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History books and podcasts (1 Viewer)

Tick

Tick

Footballguy
What's good?

I'll try to update this post once in awhile with recommendations.

Mine to start out with:

Books:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: Why Europeans won.

The First World War, The Second World War by John Keegan: My favorite overviews.

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William Hitchcock: The stuff we don't think about at the end of WW2.

Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade: What DNA tells us about history. Good counterpoint to Diamond.

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman: My son's favorite. Rescuing airmen from Yugoslavia in WW2.

Brotherhood of Heroes by Bill Sloan: Story of Peleliu - Gives a good feel for the Pacific in WW2.

Podcasts:

The History of Rome: The gold standard for me - the right amount of depth, some slight humor thrown in.

Hardcore History: Very entertaining - less a retelling and more of a reaction to how history is weird or might have felt to those involved.

The History of Byzantium: Pretty much a continuation of History of Rome, but without the humor.

Revolutions: Same author as History of Rome. English was okay, American was good, French is a little tough to follow. Except for loyalty, I might have quit by now.

Norman Centuries: A topic I didn't know much about. Good depth, no humor. Good production.

12 Byzantine Rulers: Kind of the granddaddy of them all. Good choice to do depth in spots rather than an overview, but History of Byzantium puts the same depth across more breadth.

 
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I'm enjoying Inferno - The World at War '39-'45 by Max Hastings

I'm not a history buff at all so it usually takes something not too dry to keep my attention. Another good one was Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson.

I started the Keegan WWI book but didn't stick with it.

Podcast-wise I enjoy Hardcore History but the 3-4 hour podcasts he's been doing for the last year kill me when I can only stay awake for 20 minutes at night. I must've listened to the same opening bit about Genghis Khan 20 times.

Revolutions sounds good - might give that a try

 
black dotting

WIll fill in more tomorrow.

Anything Cold War/Russia/WII: Hitler vs. Stalin please recommend - by far my favorite genre

 
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Podcast: Civil War Talk Radio

(iPhone podcasts or Voice America or impedimentsofwar.org)

Book & a blog from David Powell:

The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle: From the Crossing of Tennessee River Through the Second Day, August 22 - September 19, 1863

(1st book in a planned trilogy)

https://chickamaugablog.wordpress.com/

 
randall146 said:
Another good one was Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson.
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Same author:

For Cause and Comrade

If you're new to ACW literature, anything by Bruce Catton. My favorite quote by him: "If nothing else, history ought to be a good yarn."

Catton, Shelby Foote & McPherson are the best examples of narrative history.

 
Probably the greatest narrative historian today is David McCullough (& he's an awesome narrator as well). The man has been churning out hits for more than 40 years.

Title Year

The Johnstown Flood 1968

The Great Bridge 1972

The Path Between the Seas 1977

Mornings on Horseback 1981

Brave Companions 1992

Truman 1992

John Adams 2001

1776 2005

In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story 2010

The Greater Journey 2011

The Wright Brothers 2015

My personal favorites are The Great Bridge, Mornings on Horseback and John Adams, but honestly I would recommend any of them. Great storyteller!

 
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A couple of newer releases that I'd recommend...

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts - He uses a trove of newly released letters throughout the book, and visited every major (and most minor) battlefields fought by Napoleon. On top of everything else, well-written too. Well worth the read if you are looking for a single-volume life of Napoleon.

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan - JQA is one of my favorite historical figures; he had a long history of public service both before and after being President. I had read a few books on JQA, but, unlike this one, they were not full-life biographies. Pretty well-researched and again a lot of use of his letters.

All-time history books, I'd probably put Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy, Robert Caro's (so far) 4 volumes on LBJ, Edmund Morris's TR trilogy, and anything from the Oxford History of the United States series (which includes Battle Cry of Freedom mentioned above, as well as The Glorious Cause, a great one-volume on the American Revolution) at the top.

Podcasts... Big fan of History of Rome. Listening to Revolutions now, and recently started the History of Byzantium. Also listening some to British History Podcast and The Podcast History of Our World, but they haven't grabbed me as much. (The latter doesn't have enough depth for me, which I guess would be expected given the topic.)

