What are /r/history's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I'd say it mostly boils down to three things: timing, personality, and impact.

President Garfield was president less than a year before his assassination, leaving him little time to make an impression upon the American populace or enact any lasting, impactful legislation. President McKinley was -- generally speaking -- a very good president. He did a lot in his four years, but his legacy is completely overshadowed by the colossus that is President Roosevelt.

The assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were done at tumultuous times in American society, both men were huge, divisive personalities, and both assassinations most certainly changed the course of American history.

Edit: President Garfield is one of my personal favorite presidents, and if you're interested in him and his Presidency, I'd recommend Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.

It wasn't a matter of "corruption." Julius was just the latest in a series of political strong men who were given dictatorial or near-dictatorial powers by an increasingly weakened Senate, following the example of Sulla and Marius. And he was eventually followed by Octavian, whom we regard retroactively as the first "emperor" (Augustus), but he never claimed that title. Octavian was simply more successful at doing the same thing than his predecessors.

None of them "killed the Senate." The Senate had been declining in power for several generations. It was a probably inevitable evolutionary thing. Augustus maintained the public fiction that he was only doing the Senate's bidding, but everyone knew better. And later emperors dropped the pretense.

And all high-level politicians in Rome were "power-hungry." It went with the territory, and still does.

Mary Beard does a very good job of explaining this extended process in SPQR.

EDIT: missing

Small scale informal truces were common, even to the point of sharing a water well. Shooting your enemies food delivery guy was silly, because the retaliation on your own food delivery guy was likely. There was frequently a lull in fighting during breakfast time! Throwing a hand grenade into an enemies trench would obviously lead to greater quantity being returned. A system known as live and let live arose. Tony Ashworth wrote a great book on the subject Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System It is an unusual book in that it tells of all the ways that protagonists tried to avoid killing each other.

According to Ha-Joon Chang, a developmental economist, it is because these countries have had periods of time in their history in which they were highly protectionist of their own industry and aimed at being export-oriented. In his book Kicking Away the Ladder, he mentions some of these policies which these countries had implemented:

• Introduction of state-owned model factories (pilot plants) in industries where the private sector was lacking
• Huge state role in building infrastructure such as rail
• Copying of successful foreign institutions and systems such as the army, civil law, criminal law, banking etc
• Tariffs to protect infant industries, subsidizing the import of raw materials
• In the case of Japan, their military build-up led to technological spillover
• Export subsidies to promote an export-oriented economy
• Tariff rebates for imported raw materials and machinery for export industries
• Indicative planning to reduce "wasteful competition"

I'd strongly recommend reading the book (you can find a pdf online, yarr) if you're interested about this. Many of these policies were not invented by the East Asian states, but by Britain, France, Prussia, the USA etc. They were just copied.

Patricia Cornwell wrote a book purporting to solve the question of Jack the Ripper's identity. It's full of logical fallacies and circular logic and demonstrates nothing of value. I read it years ago and I'm still angry about the time I wasted reading it.

Commentarii de Bello Gallico

TL;DR Julius Caesars memoirs of his conquest of Gaul (France) and his invasions of Britain. He wrote them before the Roman Civil War as a means to get the Plebians (lower class) on his side as his political enemies were tarnishing his reputation while he was away.

It's also one of the few surviving primary sources of the Roman military and is easy/enjoyable to read (keep in mind his target audience). If antiquity (ancient Rome/Greece/etc.) interests you it's a great place to start.

edit Yep it comes in English, there are plenty of different translations and they're all going to be fine if you've got a non-professional interest in the subject (if you're a historian as a job with a focus on antiquity you know latin and don't need the translation. If someone tells you the translation you've got is terrible compared to the one they have you can throw your hot tea on their crotch and tell them to go away.). There may be one at your local used book store or if you want to shop online the copy I've read through a few times is:

https://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Barnes-Library-Essential-Reading/dp/0760768951/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527970815&sr=8-1&keywords=the+conquest+of+gaul+f.p.+long

Otzi has always been one of my favorite pieces of history. Ever since I was a kid 20 years ago, I was fascinated by the Ice Man. I can remember reading about him in the "Big Book of Mummies" that I got at the scholastic book fair in 2nd grade.

Edit: I found the book!

Also, an American regiment visited there on arriving in France during WWI. Charles Stanton, an officer, famously said "Lafayette, we are here," among the remarks given in respect for Lafayette's contribution to the Revolutionary War.

1776:

American Declaration of Independence.

Adam Smith releases The Wealth of Nations.

James Watt brings out his fully developed steam engine, which actually goes into production and is in that year first deployed in real commercial enterprises.

Perhaps slightly less noteworthy, that year also saw Edward Gibbon release the first part of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

You could say a lot of the modern world was born that year.

I’ve read here that in ancient Egypt there was a rite in which the Pharao would masturbate into the Nile to ensure that the Nile kept the land fertile.

