The Thanksgiving Book Orgy

[jumjum]

Originally Posted by Von Mudra

On my current read list are:

The Devil in the White City
Andrew Carnegie
TR: After the White House
Commonwealth of Thieves
1491


And I also plan on rereading F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Good on ya'. Especially the Hayek - essential for an undertsanding of the intellectual underpinnings of an entire school of modern political thought. Hell, Hayek is an intellectual underpinning all by himself.

Originally Posted by Killed in First Minute

They aren't that bad, the last ones I read were:

Postwar, by Ton Judt;
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret MacMillan; and
The First World War, by John Keegan.

I would consider all of those to be serious histories and all of them are quite readable.

(btw, that's not ALL I read, I also have plenty of brain candy which I am not going to admit to publicly.)

I don't know the first two but I've read everything Keegan has published in the last 30 years and agree completely. Just because they're true historians doesn't mean they can't be read or enjoyed. Everyone would consider Martin Gilbert a stellar historian and his Churchill biography is wonderful. Ditto David Chandler - a true historian who is the definitive author on Napoleon. Same for Douglas Southall Freeman, the last word on Robert E. Lee.

[It's Happy Fun Ball!]

If you like histories, I recommend the other two. Actually, I found Keegan's the hardest to read, (even though I've read it twice). Not his fault really, its just that in reading about WWI, I get lost in the endless corps names and numbers.

Oh yea, and don't forget Massey.

[Von Mudra]

If you want a good book on WW1, look no further then:

The Myth of the Great War- John Mosier

Trust me, you won't regret it.

[jumjum]

Robert Massie? Yes.

[jumjum]

(Sorry for the dp, but the 30-minute edit window is ridiculously short.)

Originally Posted by Von Mudra

If you want a good book on WW1, look no further then:The Myth of the Great War- John Mosier
Trust me, you won't regret it.

Which reminds me of A Soldier Of The Great War by Mark Helprin. Part is about WWI in th Alps between the Austrians and Italians, and simply jaw-dropping descriptions of what it took to fight on Europe's roof. But more than war, it's about life, heroism, despair, love, loyalty, tenacity, loss, regret, hope. Grand themes, things worth dying for. You know, Literature with a capital "L". Your spirit feels larger for having read it.

Helprin is like some fictional character himself, or at least a character out of WWI: Harvard, Oxford, gets bored with talk and joins British Merchant Marine; emigrates to Israel and joins IDF, first in infantry, then as fighter pilot, and serves in the Yom Kippur War. Becomes a novelist, journalist and think-tank fellow. His path is so classically that of a CIA asset that I'd almost bet my house he's a spook.

vM - I have to dl the program we were talking about to another computer - this is at 90% capacity.

[Von Mudra]

Originally Posted by jumjum

(Sorry for the dp, but the 30-minute edit window is ridiculously short.)



Which reminds me of A Soldier Of The Great War by Mark Helprin. Part is about WWI in th Alps between the Austrians and Italians, and simply jaw-dropping descriptions of what it took to fight on Europe's roof. But more than war, it's about life, heroism, despair, love, loyalty, tenacity, loss, regret, hope. Grand themes, things worth dying for. You know, Literature with a capital "L". Your spirit feels larger for having read it.

Helprin is like some fictional character himself, or at least a character out of WWI: Harvard, Oxford, gets bored with talk and joins British Merchant Marine; emigrates to Israel and joins IDF, first in infantry, then as fighter pilot, and serves in the Yom Kippur War. Becomes a novelist, journalist and think-tank fellow. His path is so classically that of a CIA asset that I'd almost bet my house he's a spook.

vM - I have to dl the program we were talking about to another computer - this is at 90% capacity.

Hrm, I'll look into that book for sure once I'm through my current reading list. And ok, cools mate:P