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What are you reading?

Randy Daytona

Randy Daytona

Cold War Relic
pilot
Super Moderator
Just got back from Barnes and Noble - did not know that Charles C. Mann had written a sequel to "1491" - appropriately titled "1493". Went ahead and grabbed it - will see how it goes.

A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491. Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world.

https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncover...s&ie=UTF8&qid=1478648458&sr=1-1&keywords=1493


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and a preview of 1491.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering.

https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelat...rd_wg=6LHHg&psc=1&refRID=HRCEXZ3Q7PEBBCS47PZ2

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D

Dewse5150

Member
Started Decision Points by George W. Bush and I'm about a third of the way through it. It is his perspective of the presidency and gives backgrounds to the difficult decisions he had to make. Pretty good read.
 
Randy Daytona

Randy Daytona

Cold War Relic
pilot
Super Moderator
Uncle Fester

Uncle Fester

Robot Pimp
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
@Randy Daytona there are a lot of good reads out there on how epidemics have shaped (sometimes ended) military campaigns and decided 'the fate of empires'. Sometimes literally the fate of empires...the first, worst wave of the Black Death crippled Sanassid Persia and badly weakened Byzantium, clearing the way for the Muslim armies pouring out of Arabia. A yellow fever epidemic in Haiti destroyed the French expeditionary force, which wound up guaranteeing Haitian independence and frustrating Napoleon into selling Louisiana. The Spanish Flu epidemic snuffed out almost all the post-WWI revolutionary and anarchist movements in Europe and America.

Given the annual media panic over bird flu, swine flu, zika, etc etc, it's amazing how little impact pandemics have made on common consciousness, given their enormous impacts at the time.
 
AllYourBass

AllYourBass

I'm okay with the events unfolding currently
pilot
D Day Through German Eyes was a pretty captivating (and, at 141 pages, short) read. Five Germans were interviewed—one from each of the beaches—about their experiences shortly before, during and shortly after the events of June 6, 1944. You get a pretty human perspective about what was going on in the mind of a German infantryman at the time. How did they feel about the Allies? Did they know an invasion was imminent? What was the top-down guidance on their mission in France?

The book spares no details on the brutality of the day's events. I read this book for a couple days of train rides and found myself wandering aimlessly through the station after each arrival while my brain fixated on the images and experiences described in the book.

I got it for free with an Amazon Prime membership (it may have been in the Library, I don't recall). There's a second book that's only $2.99, too.

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Speaking of free, I just found out last night about a service called OverDrive that many libraries utilize to loan out free e-Books/audiobooks. I don't live in Jacksonville anymore, but I still have my library membership. I just Google'd "Jacksonville Public Library OverDrive" and, within five minutes, a couple free books were sent to my Kindle/iPhone that I've been meaning to read. See if your library uses OverDrive!
 
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Max the Mad Russian

Max the Mad Russian

Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
Randy Daytona said:
Napoleon had led 600,000 men into Russia with the intent of conquering the country; of these, only about 30,000 survived, and of that number, it is said that fewer than 1,000 were ever able to return to duty.
Click to expand...

This time it need not to be overpatriotic to say that General Frost coupled with broken logistics train was the main reason for such overhelming loss. Kutuzov's armies have suffered from extremely cold winter too, and smaller amount of death toll of Russians were connected with less moving almost entirely. After more than a century, in 1940 in Finland, we fall to the frost even more stupidly and lost about 130,000 soldiers freeze most of which Finns killed by coup de grace...
 
Griz882

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
I got a copy of "The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945" from Santa. Hornfischer is, thus far, doing a great job of expressing the stunning technological leap caused by the introduction of the Essex Class carriers. I look forward to seeing where he takes the rest of his study.

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Randy Daytona

Randy Daytona

Cold War Relic
pilot
Super Moderator
Flash said:
Since I apparently have no idea what thread I am posting on nowadays, I figured I would repost this where I originally intended:

I just got done reading Dreadnought by Robert K Massie, overall an excellent book about the 'dreadnaught race' before the war between the UK and Germany. It was a formidable book at a little over 900 pretty dense pages but once I got going it was an 'easy' read, though it took two weeks of TDY away from the family to finish it up. It paints Germany in a pretty bad light, laying almost the entire onus of the naval arms race before WWI and the resultant historic British alliance building with France, on them.

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I liked it enough that I am going to try and tackle the 'sequel', Castles of Steel about the 'Great War' at sea. I just have to wait for a nice long TDY to do it...
Click to expand...

Did you ever get to Castles of Steel - and if so, any thoughts?

Just got this (a few days late) for Christmas. Samuel Huntington's Who Are We?

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https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-We-C...=1483061092&sr=1-3&keywords=samuel+huntington

Now in his controversial new work, Who Are We?, Huntington focuses on an identity crisis closer to home as he examines the impact other civilizations and their values are having on our own country.

America was founded by British settlers who brought with them a distinct culture, says Huntington, including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of immigrants that later came to the United States gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America's Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, our national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of primarily Hispanic immigrants and challenged by issues such as bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the “denationalization” of American elites.

Huntington, who was Director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and Coordinator of Security Planning at the NSC, was most famous for the following very widely read and quoted book:

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https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civili...rd_wg=5W5vW&psc=1&refRID=X164A9BKSMB6K8NH43D1

Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it is as indispensable to our understanding of American foreign policy today as the day it was published. As former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new foreword to the book, it “has earned a place on the shelf of only about a dozen or so truly enduring works that provide the quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”

 
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