ETA: Remembered another newer one that I read last year that was pretty good: Hampton Sides' In the Kingdom of Ice. Sides is most well-known for writing "Ghost Soldiers" about the Bataan Death March. His new one is about an Arctic expedition, which was based on the premise that there was an open sea at the North Pole, so if you kept sailing through the ice, you'd eventually reach open waters -- as you might imagine, the expedition gets trapped in the ice and things end badly.

 
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Don Quixote said:
A couple of newer releases that I'd recommend...

ETA: Remembered another newer one that I read last year that was pretty good: Hampton Sides' In the Kingdom of Ice. Sides is most well-known for writing "Ghost Soldiers" about the Bataan Death March. His new one is about an Arctic expedition, which was based on the premise that there was an open sea at the North Pole, so if you kept sailing through the ice, you'd eventually reach open waters -- as you might imagine, the expedition gets trapped in the ice and things end badly.
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Thanks for the reminder on this. I really liked Ghost Soldiers and had Kingdom of Ice on a mental list that I somehow 'lost'. It's also good that you reco'd a book that wasn't a war book. Not all history is war.

 
If you got a yr or two, must recommend the Durants' 10,000 page Story of Civilization. Revolutionized my outlook on history and reads like a novel.

 
BobbyLayne said:
Probably the greatest narrative historian today is David McCullough (& he's an awesome narrator as well). The man has been churning out hits for more than 40 years.

The Wright Brothers 2015
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I was pretty excited to see that one on your list. A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that I should look for a book on them and early flight. I like McCullough's stuff too. It looks like I have to wait until May, but will be a definite read when it is released.

 
BBC History extra podcast, most shows are two 20-30 minute interviews with Authors of recent history novels or recent news events based on history. They do alot of British history but also other historical topics.

BBC History Hour, mainly deals with topics of the 20th and 21st century. They do 4-5 stories about 10 minutes in length with interviews of people that lived through the experience along with radio news clips that played during the story.

Not a podcast or a book but if you want a quick history of western civilization look up The Western Tradition by Eugen Weber.

 
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I just grabbed the audiobook for Rick Atkinson's An Army At Dawn, about the WW2 North African campaign. It won the Pulitzer for history awhile back - I plan to listen with my son in the car.

 
I like a lot of the old school histories:

History of the Peloponnessisn War by Thucydides, The Histories by Herodotus, History of the English Speaking People by Churchill.

 
Tick said:
What's good?

I'll try to update this post once in awhile with recommendations.

Mine to start out with:

Books:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: Why Europeans won.

The First World War, The Second World War by John Keegan: My favorite overviews.

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William Hitchcock: The stuff we don't think about at the end of WW2.

Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade: What DNA tells us about history. Good counterpoint to Diamond.

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman: My son's favorite. Rescuing airmen from Yugoslavia in WW2.

Brotherhood of Heroes by Bill Sloan: Story of Peleliu - Gives a good feel for the Pacific in WW2.

Podcasts:

The History of Rome: The gold standard for me - the right amount of depth, some slight humor thrown in.

Hardcore History: Very entertaining - less a retelling and more of a reaction to how history is weird or might have felt to those involved.

The History of Byzantium: Pretty much a continuation of History of Rome, but without the humor.

Revolutions: Same author as History of Rome. English was okay, American was good, French is a little tough to follow. Except for loyalty, I might have quit by now.

Norman Centuries: A topic I didn't know much about. Good depth, no humor. Good production.

12 Byzantine Rulers: Kind of the granddaddy of them all. Good choice to do depth in spots rather than an overview, but History of Byzantium puts the same depth across more breadth.
Click to expand...
Good rec'd on the podcasts. Agree in the French Revolution. I had a hard time remembering all the characters in the English series but I feel plain lost half the time with all the French guys. But I'll admit I've learned a lot. I enjoyed "The Forgotten Soldier".

 
Andrew74 said:
Tick said:
What's good?

I'll try to update this post once in awhile with recommendations.

Mine to start out with:

Books:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: Why Europeans won.

The First World War, The Second World War by John Keegan: My favorite overviews.

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William Hitchcock: The stuff we don't think about at the end of WW2.

Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade: What DNA tells us about history. Good counterpoint to Diamond.

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman: My son's favorite. Rescuing airmen from Yugoslavia in WW2.

Brotherhood of Heroes by Bill Sloan: Story of Peleliu - Gives a good feel for the Pacific in WW2.

Podcasts:

The History of Rome: The gold standard for me - the right amount of depth, some slight humor thrown in.

