Thanks for the the information!

I'd be interested to hear your recommendations for those women. In exchange, I recommend reading Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China.

Are there any studies about the demographics of the Mongolian Empire's military?

Consider the Mongolian while powerful, make up only a small population of all the people they rule. And there are several major wars from different Mongolian Khanate. So who make the majority of their soldiers? I would guess the Chinese because several Mongolian military actions were against those Chinese dynasties so they should have ruled lots of Chinese. But are there any formal documents or studies about that? Thanks.

American Promethious and also Making of the Atomic Bomb

[deleted]

Two EXCELLENT books about the Iraq War

The March Up

and

The Strongest Tribe

Both by Author Bing West.

Now, the March Up is an interesting read, but you can take it or leave it. The Strongest Tribe on the other hand is downright educational. Its an engaging read, but its educational enough that (if I was a person that made these kind of decisions) I would put it on the mandatory/professional reading list for politicians, diplomats, and military leaders above E-7 or O-4)

First, for important context, who is Bing West?

From wikipedia

>Francis J. "Bing" West Jr. (born May 2, 1940) is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration.

But ok the real key points here are - the guy was a Marine infantry platoon commander in Vietnam. He was right there in the S***

But also made it up to Col.

But also worked in the White House.

But also worked for the RAND corporation.

The important here is, he has real world experience at all these levels, but also he has the street cred to get access to people.

When he and Gen Ray Smith decide "hey, 1st Marines is in on the Iraq invasion, pushing all the way up to Baghdad, let's ride along and write a book about it" (The March Up), they have the connections to get permission to literally buy an SUV and ride along with the convoy the whole way

and based on his street cred, his "I was an Lt in Vietnam" means he can sit down with the infantry enlisted and junior officers and they'll talk to him.

But his I was a Col, creds mean he can get interview time with the General too

and his White House cred means he can get to the point interviews with the actual Bush administration decision makers. No doors were closed to him.

AND he speaks from actual subject matter expertise.

Like, when everyone was all sunshine about the rewriting of American counterinsurgency doctrine under Peter Pace, Gen pace assembled an entire think tank to make that rewrite happen. Bing West was one of the academics on that staff. He literally helped re-write "the book" on counterinsurgency.

>Interesting side note - part of the process for reshaping COIN strategy came from square one - study, go back, find ALL the counterinsurgencies in the modern era, Vietnam, the Troubles, etc and see what did they try, what worked what didn't, and why?" and oh BTW in Vietnam he was there. So sure enough one tactic he believed strongly in, was the whole "if you want the populace to side with you, you have to prove you are invested, and prove you can provide some safety. You gotta live among them. Can't own the town unless you live in the town. Which is what they tried in Vietnam, as West wrote about in his book "The Village", and reading it I was like, "yo.... I recognize this", because sure enough, it shed light on why, on my Iraq deployment, we picked the most defensible building in our sector, bought it, sandbagged it up, and LIVED IN the city we needed to assume control of.

Bottom line, As a former Marine, former academic researchers/think tank guy/former White House cabinet level staffer, this is a guy who knows how to research, has subject matter expertise at multiple levels of war and policy, and has access to face to face interaction with people that will open up to him, all the way from Marine Private First Class up to Undersecretary of State, so his book "The Strongest Tribe" as a chronicle and analysis of

how did we fight the insurgency in Iraq, what went wrong, what went right, and what changed things for better or worse

is excellently written and insightful. (Also, he pulls NO punches. He openly discusses which decision makers made dumb dumb dumb decisions. He tells it just how it is on Paul Bremer for example.)

I actually say that the most interesting pair of parallels books which SHOULDN'T be about the same thing, and yet, they kind of are

are The March Up paired with From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (yes, aware of the many criticisms of Friedman)

But between the two books, set decades apart, in different conflicts, there is a very notable consistency in the end theme of how Middle Eastern intertribal politics cannot be forced into a Western Template.

The landscape is going to be dominated by various factions looking out for their own peoples' interests and maintaining a level of mistrust. You can't just stitch together a new pretty "national flag" and say "ok fam, just like work together eh?"