There's a great book called "Achilles in Vietnam" by psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who compares PTSD symptoms seen in his patients (Vietnam vets) to the descriptions of Greek soldiers experiencing psychological trauma in Homer's Iliad. It's a really interesting book -- the two main points are that PTSD is not a modern ailment but has been affecting soldiers since the beginning of history, and that honoring soldiers' experiences in a heroic narrative promotes psychological healing in numerous ways.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu describes how two feuding Chinese clans met for battle in an open field. One clan marched 100 fugitives to thier front ranks. All wielding only a knife. The opposing clan watched with cautious curiosity as the 100 fugitives cut thier own throats. The opposition was so enthralled by this gruesome sight that they never even noticed the regiment of chariot archers approaching thier left flank. The opposing clan's army was decimated by the sneak attack that was conducted in broad day light.

EDIT: okay everyone chill. Let me site my source properly. In the version of The Art of War that was edited and translated by John Minford he writes a preface depicting the book's influence on modern culture world wide. He also recounts several stories of how the philosophy of The Art of War inspired some brutal and unique tactics in Chinese history. Oopse, my bad. I promise I won't come to the history subreddit without proper sources again. Thanks for the 400/point by the way. It the most I've ever gotten.

The best resource I know would be the Albert Speer Architecture Coffee Table Book https://www.amazon.com/Albert-Speer-Architecture-Leon-Krier/dp/1580933548 which is pretty spectacular. I own it, it has all the plans. It does not come cheap but they reprint it once in a while. I think I got it for about $75.

Here you go.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mitrokhin-Archive-Europe-Penguin-History/dp/0140284877

Buy it read it, laugh your ass off. (kinda, it's over 1000 pages so it's not the easiest book in the world)

Fun fact: the CIA and MI6 have recommended reading lists. (here's the CIA's)

Brilliantly the KGB had one too. :D

The founding fathers drank. A lot. Like, take whatever you think "a lot" means to you, and triple it:

In 1787, two days before they signed off on the Constitution, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention partied at a tavern. According to the bill preserved from the evening, they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

Now go ahead and look up what goes into the alcoholic punch.

I also strongly recommend you read this book as it is literally a one-stop shop to answering your question better than any reddit response can!

Edit: About Madeira Wine in the young US: >Madeira was an important wine in the history of the United States of America. No wine-quality grapes could be grown among the thirteen colonies, so imports were needed, with a great focus on Madeira. One of the major events on the road to the American revolution in which Madeira played a key role was the British seizure of John Hancock's sloop the Liberty on May 9, 1768. Hancock's boat was seized after he had unloaded a cargo of 25 pipes (3,150 gallons) of Madeira, and a dispute arose over import duties. The seizure of the Liberty caused riots to erupt among the people of Boston.

Booze was serious business!

The Flood Story exists in the Epic of Gilgamesh. (Written somewhere between 2750 BCE and 2500 BCE)

Quick and dirty version: The Gods were angry because mankind was making too much noise. So they sent a flood. One God took pity and saved Utnapishtim's family, by warning him to give up all his earthly possessions and build a boat and carry his family and the animals in it while the gods flooded the world.

Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/620741/Utnapishtim

The Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia. It was in this campaign that the bloodiest massacres by Genghis Khan occured. Khwarezm would never rise back up as a political entity after that except for the short-lived Khorezm People's Soviet Republic.

>The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

This might be the quote Chapter 1: Laying Plans ~ The Art of War

They bought the supplies from locals, or plundered them if they ran out of money. Charlemagne and other competent Kings organized market fairs along campaign route through their own territory, and ravaged and plundered enemy territory. Prices of goods rapidly increased when troops were around, and often (as was the case in the Crusades), troops would pay for their own food. This angered them, and encouraged plunder. The entire Fourth Crusade and the diversion to Constantinople essentially occurred because the Crusader army ran out of food and money, and accepted bribes left and right from a Byzantine pretender and Venetians to do their bidding.

It wasn't until Louis XIV that anyone got the bright idea of storing large amounts of supplies and preservables around the country to prepare for campaigns. Source: The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, JF Verbruggen

Yes! I agree that it was an excellent film and I wish more people would watch it- it is still available on Netflix Streaming... In case anyone is interested in checking it out, here is a link to it...
Watch On NetFlix
I also recommend reading the book of the same name... And Here is a link for it on Amazon

Was the first recorded plague pandemic not the Antonine Plague / Plague of Galen in the 3rd Century? Maybe I'm misunderstanding some metric.

​

Anyway, for a narrative take on this devastating 6th Century event and its wider context, check out Justinian's Flea by William Rosen.

Even old games come under attack in this fashion now and then. "Chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while at the same time it affords no benefit whatever to the body" - Scientific American, 1859

12 inch wooden ruler for sure. It always worked successfully.

The famed socialist Edward Bellamy wrote an enjoyable short read called 'Looking Backward: 2000–1887' that had some enjoyable predictions on how life would be like a century in the future.

My mother in law was German. One of her brothers was a fighter pilot in the Luftwaft and disappeared over France. Another fought on the eastern front, and was kept by the Soviets in a POW camp until about 1950. Another was wounded in the battle of the bulge and left for dead. His family had a funeral for him, then three months later got a letter from him from an American POW camp. She and her sister took two weeks to trudge 130miles on foot in the winter to get to Danzig, to escape the advancing Russians. They boarded a ship, the Gustaf, to escape over to the main part of Germany, but the ship was so overcrowded that they were kicked off just before it sailed. That night the Gustaf was sunk by a Soviet sub, killing over 9000 people, mostly civilian women and children, in the worst but least known maritime disaster ever. She boarded a different ship the next day - this one made it. Edit: my mother in law’s sister actually wrote a book about her experience, here’s a link:

https://www.amazon.com/One-Bullet-Me-Journey-Through/dp/0875096786

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.