Hardcore History: Very entertaining - less a retelling and more of a reaction to how history is weird or might have felt to those involved.

The History of Byzantium: Pretty much a continuation of History of Rome, but without the humor.

Revolutions: Same author as History of Rome. English was okay, American was good, French is a little tough to follow. Except for loyalty, I might have quit by now.

Norman Centuries: A topic I didn't know much about. Good depth, no humor. Good production.

12 Byzantine Rulers: Kind of the granddaddy of them all. Good choice to do depth in spots rather than an overview, but History of Byzantium puts the same depth across more breadth.
Click to expand...
Good rec'd on the podcasts. Agree in the French Revolution. I had a hard time remembering all the characters in the English series but I feel plain lost half the time with all the French guys. But I'll admit I've learned a lot.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. Duncan has built up a lot of goodwill in my book, but I think as he's getting into subjects he's personally very interested in, he's getting way too lost in the weeds. I would have much preferred a 10-12 episode, higher level summary of the French Revolution and then had him move on. I mean, we're at 32 episodes of the French Revolution at this point with no clear end in sight, versus 15 for the US and 16 for the English Revolutions.

 
I heard Duncan mention that he recorded something for the "10 American Presidents" podcast, and checked it out. Only two episodes so far. A Carlin episode on Nixon, and a Q&A with Duncan (he has apparently also recorded a forthcoming episode on Washington, and the Q&A acts as a preview for that). The series is produced by Rofield Brown, for anyone familiar with him (I was not).

Carlin's episode runs about 90 minutes. Pretty well-produced. Mix of narration, and audio from Nixon's speeches, news stories, etc. I assume the rest will be similarly produced (and may be why it takes so long for Brown to edit and post episodes).

Looking forward to the rest of the series.

 
wikkidpissah said:
If you got a yr or two, must recommend the Durants' 10,000 page Story of Civilization. Revolutionized my outlook on history and reads like a novel.
Click to expand...
Looks like audible has this broken up into a few different books. Will Durant is the author? Looks interesting. My have to give it a listen when I have my next credit.

 
Is the History of Byzantium by the same guy that did History of Rome?

I'm coming up on the end of the History of Rome podcast and am looking for a new one to start. I really like that guy's delivery.

 
thecatch said:
Andrew74 said:
Tick said:
What's good?

I'll try to update this post once in awhile with recommendations.

Mine to start out with:

Books:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: Why Europeans won.

The First World War, The Second World War by John Keegan: My favorite overviews.

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William Hitchcock: The stuff we don't think about at the end of WW2.

Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade: What DNA tells us about history. Good counterpoint to Diamond.

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman: My son's favorite. Rescuing airmen from Yugoslavia in WW2.

Brotherhood of Heroes by Bill Sloan: Story of Peleliu - Gives a good feel for the Pacific in WW2.

Podcasts:

The History of Rome: The gold standard for me - the right amount of depth, some slight humor thrown in.

Hardcore History: Very entertaining - less a retelling and more of a reaction to how history is weird or might have felt to those involved.

The History of Byzantium: Pretty much a continuation of History of Rome, but without the humor.

Revolutions: Same author as History of Rome. English was okay, American was good, French is a little tough to follow. Except for loyalty, I might have quit by now.

Norman Centuries: A topic I didn't know much about. Good depth, no humor. Good production.

12 Byzantine Rulers: Kind of the granddaddy of them all. Good choice to do depth in spots rather than an overview, but History of Byzantium puts the same depth across more breadth.
Click to expand...
Good rec'd on the podcasts. Agree in the French Revolution. I had a hard time remembering all the characters in the English series but I feel plain lost half the time with all the French guys. But I'll admit I've learned a lot.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. Duncan has built up a lot of goodwill in my book, but I think as he's getting into subjects he's personally very interested in, he's getting way too lost in the weeds. I would have much preferred a 10-12 episode, higher level summary of the French Revolution and then had him move on. I mean, we're at 32 episodes of the French Revolution at this point with no clear end in sight, versus 15 for the US and 16 for the English Revolutions.
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His wife is having another kid, so at least there's now an end in sight for the French Revolution.
 
Yeah, but the end date is still like 4 months out. I think he said he's going to have 50 ish episodes. I'll stick with it but if this were my first go around with Duncan I'd probably be out.