I just finished Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen Behind Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance by Plokhy. I loved it! It focuses on the American airbases in Poltava in what is now Ukraine, which were originally established so that the British and Americans could do bombing runs straight across Germany and land in Ukraine to refuel. Stalin wasn’t thrilled about it but he ended up giving in.

Most of the Americans who were sent to staff the airbases were picked because they spoke Russian (although they were screened for anti-Soviet sentiment). The Soviets, of course, immediately assumed all these guys were spies (they weren’t). Drama ensued.

It should’ve been a relatively small moment in the larger war but he makes a really strong argument that it had outsized influence, >!partly because Harriman was involved, partly because a lot of the Americans (and Soviets) who worked at Poltava were posted to Berlin after the war, and partly because near the end of the war Poltava became central to the disputes over what was going to happen to the American POWs who were being freed from German camps by the Red Army!<

I also really liked the way that he got into the Soviet archives to follow up on how the locals around Poltava, especially the woman who dated American GIs, were treated in the Cold War. I felt like that easily could’ve been overlooked and I’m glad that he included that really personal level as well as the overarching strategic and political impact.

Highly recommend!

Well the watertight bulkheads only went to about 11 feet above the waterline on average, so that room is definitely flooded now. Also given the amount of deterioration at this point doubt it would matter much anyway

It's kind of the same answer. You had Caligula, Nero/the Year of Four Emperors, and Domitian (and the tail end of Augustus's reign for that matter) during the Pax Romana. You also had significant internal revolts (Boudica's revolt, Judea--3 times, etc.). Those years weren't particularly stable, though they weren't as bad as the Optimates vs. the Populares or the Crisis.

Looking at Europe as a whole and the longest period of peace, I think the correct answer is that the sad, tribal apes that make up the human race can't go 50 years without trying to kill each other. The best we can do is relative peace (the Pax) or stability in a single area (e.g. England was pretty stable and secure most of the 1153 -1455 time period).

I haven't read the Weitz book. But I've had When Money Dies by Fergusson on my TBR pile for a while and it looks like something you might be interested in. It's kind of old, so it's hard to find a recent review of it. But maybe that means you'll be able to find a cheap used copy.

The two governing factors here are likely padding and heat. If they're only wearing one leather article of clothing, it would be under the mail to provide extra padding to both further spread out the force of a blow and to provide better protection in the event a blow got through the chain links.

If they're wearing a padded aketon/gambeson and then mail, and then a leather waistcoat, that's basically wearing two winter coats with 20 lbs/10kg of weight in the middle. The heat load is going to be severe.

In battle, if they're wearing their knight's colors or badge, you'd be more likely to see it on a shield, a strip of cloth tied around an upper arm, a light surcoat/tabard, or a hat/helmet badge. But, they're not going to be in full harness most of the time, and a leather coat with a badge could be reasonable "around town" uniform/light armor, just like they might carry a large-but-not-huge knife instead of their battleaxe when going into town. As.a garment, it's an extravagant use of leather, but it's not crazy.

This was a great book to read after playing AC: Valhalla

I read Mai Ngai's The Chinese Question. It was interesting and helpful b/c she tied in anti-Chinese sentiment from the US, Australia, and South Africa to show how they influenced each other. I know it's ridiculous to expert her to know every language, but I would have liked to have learned more about Chinese immigration to Peru.

I think there are some interesting lessons to learn about changing rationales in racism and the economic importance of the transnational Chinese community to China in terms of remittances and reinvestment in the home country.

I thought the book maybe over focused on S. Africa, but I put that down to that subject most likely having more archival resources.

There's a book by Carl Nightingale called Segregation. It was kind of dry, but it would be a good complement to Ngai's book. Overall if you have any interest in Chinese migration in the late 19th/early 20th century I would recommend Ngai's book.

I’m fascinated by totalitarian governments, how they came to be and the men who led them.

Last year I read Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror; Young Stalin; and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

I just finished The Romanovs: 1614-1918 and have started Mao: The Unknown Story. Any recommendations are super appreciated!