Attributed to "Hericletus c. 500 B.C." [sic] in Gabriel Suarez, The Tactical Rifle (1999). No earlier source known.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heraclitus

Apparently not real. I've always thought it odd that an ancient Greek, who were bizarrely fond of volunteer, unprofessional military forces, would say such a thing.

> The Pacific Northwest was settled long, long, long before most Polynesian Islands.

Christiana Thompson's "Sea People" is a great general-interest history book about the Polynesian settlement--so much more recent than I realized!

If you really want to get into it, I would recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-War-American-Civil-Divided/dp/1493009540

The Battle of Poltava (Peter the Great of Russia v. Swedish King Karl XII) was the conclusion to Karl's unfortunate decision to march across Russia, and the bloodiness of Sweden's defeat was the death knell to the Swedish Empire and status as a major European power. Sweden, never the most populous of European nations, relied on a smaller but professional army. Marching across scorched earth, outnumbered and withered, the Swedes were destroyed. Karl survived, and would try to reclaim Swedish power among the other Scandinavian powers in an attack on Norway, but he was shot in the head, possibly by a disgruntled Swedish soldier, or a really lucky Norwegian

I watched a one man play last year that, more or less, talked about this. It was just him talking about his experiences in war and how it effected him. But also how he sought comfort in reading and then performing Shakespeare. The most interesting part is the concept of the "berserker" as a form of PTSD. A seeking requirement towards death that leads one down a destructive path. Hence the concept of removing armor and rushing into the melee.

His concept was that Margaret of Anjou was, effectively, a P.O.W and...goes berserk later. I'm not 100% sold on it, but researching it did lead me to read Jonathan Shay's novel "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character". Which was pretty amazing to read. Comparing Achilles fall into madness to PTSD and veterans was quite interesting and helpful to me.

Here's a link to an article written by the playwright mentioned and link to the book in question

All answers are subjective, of course, but my vote for the most unlikely victor of the 20th Century would be the heavily-outnumbered US Navy at the Battle of Midway. Pacific Fleet commander Chester Nimitz received some excellent intelligence and determined to ambush a superior force, when he might easily have avoided a showdown. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."

The iconic image wasn't a crop. This is the most widely published version taken by Jeff Widener. Note how it's shot from a lower angle and the ornamental street lights hover over the road markings to the right of the tank. In the wider image, those specific lights are out of view.

At least five photographers are known to have captured images of the Tank Man confrontation. Four of those photographers were in the same building, so they look similar. The fifth, by Terril Jones, was taken from the ground and only published a few years ago. Most people haven't seen this one before.

If you like this article you have to read the book Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. It is a very comprehensive, detailed account of all of the ways drugs were used by the Germans during WWII, and man, did they use drugs. It may very well have played into how the events of the war unfolded. In particular, one topic it talks about is the "vitamin shots" Hitler received from his doctor multiple times a day. This is not new information, but this is a very detailed account. I really enjoyed this book and the article reminded me of it.

There wasn't much of a plan, and Stalin was in disbelief when Germans flooded across the border. There was resistance at first, but it was futile and really lent credence to Hitler's notion that all you had to do was kick in the door of the Soviet Union and the entire house would collapse.

Now, I may muddle some of the chronology or details here. Once it was evident that stopping Germany would take time and extensive resources. Moscow was determined to be a fortress city (to bleed out Germans in the winter of 41-42), while industry was disassembled and moved east, out of the range of the Luftwaffe. Once it was settled that Japan did not plan to invade the USSR from the east, Stalin decided to go full-fledged against Germany during and after Stalingrad.

As I said, I may be a bit off on some of the details/chronology.

For more information, check this book out: https://www.amazon.com/Barbarossa-Russian-German-Conflict-Alan-Clark/dp/0688042686

Auschwitz - The Nazi’s and the Final Solution besides being an amazing and harrowing series has interviews with a member of the Sonderkommando, really highly recommended to everyone.

The Japanese were objectively more brutal than the Americans or German/Italians during World War II. The death rate for POWs was much higher, on the scale of something like 30% in Japan versus less than 5% anywhere else.

The reason for the brutality is many-fold. Aside from the POW being considered dishonorable, which I'm sure will be covered in a different post, one big one is that's just how the Japanese disciplined. They trained and disciplined their own troops the same way: beatings, starvations, and dominance games. There were also massive shortages of food and supplies in Japan during the war. The camp staffs could sell the POWs' food and supplies on the black market for quite a bit of money. Also, the camps were a dumping ground for poor and undisciplined soldiers.

If you want primary source material on the treatment of American POWs, find the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and just read the appendix filled with numerous, numerous interviews the author did with survivors of Japanese POW camps.

"The Cuba Libre Story" on Netflix

Edit: Netflix said I would rate it 3 stars, I gave it a 4.