 
FreeBaGeL said:
Is the History of Byzantium by the same guy that did History of Rome?

I'm coming up on the end of the History of Rome podcast and am looking for a new one to start. I really like that guy's delivery.
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Different guy. The Rome guy went on the do the Revolutions podcast.

 
FreeBaGeL said:
Is the History of Byzantium by the same guy that did History of Rome?

I'm coming up on the end of the History of Rome podcast and am looking for a new one to start. I really like that guy's delivery.
Click to expand...
Different guy, but FWIW I like his work, he does a better job than some of not getting bogged down in tiny details.

Other podcasts I like are:

The History of WW2 by Ray Harris Jr. It's well done, but subject to the getting caught up in the detail issue it seems is easy to do. Had a long tangent on Churchill's back story growing up and in WWI, which I forgive because it was really interesting.

Another one is The History of England by David Crowther. Covers a long period of time, starting from the early Anglo Saxon period (from memory) doesn't get too bogged down, and has some of the dry English Monty Python-y humour. Puts the boot into the French regularly as well, which most of the world enjoys.

The Ancient World is one that covers prehistory up until about 500BC, so pre Greek and Roman eras which are less common topics to hear about. He's completed that section, and is now telling the family history of some tangential type characters through early Imperial Rome, which is more interesting than it sounds.

The History of English by Kevin Stroud focuses on the evolution of the English language from it's theoretical Proto Indo-European root language through (hopefully) to modern English. Currently it's up to the 9th century or so. There's a lot of history in this by necessity, but mostly it's about the language itself and how the events of history impact the changing language. It can be dry and there have been episodes that were tough to stick with but if you find that topic interesting it's worth it.

 
KarmaPolice said:
Didn't see it mentioned, but I recently read The Guns of August, and thought it was great.
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My son and I were listening to the audiobook and got very far in, but lost our driving time (indoor soccer season ended). We'll have to finish it off. The reader for the audiobook isn't one I like (old British lady).

An Army at Dawn is great 3 hours in.

I listened to the episodes of History of Iran. I hope he gets back to it. I can't understand proper names when spoken by native speakers in just about any language, so that's been a slight problem, but otherwise it's good. Only 10 episodes over 2 years, though.

History of Bulgaria is good so far. I'm trying to wait on that one until I cover the same time in History of Byzantium.

I was hoping to find a timeline that showed all the podcast episodes covering a specific year, but haven't found just the right thing. I'd like to see which episodes to listen to for the year 700 in Byzantium, Bulgaria, Persia, the Franks, England, etc.

http://www.history.org.uk/podcasts/is so close to what I want.

 
Ireally enjoy Dan Carlins hardcore history stuff but man is he ever loquacious. I'm halfway through part 3 of Recipe for Armageddon and he just takes way too long to describe armies involved with way too many metaphors and examples.

I feel like he could be just as effective in half the time.

That said, I'm still a huge fan.

 
John Bender said:
Ireally enjoy Dan Carlins hardcore history stuff but man is he ever loquacious. I'm halfway through part 3 of Recipe for Armageddon and he just takes way too long to describe armies involved with way too many metaphors and examples.

I feel like he could be just as effective in half the time.

That said, I'm still a huge fan.
Click to expand...
I like Dan Carlin because he doesn't do straight narrative history like everyone else does (authors and podcasters), he always has a different point of view which I think quite thought provoking and adds a lot to my understanding of a topic

 
John Bender said:
Ireally enjoy Dan Carlins hardcore history stuff but man is he ever loquacious. I'm halfway through part 3 of Recipe for Armageddon and he just takes way too long to describe armies involved with way too many metaphors and examples.

I feel like he could be just as effective in half the time.

That said, I'm still a huge fan.
Click to expand...
Just started listening to this. The first episode of the Armegeddon/WWI stuff. This is my first podcast I have ever listened to. I figured it would be an hour or so. 3 hours, holy cow. And that is only episode 1

I do like that he sounds like Charlie Sheen though

 
The best one volume world history book I've ever read is The Rise of the West by William McNeill. It was influential as a move away from previous historians Toynbee and Spengler (the title purposely contrasted with the latter's Decline of the West), as a champion of cultural diffusionism.

