(Part 2) Best history & criticism books according to redditors
We found 387 Reddit comments discussing the best history & criticism books. We ranked the 141 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
How to Judge a Book Without Even Reading It
Do you think librarians read all those books they buy?? Heck no. Yes, collection development librarians rely heavily on library review journals, but you can pretty successfully judge a book before you even read the intro. And how!
1. Try a Little Intellectual Snobbery
Basically with this you need to try to smell out the people who are saying “I’m not a historian but…” when they start their books. Who wrote this thing and why? Is this a historian going for tenure, is this maybe a historian trying to write more popular history, is this a historian at the end of their life putting out a magnum opus, is this a journalist? Who published it, academic press or regular press? Does this person have Something to Prove with this history book?
Now, I’m a little leery of recommending this method first, because I’ve seen some pretty shitty books published by big academic houses from heavily degreed people, and I’ve seen some very nice historical work put out by tiny publishers you’ve never heard of or self-published, and written by people who just decided to write a book because they cared deeply about the history of something that few others cared about. Good work absolutely stands on its own merits, and independent scholars are important animals in the academic ecosystem. But there is a correlation here, and not necessarily a causation, between academics working with academic publishing houses and the production of rigorous history, and you can lean on it a little.
2. Give it the Vulcan Citations Pinch
Flip to the back of the book. Where does the actual book stop and the endmatter start? Basically the more endmatter the better. You want maybe a good solid half centimeter of paper between your fingers, preferably more. If you start seeing appendices in addition to citations and index that’s very good.
3. Scope-to-Cred Ratio
This one’s hard to quantify but basically, the more modest the book’s scope the more modest of arguments and credentials the author needs to pull it off. So a book about say the importance of paperback books for soldiers in WWII, this is a pretty modest scope, and it’s not making any very bold claims, there’s no real reason to be suspicious about the arguments made in this book, although it’s absolutely a popular history work. A book trying to explain the history of everything, get suspicious.
4. Read the Intro
Okay after the first three bits you’ve decided this book has merited your attention enough to open the thing. The intro to a book should give you the outline of the major argument and you can decide whether the argument passes a basic smell test of not being total bullshit. If you find the argument compelling and you want to see how they are going to argue it in the knitty gritty, it’s time to commit to checking out/buying the book and seeing what’s up. (Intros are usually available for new books on Google Books or Amazon previews.)
4b. Read the Acknowledgments
You can tell a lot about a person from their acknowledgments section. I’ve seen books where the author specifically thanked the ILL staff of their local library. They should ideally be thanking an archives or two if it’s a modern history book, because that means they’ve done Real Research.
5. Have a Good Idea of How One Does History
This one takes a little time investment, but having a basic idea of what makes a good historical argument and what makes a bad one will serve you well for judging any history book, from any topic. Maybe just spend some time on the logical fallacies section of Wikipedia. Just knowing to run away when you hear someone start yammering about glorious progress or indulging in extended hero-worship will serve you remarkably well in the history section at Barnes and Noble.
6. Nothing Wrong with Reading a Bad Book
Okay, so you did all this pre-judgement and you still managed to read a real turd. Ah well. You always can learn a lot from something done poorly. They’re a certain grim joy in hating a bad book, especially if you get to feel smarter than an author, so just treat yourself to a really firm critical dismissal of the work. Maybe leave a real stinker of a review here on a Saturday or /r/badhistory.
It's amazing to me that after all this time and after so many people analyzing the books word-for-word we are still finding things like this from books published years ago. I've read a lot of stuff and this is the first I've seen this. I kind of wish there was a version of the books where everything was annotated like a Shakespeare play or a companion guide like they have for Joyce novels like Finnegans Wake that makes note of every little thing. I know there are podcasts and blogs but how cool would a book like that be?
If I could go back in time as a senior in high school, above all, I would just do more reading, and I would read widely. I did not start on the path to English teaching until I was 26, and although I did great in college and I feel that I am a successful teacher now, my weakness is my reading background. I would suggest using an app like Goodreads so that you can track your progress as you chip away at the literary canon, work by work. The texts that are going to help you the most and serve you for the rest of your career are the ones that most authors allude to, so, I would suggest that at some point you familiarize yourself with these from a literary standpoint:
As far as resources that will give you a head start, I suggest:
Considering pedagogy resources, by the time you are in an education program, there will be new research and new buzzwords, so I won't waste my time here, but these are my favorite resources when it comes to inspiring my teaching:
Lastly, if you go into an English education program with a near-perfect understanding of grammar, your life will be so much easier. I suggest these three resources for brushing up:
Good luck, and let me know if you have questions! If you do anything on this list, just read!