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed sort of covers this topic for the Old Testament.

Edit: and IIRC, Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted does the same for the New Testament.

I enjoyed "When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt" by Kara Cooney. Several years ago she gave a talk as part of a National Geographic traveling series. I found her to be an excellent speaker. I bet videos have been posted to YouTube by now.

He was unpopular, he was by a large measure unsuccessful in his rule and particularly in his conflicts with France, he did not have a particularly strong position, a civil war would be both difficult and costly when he was already not doing well financially, and he had no intention of adhering to it anyway.

[removed]

Looking for some material on female rulers in history. Already have stuff on Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Lilioukalani, and Catherine the Great.

Would be especially interested in Olga of Kiev, but she doesn't seem to have much out there.

Has anyone here read Weimar Germany – Promise and Tragedy by Eric Weitz and is it any good?

Read The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett which I mentioned in last weeks post.

>3.75/5 a good history book but very difficult to recommend.

>Chunky at 650 pages, the first half covers D'Annunzio's life pre-WWI - his works, his financial struggles (the man had a borderline mental problem with how quickly he spent money) , the numerous affairs. The second half covers his experiences in WWI, his capture and rule of Fiume, his life after he was forced out of Fiume, and his relationship with Mussolini (who saw Annuzio as an inspiration but also felt he was a potential threat he had to keep on side). The writing style is great, even the topics I'm not interested in were still entertaining to read. I very rarely skipped over stuff. The book basically covers everything anyone would want to know about Annunzio

>The reason I wouldn't recommend it is mainly due to the length. I went into the book for the political stuff, mainly around Fiume, and it took several hundred pages to get to that. But if you are interested in literary and artistic side of things then you have several hundred political and military pages to read.

Also read Weimar Germany (Short Oxford History of Germany series) edited by Anthony McElligott

>3.25/5 not bad but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

>Basically a undergrad level textbook with each chapter by a different historian. The writing is very on the academic side and for certain topics (the urban reform and welfare chapters) quite dense. For other chapters despite having niche topics (Bauhaus and new housing, Weimar Jews) they were surprisingly readable and more interesting than I expected. Of the normal topics the politics chapter was good but focused on emergency powers and the shift towards authoritarianism in 1930-32 rather than x happened then Y happened. The foreign policy chapter was good about how the German government tried to undo the Versailles Treaty. The culture chapter was better than I expected and basically argues that the arts (theatre, cinema) of the time were a lot more conservative than the traditional image of Weimar culture suggests. I also liked the chapter on the Reichswehr about the different visions for the future of the German military and the militarisation of society. There is a economics chapter but it was complicated.

>There is a decent further reading list for each chapter but for the more niche topics (urban reform) most of the suggestions are in German.

Now reading 2 books - On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War by Holger Afflerbach and The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army by Gary Sheffield (his Forgotten Victory - The First World War Myths and Reality is also very good) and really enjoying both but not that far into them yet

This isn't really helpful, but Stephen Metcalf has been writing one for like the last decade and I wish he would finish it up. Rick Perlstein has one called Reaganland. I heard some interviews with him and I don't know if I totally buy his argument, but overall I think it's a good look at the decade. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/books/review/reaganland-rick-perlstein.html

Kate Masur's book, Til Justice Done, is about the civil rights movement in the antebellum period and the Souths' constant reaching and imposition on Northern states really started to drive civil rights in the 1850s. A lot of states expanded citizenship to Black Americans during that period, that's part of what Dred Scott was about. States were also trying to force equal application of the privileges and immunities clause, etc. Ohio really did a 180 during the period and is an instructive example.

I just heard a good interview with Taylor on The Rogue Historian podcast. They talked about the New Orleans Native Guard and explained what was really going on with it during the Confederacy, since it's often used as an example of Black Confederates.

Here's a good interview with Hoyer over at The New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/blood-and-iron

Can anyone recommend a book (or several!) on ancient LGBTQ+ history? I'm ideally looking for BCE information but I'd also be ok with anything before the 19th century.