Reading Still Matters

I finally got around to digging into the fall of the Roman Empire. No, I didn’t read Edward Gibbon’s famous study of the decline and fall of said Roman Empire. Instead, I picked something more recent.   There has been so much new archeology, so much new scientific work on the classical period, that I thought it made sense to read something more contemporary.   I will get to Gibbon someday. Purchase at The Fall of the Roman Empire at Amazon :  https://amzn.to/45tMQT3   Instead, I read The Fall of the Roman Empire, by historian Peter Heather.   In this major reconsideration of the history the collapse of the western Roman Empire, Heather argues that Rome did not fall because of the decline of Roman martial virtue, internal moral decay or economic collapse, or even the spread of Christianity. Instead, Heathers argues that centuries of Roman friction with the Germanic peoples across the Rhine transformed neighboring these tribes into economically more advanced, ...

I finally got around to reading The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land  by medieval historian Thomas Asbridge.  The Crusades is a sweeping, authoritative single-volume history of the holy wars fought between Western European Christians and Near Eastern Muslims from 1095 to 1291. In my humble opinion, this single volume history of the crusades is the best place to start if you want to dig into the history and learn more about the era. See it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/43YO3kH And I do think the history of the crusades is very relevant to the world of today. With ongoing conflict in the middle east, the crusades often is deployed by leaders, political pundits and propagandists on various sides of the conflict. Politicians and propagandists both distort facts for their respective arguments and pushes, and so its great to have a good foundation in the actual facts. And Asbridge does a great job of setting out the 200-year history of the crusades, from the motivations of west...

Greystone Books recently sent me Buffalo Lessons: How Bison Returned to Banff National Park by the late wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer.  Buffalo Lessons chronicles the remarkable story of the reintroduction of wild bison to the Canadian Rockies in 2017. For thousands of years, plains bison roamed the mountains of what would become Alberta until hunting pushed them completely out of the area and almost to extinction. Buy it on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/4441T5d I was excited to read this book because Banff National Park is just down the road from me, and I followed the reintroduction of the bison into the Park closely. But like all news reporting, the story was fragmented and I never really heard much about the bison after that initial period of their introduction. And so, I was really looking forward to reading about the entire story. The book itself is relatively short, written for a general audience and includes a lot of beautiful photographs of bison in the area, as well ...

I recently read The Guns of August by the late Barbara W. Tuchman. It’s a book that I have always wanted to read, since this Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative history book has been read and reviewed glowingly by so many history fans!  How many history books written in the early 1960s are still talked about in such glowing terms? Not many, that’s for sure. See it on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/4eKM1cJ By way of overview, The Guns of August provides a detailed, dramatic account of the prelude to and the opening month of World War I, tracking the diplomatic failures and ultimately the military maneuvers of August 1914 up to the first battle of the Marne.   Tuchman opens the book with the 1910 funeral of King Edward VII, which served as a grand gathering of Europe's royalty and masked the underlying geopolitical rivalries. The men and women that would soon be lined up against each other in the trenches, visited London for the funeral.   Its amazing to think it was just 4...

Before & After Alexander is a work of history that challenges the traditional, highly romanticized "great man" myth of Alexander the Great.  Yes, it’s true.  Columbia University professor Richard A. Billows attempts a take down of the world’s greatest general, all by analyzing the geopolitics of the ancient world before his birth and after his sudden death. Notably, he mostly skips the period of Alexander’s time as general of the armies of Macedon. Buy it on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/43MlHtX But let’s dig in a bit.   Alexander can basically be split into two parts, with a short part that acts as a pivot in the middle.    The first part is all about the formation of Macedon prior to Alexander’s time as king, and primarily during the period when Alexander’s father Philip built Macedon into a regional power. In fact, there is a great deal of information on the development of Macedon from a historical perspective, including political, cultural and military...

If you are looking to read nonfiction history that is enlightening and entertaining the here are five great places to start that history reading journey!  Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard is a highly acclaimed historical book that explores the Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1715–1725). Moving past Hollywood tropes, Woodard frames the historic Republic of Pirates as a deliberate, social-political uprising against the brutal colonial powers of the British and Spanish Empires. I liked this one because it used the Pirates' base in the Bahamas as a focal point to framing a story, rather than just going through a list or a chronology of famous pirates.   Buy it on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/4xhlCfd Fall of Berlin by Antony Beevor The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor is an authoritative, meticulously researched military history book tha...