Like others have mentioned, not the best but a good place to start and it does focus on the tactics used by Castro and why he was able to defeat Batista.

Is there any other source aside from the ~~odyssey~~ ~~Illiad~~ odyssey (edit:I'm dumb) for the Trojan Horse? If not, it wasn't just the Horse, but the treachery involved in it being a gift that was most poignant. Why would Homer mention all of that if he was just taking poetic license in describing a siege engine?

Also, I don't think the widespread use of those siege engines in Assyria began until the 9th century bc (http://www.ancient.eu/Assyrian_Warfare/) whereas the trojan war took place about a century before that. I don't think linking this with Assyria does much to prove it was a battering ram instead of a horse.

Goldsworthy has a few good ones. Would highly recommend In the Name of Rome by him if you're interested in some recounts of major Roman battles and generals.

"Aka" (also occasionally written "AKA" or "a.k.a") simply stands for "also known as." The word "eke" predates common use of "also known as" by several hundred years.

Could it be the Archimedes Palimpsest? ^[1][2]

The Archimedes Palimpsest was a 10th century Bzyantian Greek copy of an otherwise unknown work of Archimedes and other authors. It was overwritten with a Christian religious text by 13th-century monks.

Apparently, working in the third century BCE, Archimedes consider the concept of actual infinity - a very important mathematical idea thought only to be developed in the 19th century - and anticipated calculus.

That book
https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Soldier-Guy-Sajer/dp/1574882864

Man...what an amazing book...thanks for brining back the memories. I do not recall the parts about gernades. But his personal account of his experiences on the Eastern Front...wow...

Both Bruce Clarke and Omar Bradley got detained on their failure of American trivia during the battle of the bulge. Clarke for baseball. https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Germans-use-spies-dressed-as-American-soldiers-during-the-Battle-of-the-Bulge

The Art of War, or maybe some encyclopedia about military weaponry to an early Mayan ruler.
I'd like to see how well they could defend against the Spanish if their later successors, the Aztecs, were well versed in military strategy/weaponry, or how their civilization would progress. It would be interesting to know more about the civilizations of that area.

American who went to a competitive Catholic High School here, so I might have a different experience. We initially talked about the leading up to World War II (i.e. the harsh reparations on Germany imposed from the Treaty of Versailles which was seen as a humiliation, the struggle of the economy which caused hyperinflation, the rise of Hitler, and then the recovery of Germany) and then the battles and actual events of World War II. We would discuss Nazism and dedicate a class or two to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, but the overall war and its battles were the focus of the class.

We also read Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" in our religious studies studies class, so we were kind of acquainted to absolute horror of concentration camps.

Jackson was a mixed bag. Like most of them back then.

He did work to extend the right to vote to men without land.

That was huge. He was a "Democrat" literally because he was expanding democracy back then...

Granted, that's long before the vote went to women or black folk - particularly in the south.

But allowing renters and factory workers and sons of immigrants to vote was a huge step forward, and changed the country tremendously.

Jacksonian Democracy was vitally important in US political history.

EDIT: The Wiki article for Jacksonian Democracy sucks. Replaced with encyclopedia.com article instead.

To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman is very good book on the subject and genuinely interesting read

I'm certainly not trying to get into a pissing contest so to speak, just trying to relate his experience to what an uniformed person would understand. That being said, the horrors of the gulag are nothing to be trifled with. To put it mildly, the soviets reached new lows (lows that the Nazis set), and one of the saddest things about it was that it all occurred before and after WWII. It's a shame the west didn't act when it could, but I don't blame them either.

I'd recommend you read his book (link here) and you'll see what I mean. Both systems were absolutely atrocious crimes against humanity.

The Knights of Solomon's Temple had lost Jerusalem, Acre, a fortress in Syria, and an island called Ruad (modern Arwad) off the coast of Tartus (Syria) in the ~ decade preceding their 1307 arrest.

Many escaped. Probably those with foreknowledge of the arrests. The Grandmaster obviously fancied his chances in a trial, or knew that if he fled, he would appear guilty (probably then be guilty of evading arrest).

The Templars had a tower in Paris, but they had let Philip inside it, during riots the previous year. So either he bribed someone to let his bailiffs in, or they made a copy of the key.

There is an account of the arrest in the recently released historical fiction novel, Conquest of Truth (of which I am the author).

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07QX9J923/

Well... The communists are considered another occupational force in Poland. That's why the secret service executed 50 000 Home army soldiers after the war, to prevent a serious uprising. But you're right that there is bitter irony in this. Another example is Polish RAF pilots that would return to Poland to face execution.

EDIT: grammer + The last sentence was not completely correct this link though poorly translated by google provides a more diverse picture on Polish RAF pilots after the war. They were not directly repatriated by force.

