Typically, thoughts about the economy of the ancient world hit a wall of ‘they didn’t have a solid idea of how finance works’. Similarly, talk of the Roman Empire doesn’t generally get any further away than it’s immediate political neighbors.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posts Tagged history
Despite the title, this is not a how-to book on how to get your own Crusade going. It’s actually a scholarly look at how the planning of the actual Crusades worked. Tyerman identifies broad subjects in planning and looks at[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Kudos to Bloomsbury for making worthwhile older books available in e-format with good editing. No kudos for spending zero effort on the cover, but… the text’s the thing anyway. Crankshaw’s biography of Empress Maria Theresa is certainly well done, within[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s battle tactics series continues to be well done overall. This one concentrates a bit more on background, but that doesn’t really interfere with the main parts of the presentation. Despite the title, Fields takes a look at the situation[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Even in the realm of narrative history, this is fairly unique. The Frontiersmen reads much like a novel, but it is as historically sourced as possible (and contains a fair number of endnotes, though more for explaining context rather than[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Narrett’s book takes a look at the intrigues that surrounded a portion of the Gulf coast in a period of unsettled transition. It’s far enough off the track of the usual topics of the colonial period to be nearly completely[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As a one volume history of the American Revolution, The Glorious Cause is nicely complete, but seems to assume some prior knowledge. Now, as there’s plenty of ‘everyone knows’ bits about the American Revolution, that’s not awful here, but this[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Crowley’s book on Venice is about the Stato da Mar, and as such, is exactly one of the things I’ve been on the lookout for. The first section starts with Venice’s mercantile rise, and then goes into the story of[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Tom Pocock posits the Seven Years War as the first world war (an assertion that he’s not alone in, and that I can get behind), but his book on the subject doesn’t really develop this. Instead, each chapter is about[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This was created as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and while good, is smaller and much more limited than the main four books. The first part is a collection of four essays done as a result of the Kickstarter that funded[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…