Take a look at Books Are Made Out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy's Literary Influences. You'll get a lot of insight there.
My man, this book was written for you.
https://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Shining-Reading-Classics/dp/141659616X
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You can get the gist of it in this interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQHxJQrg1E
But I do highly recommend the book as the authors use Wallace in the same way you described. They ultimately contrast Moby Dick to Infinite Jest and suggest the answer to the meaning crisis might share something in common with the worldview of the Iliad.
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I'll check out your essay on Monday when I have the time.
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1001 books to read before you die
this is where i get a lot of mine from
i've got the actual book. it's got a brief summary of each of the 1001 books
What is it you're looking for, if you feel like books on writing won't help?
If it's academic writing in particular that you want to improve, why not look at something like
People of the Book is almost pornography for bibliophiles. This book had me seriously considering going back to school to learn about document preservation.
I went through a period of wanting to read a lot of books about books about a year ago. I think I even have an old submission in r/books on the same subject. Here are a bunch of books I still have on my amazon wishlist that date to around that time. This will be a shotgun blast of suggestions, and some may be only tangentially related, but I figure more is better. If I can think of even more than this, I'll edit later:
The Man who Loved Books Too Much
Books that Changed the World
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
How to Read and Why
The New Lifetime Reading Plan
Classics for Pleasure
An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books
The Library at Night
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
Time Was Soft There
I have even more around here somewhere...
Edit: Ok, found a couple more....
Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter in the 21st Century
At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries
Candida Hofer
Libraries in the Ancient World
The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read
A Short History of the Printed Word
Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption
Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work
The Book on the Bookshelf
A History of Illuminated Manuscripts
Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production
Library: An Unquiet History
Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms
A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
And yet I still can't find the one I'm thinking of. Will get back to you...
Fuck yeah, I found it!
That last is more about the woman who own the store than about books, but it's awash in anecdotes about writers and stories we all know and love. Check it out.
People do need something to live for and meaning. And that meaning can't come just from working and making money and buying shit.
Not saying you have to turn to god though either. You should read the book
https://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Shining-Reading-Classics/dp/141659616X
Interesting philosophy book.
Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a very accessible introduction to thinking about literature in a way that blends narratology and semiotics. It generally sticks pretty closely to talking about the stories he has in mind, so I wished while reading it that I'd had a copy of Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie on hand, among others.
David Lodge's The Art of Fiction used to be popular as a supplementary textbook in creative writing classes because it just uses nice examples to provide a basic language for talking about literature.
John Sutherland has a number of books intended for a general audience that either introduce basic concepts of literary criticism or that just make careful reading fun, e.g. How Literature Works, A Little History of Literature, and The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction (an omnibus edition of the books he's probably most well known for).
Gaston Bachelard comes to mind as someone who, like Gass, is just a delight to read: The Poetics of Space, Air and Dreams, etc. I'd put some other writers writing about their personal relationships to reading in a similar category: Nicholson Baker, U and I; Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary; and even Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.
I mean, you really need to be reading anthologies to get a basis of the poetic tradition and then move on to individual books. While individual books of poetry help you get a sense of each writer, getting a taste of many poets throughout many periods is the only way to really become well versed (pun-intended). Also, part of the way to learn how to read poetry more critically is learn how to write poetry, or at least what goes into writing poetry. And my personal advice is to purposefully read poetry that is hard for you to grasp or find interest in, whether that be due to understanding or content (e.g. Yeats and his faeries don’t interest me in the slightest).
Theory/Reading Critically:
American:
Other:
Source: Have a Master’s Degree in poetry and currently working on my MFA. My expertise is in 20th & 21st Century American Poetry, particularly post-War/post-45.
For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:
Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus
You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.
I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.
I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.
Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs
Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs
Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.
That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.
The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.
Athenaze: Book 1
Athenaze: Book 2
Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube
Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.
Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.
Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:
*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)
Plato: A Transitional Reader
Kaegi’s Greek Grammar
Smyth’s Greek Grammar
Plato Apology
Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners
Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader
Basics of Biblical Greek
A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek
Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES
Maybe instead of some random book, give her a book journal. I think it makes a great gift for avid readers.
https://smile.amazon.com/Book-Lovers-Journal-Reading-Organizer/dp/1441304827/ref=sr_1_3?crid=DY4YPNAX9CDB&keywords=book+journal&qid=1559239946&s=gateway&sprefix=Book+j%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-3
These are the books we used in my creative writing classes a couple years ago:
On Writing Short Stories
The Everyday Writer
The Art of Fiction
I highly recommend On Writing Short Stories. The other two were ok, in my opinion, but this one is pretty much a "one stop shop" that I still use today.
It is a major undertaking, and this sounds strange that you might want to read a book to interpret another book but I'd also recommend the Tindall guide as a companion. It helped me through it.
While it's not specifically about modern literature, I would suggest Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I would also recommend The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism and finally Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction.
As for stream-of-consciousness, it can be beautiful when executed artfully, but excruciating when done ham-handedly. If you want an excellent example of s-o-c narration, look no further than To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. No other author so expertly captures the inner life of the mind.
Do you like the idea of a suitcase? Because you could still make a book/suitcase with pics and everything, put those few books in there and put this in there too:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lovers-Journal-Diary-Notebook-Organizer/dp/1441304827. you can write the list in there and she can make notes or use it as her book journal :)
Those are questions with many different and widely debated answers. This book by Habib, Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History, and this one by Parker, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, are two fine resources. Parker's book is a little more basic and introductory.
I hope that helps.
Why not go one better?
I'll give you a few suggestions based on what I've read.
A good introductory book that covers many different literary theories is Peter Barry's Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Theory-Introduction-Literary-Cultural/dp/0719079276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452013996&sr=8-1&keywords=beginning+theory). His chapters on Cultural Studies and New Historicism, as well as the other chapters, are very accessible.
Robert Dale Parker's How To Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies (http://www.amazon.com/How-Interpret-Literature-Critical-Literary/dp/0199331162/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1452014126&sr=8-8&keywords=cultural+studies) focuses on major literary movements since the 1930s, and it is one of the more accessible books about the newer forms of literary theory.
Catherine Gallagher's Practicing New Historicism (http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-New-Historicism-Catherine-Gallagher/dp/0226279359/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452014436&sr=8-1&keywords=new+historicism) is an excellent and easy-to-follow-without-being-condescending introduction to this area of literary theory.
	
	
	
> # 3 medidas de Maduro que cercaron a la banca en Venezuela
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> Por Caleb Zuleta (KonZ).- Indices de adecuación patrimonial. Encaje legal. Ajuste de los créditos al tipo de cambio de oficial. Todo atenta contra la banca. Contra el crédito. De modo que las empresas, el comercio, lo que aún queda en Venezuela, se encuentran en problemas para conseguir financiamiento.
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> Lo dice el reciente análisis de Consecomercio. Enumera el gremio de los comerciantes los factores que han restringido el crédito para la industria y el comercio. “En el transcurso de 2017 y gran parte de 2018, el crecimiento de la cartera de créditos del sistema financiero venezolano estuvo restringido por los índices de adecuación patrimonial que debían cumplir los bancos. No obstante, a finales de 2018, los considerables incrementos en el tipo de cambio oficial aliviaron –parcialmente- este problema”.
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> > Y aquí viene el punto. “Según cifras de Ecoanalítica, la banca venezolana se encuentra en capacidad de prestar sólo el 19% de los depósitos que recibe, lo que implica una restricción importante en la disponibilidad de créditos para los distintos sectores de la economía venezolana, especialmente, el comercio y de servicios”.
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> Esto por un lado. Según se lee en el Informe Económico, Perspectivas 2020, elaborado por la Comisión de Economía de Consecomercio. Señala que “2019 comenzó con un nuevo desafío para la banca venezolana: a mediados de febrero entró en vigencia un nuevo sistema de encajes legales, que consta de un encaje ordinario -de 57% de las captaciones del público- y uno marginal -de 100% de las reservas excedentarias-. En consecuencia, la capacidad de intermediación se vio mermada. Y de manera considerable”.