This is a popular misconception. There were horrific periods but even these were - relatively - manageable. There's a lot of new history books covering the period and redressing the balance of the 'Blackadder/Oh What A Lovely War' misconceptions. If you get the chance, have a look at "Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War" by Gordon Corrigan.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mud-Blood-Poppycock-Britain-military/dp/0304359556/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

In 1974, a scallop trawler brought up a mastadon skull and what is clearly a pre- Clovis man-made tool in over 200 feet of water in the Chesapeake Bay Area. Since most early people's likely lived in coastal areas, much of the archeological evidence is now submerged.

http://www.livescience.com/47289-mastodon-found-under-chesapeake-bay.html

There's also genetic and archeological evidence that a people related to Australian Aborigines inhabited Brazil before the Clovis people as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/americas/discoveries-challenge-beliefs-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=0

You live in Green Bay? I took his Intro to Greece and Intro to Roman history classes back in 1999/2000. Two of the best classes I ever took.

He's also got some stuff on The Great Courses that's interesting to listen to as well. I got them via Audible when I had a yearly subscription, so it was more affordable than those TGC prices..

I'm not a linguist by any means, but I found Don't Sleep, there are snakes extremely interesting. The tribe has multiple types of language (including a whistling language) and don't believe anything that they haven't seen with their own eyes... it's a fascinating book

The legendary Vinland of the Viking sagas is now considered to have been Newfoundland by many.

Carthaginians practiced blood sacrifice, including that of children. Evidence has been found to support the idea; it had previously been considered just propaganda from the Greeks and Romans, much the same as accusations of cannibalism have been used throughout history. There are still many who argue against Carthaginian child sacrifice, however.

The platypus and silverback gorilla were both considered myths for some time.

I would get him these:

https://www.amazon.com/Leonidas-Spartan-Statue-Sculpture-Figurine/dp/B01COOFAGI?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_12

https://www.amazon.com/Julius-Caesar-Military-Uniform-Statue/dp/B00EUHRIG8?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_9

Not ancient history but I recommend this book about a British diver who dived some important missions during the Falklands conflict in the 1980s.

https://www.amazon.com/Diver-Commercial-Divers-Journey-Through/dp/1574092693

I recommend reading Frederick Douglass' autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (or anything written about him for that matter) to anyone who wants to feel indignant at the institution of slavery.

This is probably my favourite passage from that book, when he describes how his master took his wages from him when he worked as a ship caulker in Baltimore: >I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it, -- not because he had any hand in earning it, -- not because I owed it to him, -- nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.

I think we'd effectively be coming back to the more meritocratic aspects of his command structure. He ensured the best men were on the job because the best men were recognized as such. I can't say if he did anything that would dramatically change it but the very notion of being more meritocratic would ultimately result in the best men being at the front of whatever part of the military force they were a part of. I have to assume, that would include the communication and logitistic branches. Promoting surviving off the fat of the land also works to The Art of War's teachings on maintaining a standing army in the land of the enemy. "1 cart of food foraged is worth 20 carts of food from home, because 19 cart loads will be used up getting it to the front line" Sun Tzu.

It could be a combination of those factors that created his success.

When you think about it it makes sense. It'd be easier to put in backwards and that would make it easier for others to notice. Also, depending on what type of round it could be mostly lead with a brass shell. Here's an image of one broken down for reference (the full round furthest left and the bullet furthest right). The back end of the bullet is slightly tapered just like the photo.

Sun Tzu understood perfectly, but /u/Heageth is misrepresenting his advice in The Art of War. What he truly says is that you should avoid fighting an enemy who has no escape because they will gladly fight to the death, and that makes them more dangerous. He never once advocates for intentionally putting your own men into that situation.

Edit: Actually, I shouldn't say that he "understood perfectly" because he also states that you should never fully surround an army, but instead give them a way out so once they realize hope is lost, they will try to take the way out and break formation, making them easy to slaughter as they try to retreat.

I wrote a research paper on Corporations and the use of force in law school. I broke the incidences down into three categories.

1) Corporations using force (generally with wilfully blind governments)

2) States employing Corporations to use force (Blackwater, etc.)

3) States using force at the behest or to benefit Corporations (generally overthrowing unfriendly governments, IE: Iran for BP)

I recommend Making a Killing

The idea that the Wehrmacht engaged in an honourable war and the SS committed the atrocities is known as the "clean wehrmacht myth". There's lots of books and sources available, some good starting points would be https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319 and https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

There's also a wikipedia page that might be more accessible on the "clean wehrmacht myth". The gist is that we needed allies for the war against communism, so we rehabilitated the German Army and let them have a scapegoat. We literally let them write the history of the war in the East.

There's Witness To War by Richard Aldrich. I bought it over 10 years ago and it's a shame that it doesn't seem to be all that widely known. It's a wonderful collection of selected passages from hundreds of diaries covering the entire period of the war in Europe. The writers of the diaries include civilians (both adults and children), soldiers, military commanders, politicians. Many of the diaries have never been published before. He also wrote a companion volume called The Faraway War that covers the Pacific Theatre of the war.

The thing about The Art of War is that everything in it is really vague and nonspecific; for example sun tsu will say something like

"food from your enemy's cart is worth twice as much than food from your own"

but nothing about how move an army across an river

There's a great passage in "When Breath Becomes Air" where the author talks about whole experience of dissecting a human body as a first year med student. There's this evolution that happens - the first day is full of tenative touches and lots of confused feelings. I was grateful someone had donated their body and I tried to treat him with the utmost respect. But as the months wear on it becomes an exhausting chore and you resent the yellow, cheesy fat that stands between you and the stupid nerve you need to find before you're allowed to go home. Damn stuff gets everywhere. Everything in the lab is coated in a thin layer of ... grease.