It won the National Book Award in History or Biography in 1964, and was named one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

Many history books (especially world history) are in my experience a dry recitation of facts, names, dates, etc. Nearly every page was packed with multiple insights that imaginatively made CONNECTIONS between facts, events, people, whether science, technology, art, religion, politics, sociology, etc., in a way that rendered the whole far more unified, coherent and intelligible. An adjective I don't throw around like man hole covers that describes the author's command of the material and narrative brilliance - magisterial.

Noted above:

Enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (a documentary series was available streaming on Netflix).

Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman was great.

So was the multi-volume history by the Durant's (at least, what I read, got through 3-4 volumes).

* Some of the below aren't typical military, but philosophical, psychological and/or in the history of ideas.

The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler a great history of Astronomy, from Babylon to Copernicus. The Act of Creation by the same author is a survey of connections between the history of discovery and invention in science and technology, art, literature and humor. A third title in a trilogy, Ghost in the Machine, was coopted by the Police for one of their albums.

The former Librarian of the United States (there is actually such a position and job title), Daniel Boorstin wrote two major trilogies. The Americans (last book of the first trilogy) won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for history. I have two from his second trilogy, the Discoverers and Creators.

Fernand Braudel may be the greatest economic historian of the last half century?

The TV series (and companion book) Connections by James Burke was fascinating and highly recommended, showing how distant and remote technological inventions like the stirrup might lead to something like the atom bomb (The Making of the Atomic Bomb won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, author Richard Rhodes received a MacArthur so called genius grant).

The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski (also a TV series and companion book), a prominent scientist, was also in this world history vein and well done.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes had a strikingly original thesis that ancient people weren't conscious in a modern, conventional sense, using literary clues to shed light on the subject in a kind of archaeological excavation of the human mind.

 
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Finished reading McCullough's The Wright Brothers. Pretty good. Not McCullough's best, but still a good read and up to his usual standards if you enjoy his books. I could have used a bit more of an epilogue about the life of Orville Wright; that was a bit shorter than I was anticipating for a full-scale bio. But otherwise pretty thorough and an enjoyable read.

Also recently finished Volume 1 of Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Enjoyed it, and learned a lot since that is a bit of a hole in my education/reading, but taking a break before moving on to the rest.

Moving on to H.W. Brands' new bio of Reagan.

 
AcerFC said:
John Bender said:
Ireally enjoy Dan Carlins hardcore history stuff but man is he ever loquacious. I'm halfway through part 3 of Recipe for Armageddon and he just takes way too long to describe armies involved with way too many metaphors and examples.

I feel like he could be just as effective in half the time.

That said, I'm still a huge fan.
Click to expand...
Just started listening to this. The first episode of the Armegeddon/WWI stuff. This is my first podcast I have ever listened to. I figured it would be an hour or so. 3 hours, holy cow. And that is only episode 1I do like that he sounds like Charlie Sheen though
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He's got a cool voice. I listened to all of his WW1 episodes (I drive 6 hours from Chicago to Minneapolis and back about once every 6 weeks). Started his series on the Mongols. Those are shorter but harder to follow for me (I don't know Asia geography very well!)
 
I've been listening to Slate's "Whistlestop" podcast, by John Dickerson. Each episode is centered on a Presidential campaign history story. Good listen for anyone else into Presidential history.

 
I'm working my way through Ray Harris's WW2 podcast. Great info, but he's not much of a reader. He seems to be getting a little better as he goes along, at least. Spoiler alert: Germany just broke through the Ardennes in the podcast.

Also, my boys loved the crap out of a Nazi mega weapons series from PBS: http://video.pbs.org/program/nazi-mega-weapons/

Has anyone watched The War by Ken Burns? It keeps getting recommended by Netflix, but I've never heard of it before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_(2007_TV_series)

 
I made the mistake of making "Unbreakable" my first audiobook and nothing has else come remotely close.

 
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Tick said:
I'm working my way through Ray Harris's WW2 podcast. Great info, but he's not much of a reader. He seems to be getting a little better as he goes along, at least. Spoiler alert: Germany just broke through the Ardennes in the podcast.

Also, my boys loved the crap out of a Nazi mega weapons series from PBS: http://video.pbs.org/program/nazi-mega-weapons/

Has anyone watched The War by Ken Burns? It keeps getting recommended by Netflix, but I've never heard of it before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_(2007_TV_series)
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It's REALLY good, but I like everything that's WW2.

 
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