiya Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It

Author or Editor: Suraiya Faroqhi
Publisher: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
Published: 2004
Pages: 290

In a sense, this study deals with one of the oldest and most often studied topics in Ottoman history. From the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards, European ambassadors, merchants and other travellers made it their business to write about their various receptions in the Ottoman lands and, analysed with due caution, these accounts are germane to our topic.

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