Then, at the end of the year, we burn our lab coats and have a memorial service for the donors. Prayers are read, reflections are shared, and everyone tries to re-capture the solemn nature of the first day.

But you can never really forget the feeling of whacking a chisel into someone's spinal column.

How anti-science the Catholic Church apparently was, citing the Galileo Affair as evidence...when the evidence wasn't too accurate as told.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-historical-event/answer/Tim-ONeill-1

> How could I hear a warning shout or some sound of impending disaster?

pretty easily actually. Ear pro reduces noise levels, not eliminates them. So if your hearing isn't completely fucked you'll still hear mostly everything

also nowadays there are fancy ear pro solutions that block out loud droning noises while letting everything else in. Soldiers are actually wearing hearing protection more and more. They use special earplugs that block out reports but allow radio comms + other sounds in https://www.amazon.com/3M-Peltor-Combat-Arms-Earplugs/dp/B000W2CPCC

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond describes a vivid story when 168 conquistadors under Francisco Pizarro slaughtered thousands of Inca warriors in one battle and captured their leader Atahualpa, later executing him and starting the destruction of the entire civilisation.

Dominance and Submission:

> On the morning of Nov. 16, 1532, the Incan Emperor Atahualpa greeted the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca. Atahualpa was surrounded by some 80,000 Indian warriors; Pizarro came accompanied only by a ragged group of 168 horsemen and foot soldiers. The meeting was ostensibly friendly, but when Atahualpa scorned an offered Bible, the Spaniards attacked. By nightfall, 7,000 Indians had been slaughtered, without the loss of a single Spanish soldier. (Atahualpa was captured alive and held for an enormous ransom of gold. When the ransom was delivered, Pizarro executed him anyway.) Within a few decades the Incan, Aztec and Mayan civilizations had crumbled, and within a few centuries 95 percent of the native population of two entire continents had disappeared as well.

e. Since I got automoderated I will add another source through Wikipedia that corroborates the story, which is written in a more elaborate language by Diamond. Hemming, John (1993). The Conquest of the Incas

The Wealth of Nations does a great job of explaining how Spain's Mercantilist economy didn't translate into true wealth. It shows how powerful trading nations like the Dutch and British were able to transition to a Capitalist economy and bully the Spanish even though they held the vast majority of gold and silver mines.

But that's wrong. The aftermath section on the very link you provided states that the Spanish retains their naval superiority. The fall of the Spanish Empire was not linked to the failures of the Spanish Armada at all. The Spanish Empire didn't even decline until the 19th century. That's long after the events of the Spanish Armada.

Your honest best bet might be to scour PBS archives, your local libraries streaming services or dvd selection etc. If you go on youtube your going to have to sift through about 100 history channel esq videos, no less then 1000 different people who can't let go of the knights templar theory, and other stuff that is a total waste of your time.

If your interested in the topic, the best and most concise history is 1491 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKVE4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 it does not touch on the Clovis very much as its more of an attempt to recreate the political and social landscape of the Indian nations prior to Columbus but you may find it helpful, it has a good bibliography it might be a good starting point. But again if your library, I know the Chicago library does, gives access to the educational streaming services or has a inner library loan agreement your going to have a far easier time finding what your looking for without some off the wall theories.

The fact that no one in the West even knew that The Art of War existed until the 18th century (when it was first translated into French) is itself a clear indication that Hannibal Barca could not have possibly read The Art of War, nor even knew of its existence.

My favorite story about the Soviet Union is that in a two year period from november 1917 to november 1919 the New York Times reported that the Soviet leadership was about to be overthrown or actually overthrown no less than 91 times. They reported four times that Lenin and Trotsky were planning to flee the country, and three times they reported that they already had fled. They also reported that Lenin had been thrown in prison three times, that he was considering retiring two times and that he had been killed one time.

Source: A Test of the News - by Charles Merz and Walter Lippmann

I think you're making a joke, but there's actually a really interesting book with that title that goes over Carthage's history and Phoenician origins.

​

If anyone has even a passing curiosity about Carthage beyond the surface level you learn reading about Hellenistic history, that book is probably one of the best.

​

Title of the book is Carthage Must Be Destroyed in case the previous post goes away.

The invention of the restaurant as we know it today: somewhere where you sit at an individual table and order from a set of options made to order on a menu, originated in 18th century France, before the French Revolution. Prior to that eating out consisted of the kind of hawker stalls mentioned elsewhere in the thread dating back probably as far as cities, or travelers inns and pubs where a set meal would be served communally at set times.

Around the late 18th century in France it became fashionable to have dietary restrictions and only be able to eat certain foods (sound familiar?) So those who were sensitive dined on broths or "restaurateurs". But because broths are very labor intensive to prepare so an entrepreneur (forgot his name) opened up a novel concept: a dining space where you had your own table, could arrive at any time, and order from a variety of different broths which could be served to you at any time. It also had the added distinction of you showing your sensitive and refined palatte in a public space giving you social cred. More opened and the menus expanded beyond the original broths.

