Your Favorite History Books About Ancient Times through 1066 AD

[mn dave]

Thanks!

[springrite]

My Chinese standard that's almost like contemporary history!

[mn dave]

My Chinese standard that's almost like contemporary history!

!

[Wanderer]

.[asin]0394537785[/asin][asin]0394537793[/asin]

[Ken B]

Probably Rubicon by Tom Holland, which does a very good job with the fall of the Roman Republic, which requires more explanation than it usually gets.

Holland has written several excellent books. Millenium and In the Shadow of the Sword.

Peter Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire and Bryan Ward-Perkins The Fall of Rome are great but a bit more academic in tone.

I like several books on the origins of christianity and islam (I like tragedies and tales of disaster.) For a an introduction to the issue on islam Holland's Shadow is best, for christianity Ehrman Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet .

[mn dave]

Probably Rubicon by Tom Holland, which does a very good job with the fall of the Roman Republic, which requires more explanation than it usually gets.

I have one of his. He used to write historical horror novels in the '90s, but I think his straight history has made him more famous.

[kishnevi]

Thucydides still is one of the best historians who ever wrote.
I am hard pressed to think of a modern writer on that time period I like unreservedly.  My favorites all wrote on the modern world...Manchester's biography of  Churchill (the two volumes he actually wrote)Schama's chronicle of Revolutionary France, Prescott's histories of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and Peru,  McCullough's history of the Panama Canal and several others of his books...Norwich's history of Venice falls mostly outside this thread's ambit.

[Ken B]

Thucydides still is one of the best historians who ever wrote.
I am hard pressed to think of a modern writer on that time period I like unreservedly.  My favorites all wrote on the modern world...Manchester's biography of  Churchill (the two volumes he actually wrote)Schama's chronicle of Revolutionary France, Prescott's histories of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and Peru,  McCullough's history of the Panama Canal and several others of his books...Norwich's history of Venice falls mostly outside this thread's ambit.

Huge huge plus for the Schama, but not what we were asked for!
I think you would like The German Dictatorship by KD Bracher though Jeffrey. Probably my first choice in history, but I have a lot of favorites in history.

Added. Bracher is a little demanding. It analyzes the Nazi seizure of control and assume a certain ready knowledge of the history and the names. A more approachable book is Evans.

I have one of his. He used to write historical horror novels in the '90s, but I think his straight history has made him more famous.

Yes, that's him.

[bwv 1080]

A few recent reads:

[mn dave]

Thanks! Keep 'em coming.

[drogulus]

     

     
     Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age

     
     

[drogulus]

     

     A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State

     

[Ken B]

     

     A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State

   

I liked that one a lot more than his Closing. Rubenstein, How Jesus became God is better though.

[drogulus]

Thucydides still is one of the best historians who ever wrote.
I am hard pressed to think of a modern writer on that time period I like unreservedly.  My favorites all wrote on the modern world...Manchester's biography of  Churchill (the two volumes he actually wrote)Schama's chronicle of Revolutionary France, Prescott's histories of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and Peru,  McCullough's history of the Panama Canal and several others of his books...Norwich's history of Venice falls mostly outside this thread's ambit.

You're absolutely right about Thucydides. He was in the intellectual circle around Pericles (Phidias, Sophocles, Aspasia, Anaxagoras and others) and his approach bears a distinctly philosophical imprint.

Citizens is another favorite of mine. I read it twice. Read it then watch the film Danton.

Manchester wrote great books on Churchill, I loved them both. Manchester thinks Churchill was right about Gallipolli. I think he was, too.

[Octave]

Re: Thucydides, is there a superior English translation of HPW?  I rely on THE LANDMARK THUCYDIDES because I dig the maps and other contextual apparatus for students.  No idea how its editing and translation rate against others.

[drogulus]

     I have the Penguin Classics paperback, a 1972 revised edition of the 1954 translation by Rex Warner.

     I saw the landmark book at the Harvard Coop some time back and wanted it, but I got something else and time marches on.

     Robert Kagan (of the warmongering Kagans ) wrote a modern history of the war if you want a contemporary interpretation, which I did.

[jochanaan]

The Bible 

[kishnevi]

I have the Kagan...found it in the local used bookstore but have yet to read a page of it.
My copy of Thucydides is a Modern Library paperback I bought a mort of years ago...the Finley translation if you go looking on Amazon (although my precise edition does not seem to be there) which also has the Landmark edition, and Landmark editions of Xenophon's Hellenika, which picks up where Thucydides stopped, and Arrian.  Those guys I have in the Penguin versions.

[kishnevi]

The Bible 

I have seen books devoted to the argument that whoever wrote the original version of the Book of Samuel was the world's first historian, and a very good one at that.

[Ken B]

I have the Kagan...found it in the local used bookstore but have yet to read a page of it.
My copy of Thucydides is a Modern Library paperback I bought a mort of years ago...the Finley translation if you go looking on Amazon (although my precise edition does not seem to be there) which also has the Landmark edition, and Landmark editions of Xenophon's Hellenika, which picks up where Thucydides stopped, and Arrian.  Those guys I have in the Penguin versions.

I couldn't get into Kagan. Still have it, might try again. Thucydides is great but Herodotus is rather more fun.