Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Grumble Jones Desperation Morale Banzai!! Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerThe fundamental problem with most of ancient history is that the vast bulk of everyone involved left no records behind. There are bright spots, and sometimes stories that were later written down, but sometimes even those iffy sources are missing.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve long been interested in the ancient world. The Roman Empire, especially, gets a lot of my historical interest. In my reading, it’s very easy to find books on Rome (Empire and Republic), and on Alexander. The period right after[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Well, this was a little different. There’s a set of introductions to the book that, between them, take up well over 50 pages. The main one (by the author) gives a short history of clan MacGregor, and explains the long-term[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The Wars of the Roses is the second book by Alison Weir I’ve read, and it definitely tells me there’s no need to stop here. The writing is good, and gives a great overview of what is a legendarily confusing[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Tracy Borman’s book about Queen Matilda (William the Conqueror’s wife, if you’re not keeping score at home) does a very good job with tracing the live of a medieval woman (much better than Weir’s Eleanor of Aquitane, but it is[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The Five Battles of Kawanakajima are not that well known in the West, but they are one of the most celebrated incidents of the Warring States period in Japan (right behind those parts that are better known in the West,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I was expecting Strauss’ The Trojan War: A New History to be a scholarly study of every detail we have about the Trojan world; basically an updated version of In Search of the Trojan War. Instead, it is a more scholarly[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Authoritative – adj. “having or showing impressive knowledge about a subject” Asbridge’s ‘authoritative history’ of the Crusades certainly does this. It is a very extensive look at the period in a single volume. There are problems; I think there is[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Lars Brownworth’s first book catapulted to success on the back of a related podcast, and he used the same formula this time. The Norman Centuries has been another good history podcast from him (though very slow, fourteen episodes in four[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
John Darwin’s After Tamerlane is a look at empire making from 1400 to pretty much the current day. His beginning idea is that the Timurid state represents the last time that the age-old pattern of a vast Eurasian empire based[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…