Right on the eve of the French revolution restaurants became gathering points and centers of fraternity.

Rebecca Spang wrote the definitive account of the subject in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Restaurant-Gastronomic-Culture-Historical/dp/0674006852

The noise was bothering me like hell, so I ran a couple noise reduction processes and added some very slight EQing (raising mostly the mids so you can understand him better): https://clyp.it/f1npsi4z

Edit: For the Ctrl+f people: FIXED AUDIO

I don't know. It's from this account in The New Yorker:

“Before leaving, I had accepted death,” he said. “At a certain moment, this happens. One hopes not to die cruelly, but one expects to die anyway. Not death by machete, one hopes, but with a bullet. If you were willing to pay for it, you could often ask for a bullet. Death was more or less normal, a resignation. You lose the will to fight. There were four thousand Tutsis killed here at Kacyiru”—a neighborhood of Kigali. “The soldiers brought them here, and told them to sit down because they were going to throw grenades. And they sat.

“Rwandan culture is a culture of fear,” Nkongoli went on. “I remember what people said.” He adopted a piping voice, and his face took on a look of disgust. “ ‘Just let us pray, then kill us,’ or ‘I don’t want to die in the street, I want to die at home.’ ”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/12/18/after-the-genocide

Another account from the New York Times:

"People in pain were told that they would be finished off quickly with a bullet if they paid money. There were children crying over the bodies of their dead parents."

https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/melvern-betrayed.html

Caesar also wrote an account of the Civil War, in three books. He wrote some of it, along with a number of other individuals around him at the time also contributing.

Link: Caesar: The Civil War

Just finished a three volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt). He was actually one of the most accomplished speakers of his day, even Woodrow Wilson wished at times he had the oratory skills of Roosevelt. The recording is accurate according to what I've read; his voice would often break into high-pitched falsettos, and his sentences would rise and fall exactly like the audio. This particular recording was made during his 1912 presidential campaign when he split with Republicans and formed the Progressive Party, or Bull-Moose as it is commonly known.

Fun fact: it was during this campaign that he was shot in a failed assassination attempt. The bullet, fired at point blank range, was stopped by a folded speech he had in his pocket and his steel glasses case. After being shot he stuffed a handkerchief against his bleeding chest and proceeded to give his intended speech for almost an hour. At one point, he even ripped open his shirt, showed the audience his wound, and proclaimed "It takes more than that to kill a Bull-Moose!"

The guy was a badass.

EDIT: Formatting

If you’re like me you want a single book that covers a lot of topics - I would highly recommend The Earth Is Weeping

It’s a comprehensive study of the Indian Wars in the American West, from about 1850 to 1895. This is the period that most people are familiar with as it falls into the “Western” period.

Documented native history goes back well before then obviously. We often forget, because they have been so thoroughly wiped out, that ALL of America was once inhabited by different tribes. The written history of the tribes in my home region of the Kankakee river valley spans the 1670s to 1840s, and I have been absolutely amazed at how cool it is to learn the history of my own home region. I highly highly recommend doing the same. If you can tell us what region you’re from, I can try to point out some resources.

"The Art of War in the Western World" is an excellent read if you have any interest in how and why tactics were used in basically every major conflict. It does a good job at comparing modern tactics to ancient tactics, and analyzes why commanders acted the way they did, how their ways compared to predecessors, why they were (un-)successful, and what could have been done to alter the outcome.

The site you linked is the only site I can find that makes that claim, has no direct citation for that statement, and the other claims to that end reference that site. Most historical considerations of infantry in mongol forces deal with infantry as part of vassal armies under the mongol empire, not as part of the mongol units themselves.

We have people like Richard A. Gabriel explicitly stating that "There were no organic mongol infantry units." He does go on to say that units from conquered peoples would be pressed into service for specific campaigns, but he indicates that a purely mongol force would have no infantry, summing it up by saying that infantry generally played only a small role in mongol tactics. This is generally supported by other sources as well: Infantry almost always was from vassal states or subject peoples. Subutai's campaign against the Russian Steppes, for instance, was in essence a massive cavalry raid.

You might of course say that if they were fighting on behalf of the mongol armies, then they would be considered part of the army. But I would say that we still differentiate the Roman Legions and the Roman Auxilia, despite that being a very similar kind of relationship.

https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Mark-Twain-Readers-Papers/dp/0520272250/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=7E6SRFKVQNFAW2BXHCHV

Sorry about the format, I'm on my phone.

There are three volumes, and this is the first one. There seem to be two pathways you can take - the "reader's edition", and the "complete edition". I got the non-reader's edition for volume one, and there is a metric shitload of sources, comments by various academics/Twain scholars, etc in there.

I'm decidedly not an academic, and didn't really enjoy the extras - I just want to read the great man's words. I bought the reader's editions for volumes 2 and 3 and don't feel like I'm missing anything.

Your milage may vary, of course.

If you remember, please drop me a line and tell me what you think!

The site is open. It's name is "Open Culture". It's mission is:

>Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It's all free. It's all enriching. But it's also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it.

