history books rfi

norman davies RAWKS but i gave up cos i am a lazy sod and couldn't be arsed lugging it on the tube. i shall start again though. the thing that annoys me about a lot of "general" history books though, is that of necessity they tend to gloss and skim over a lot, and i get very frustrated when a promising avenue of enquiry gets opened and then the author moves on. i'm a lot more of a "get interested in one period/subject and get books about that" kind of gal (overviews confuse me, haha). as a springboard for other research i tend to find that social or literary studies, or even biographies, are a lot more useful, as... well i dunno quite why. maybe i'm just more into personalities than events per se, and like the feeling that by examining one person's life you can start to get a feeling for the period as a whole.

plus, RickyT to thread! (also plus, did you manage to move OK toby?)

(not yet - am probably going to move two weeks today it seems)

(but i still haven't worked out how i'm going to do it)

Peter Hopkirk's chronicles of great game intrigues in central asia and Persia are well worth reading and give a useful background to afagan history.

i am reading j.h.plumb's "england in the 18th century", which i got for 50p off islington street-stall of books: someone has underlined all the important sentences in pen (i have become a whore for walpole)

it is weird after e.p.thompson to read abt eg the london corresponding socs as if they were al qaeda and the luddites as they were mere thug morons: to realise how far thompson shifted the landscape with "history of the english working class"

FEAR AND HONOR PALMER -author of my high school European history textbook

the last words of the book are etched into my mind:

"...but so to would be to end on a note of doom."

(god AND comic genius)

I like Katie's strategy of reading biography etc. to begin the study of a particular place/era. i just finished reading SON OF THE REVOLUTION by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro. Its a memoir sorta thingy about Liang's youth in post-Revolutionary China. ...and now I'm looking for a good, massive HISTORY OF CHINA (ALL OF IT) to spend the winter in. Any suggestions?

see? you all thought i was just being RUB when it was in fact a STRATEGY (thanks gabe!)

*bows and fears Katie* General history of China, I was just looking over one that seemed promising the other day, but I can't recall the damn title.

Let me put in a note for Larry Gonick's hilariously entertaining The Cartoon History of the Universe, which he's been working irregularly on for about 15 years now. Best overall world history I've ever read, while also including an extensive bibliography for further reading, which is great.