​

Anyone intrigued by this thread might want to read Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It describes a man transported to medieval England who gradually rebuilds important parts of modern technology. It deals with 19th-century technology and medieval times, but the general concept is similar.

EDIT: The book is available for free on Project Gutenberg.

Yep they were, in fact this was one of the earliest an largest signs of British superiority in the intelligence sector. Come WWII the British taught the OSS (WWII prelude to the CIA) all the tricks in the trade.

I actually wrote my undergrad dissertation on this, if anyone cares Anglo-American Intelligence Relations 1910-1945

Edit: Wow, 100 views in one day on my paper. It's now one of the most viewed papers on Academia for it's category :). Thank you for taking such an interest.

I read The Last Navigator about 10 years ago, I don't remember much off hand but it was very good and about this very thing.

The description from Amazon > > As a young man piloting a small sailboat across the Pacific, Steve Thomas developed a fascination with ancient methods of navigation. He learned of a seafaring culture which 6,000 years ago, used arcane navigation arts to guide initiates unerringly across the Pacific wih no compasses, no charts. By the time of Christ, these navigators were pushing on through all of Oceania, populating nearly a quarter of the Earth's surface. Thomas ventured to the tiny coral atolls of Micronesia in search of these mysteries, this ancient language of the sea. There he found the last navigator. > > Mau Piailug, one of the last surviving palu, belongs to a dying breed of navigators who used only natural signs--stars, waves, birds--to guide their sailing canoes across thousands of miles of open ocean. > > Thomas and Piailug voyage together on the frail ship of human memory in an attempt to preserve for future generaions an ancient, mysterious, and beautiful kinship with the sea before it is lost forever. Theirs is an unforgettable journey. >

I read a really great book about the Gothic people's (called The Story of the Goths) that goes into a lot of detail on this. Particularly the final chapters covering Dark Age Spain will really give you a feel. There is an extended period of a few hundred years where there is a great deal of tension between the Visigoth barbarians and Spanish Romans, lots of it focused around religion. I'd recommend the book if you want to dig in more. The Audible book is great.

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Goths-Illustrated-Henry-Bradley-ebook/dp/B00E9CLY1O

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=7MBS44E7C3EG574XJWYN

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a really great historical text on Hitler's life and WW2, focusing on Hitler's politics more than it ever looks at the war itself. It explains a lot of what you just covered with Hitler's early annexings of areas that had large amounts of ethnic Germans in them.

Basically, Hitler was doing what Vladimir Putin did when he annexed Crimea. Claim "there's so many Germans/Russians living there, they should be apart of our country!" and then invade it and hope the rest of the world lets you get away with it.

If you are looking specifically at the history of the penal colonies, try Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore. I read it some time ago and enjoyed it quite a bit.

N.B. Hughes is an Aussie and no fan of the British.

The Last Lion by William Manchester. A great biography of Winston Churchill. Basically, anything by Manchester is going to be good, but The Last Lion, especially volume II is excellent.

Also, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris is very good

True but Chaplin also regretted making it.

"The Great Dictator was a commercial success. Later, Chaplin regretted it being so funny. He insisted that had he known about the Nazi’s industrialized murder of the Jews, he “wouldn’t have made the film.”"

Source

Do I ever! Everyone knows that Meyer was a Washington DC socialite, painter, former wife of CIA official Cord Meyer and close friend of US president John F. Kennedy who was noted for her great beauty and social skills.

Terry A. Davis - A schizophrenic computer scientist who created his own computer operating system from scratch (Temple OS)

No, it's a child's "chapter book". The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman. At least, this is the one I read. https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Boy-Sid-Fleischman/dp/0060521228/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Whipping+Boy&qid=1568338555&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sr=1-1

Yeah I got first wind of this when reading Lincoln's Melancholy and there are some very personal (but not sexual) letters between Lincoln and Speed. To be fair it was very common for lawyers on the same circuit to share accommodation, so that shouldn't be taken as evidence, but some people point to Lincoln's extremely close friendship to Speed (his depression would recur when Speed was away, etc) and relative "detachment" from women, and think there could be more there. Be wary if you go reading into it because there's some letters/diaries out there that are definite hoaxes.

edit to add: Here is an example of one of the letters, unfortunately I can't find the one I'm thinking of where Lincoln expresses depression from missing Speed. You'll see that it indicates a very close relationship (where Lincoln straight up asks Speed if he regrets getting married) but not necessarily romantic. That said, it's clear they confided intimately in each other.

Here are some specific books they are known to have read: *History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
*Life of Alexander the Great, Quintus Curtius Rufus
*The Gallic War & The Civil War, Julius Caesar (which is available as a free download and still an interesting read, by the way, as are most of these because no copyright)
*Lives, Plutarch
*Annals & Histories, Tacitus
*Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
*Meditations, Marcus Aurelius *The Aeneid, Virgil

"Newer" books written less than 100 years before their time:
*History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbons
*An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government, John Locke
*The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu
*Candide, Voltaire
*Guilliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
*Trsitram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

That's definitely a television. The dials are likely located on the side opposite the camera, as can be seen in these examples.

Hinduism literally covers every thought, and then some more ...

from: rgveda (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rigveda) >Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.