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> Y aquí viene el punto. “Según cifras de Ecoanalítica, la banca venezolana se encuentra en capacidad de prestar sólo el 19% de los depósitos que recibe, lo que implica una restricción importante en la disponibilidad de créditos para los distintos sectores de la economía venezolana, especialmente, el comercio y de servicios”.
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> KonZapata consultó algunos banqueros y en el mejor de los casos, uno solo de ellos admitió que la cartera de su banco alcanzaba el 23%. Parece un récord en estos tiempos.
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> Señala el escrito que “a finales de octubre, el BCV oficializó la implementación de un nuevo esquema de ajuste del valor de los créditos comerciales en la misma proporción de los incrementos del tipo de cambio oficial. Según Juan Carlos Dao, presidente de Bancaribe, la banca en su conjunto ha desembolsado muy pocos créditos desde la entrada en vigencia de esta medida”.
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> [Image](https://konzapata.com/fotos/1/9669_DlDWzN9XoAAYlo3_thumb_675.jpg)
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> Cada semana que pasa los alertas crecen en volumen...
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> Leer más
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> Concluye el análisis señalando que “la dificultad de pronosticar el comportamiento del tipo de cambio en un entorno de incesante volatilidad macroeconómica ha restringido aún más las posibilidades de financiamiento para las empresas venezolanas”.
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> [Image](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41rN68jtyxL.jpg)
If this is a question about which you have given some thought, I recommend The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski.
^(Me, I want rolling, single-aisle storage bookcases but I have no idea where to get them. In the mean time, any organization I once had died several moves ago. I'm just glad I have an electronic record of what books I own.)
Why Poetry, By Matthew Zapruder.
(A) I can't fully vouch for this book, haven't read it thru and thru yet.
(B) I just picked it up literally 2 days ago.
(C) In the bookstore though, the flap, intro and a few random samplings seemed to make it a reasonable read.
He doesnt' take on an acedemic stance about rhyme and meter and iambic pentameters etc, but talks more about how we tend to read poems, how we've culturally beeen trained to read poems, and offers some strategy on how to break down the language and motifs.
So it seems.
That's all I got for you.
English Lit 101?
Don't show him this.
Forsitan Rouse's Greek Boy te adiuvet, amice/a.
Sometimes when I feel inclined to growl, it comes out in the mildest statements made by Marxists.
Alas. I'm not quite Canadian enough to believe Marshall McLuhan's arguments are organized enough to qualify as human speech (or writing), and further don't have the energy to paraphrase his argument.
And nobody knows who Thomas Nashe is anymore, and to a certain extent that is a good thing. Same with Thomas Wolfe (if you're a fan, I'm very sorry).
McLuhan's book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Classical-Trivium-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584230673
He was pretty young when he did this one, his specialty still teaching literature.
The McLuhan that knew Leary and Watts was decades later, after McLuhan had made a name for himself as founder of a department of technogy and communications at a university in Toronto. He was invited to an academic post in New York, but refused it.
One way to control the media is to own it. And the viewership numbers for a lot of traditional media outlets is in free fall.
I am sure that McLuhan, Watts, and Leary consulted with each other. Leary saw some stuff he was not supposed to see regarding the JFK assasination and was lucky to have lived. McLuhan lived on happily in his head. Watts had reason to be a little depressed at the end, but he had had a good run.
McLuhan hated new age stuff, privately. But he had some fun with the electronic and psychedelic styles, maybe even with hallucinogens, their affect on time and perception. He was fascinated with perception. How technology alters it. One way or other, intelligence departments would have been picking his brain. I know he consulted the Canadian government as well. He was a loyal Canadian, and a declared Catholic. But he did not trust what he called the gnostic influence in literature that affected TS Elliot and others.
I had to really focus to get McLuhan. It wasn't easy. I had to read and re read. What it left me with though is a deeper appreciation of how the way we get our information, by hearing, by reading, over the web, does change the way we process the information. Years ago the intellectual class was so much more linear and so much more oriented towards incrementalism. The preliterate world was also a very different world. Now, we are straddling. And its chaotic with the only efficient spots being places where the Apples, the Elon Musks, the Bransons hang out. Academia has become incredibly inefficient in delivering good information. Bureaucracies are in chaos. Much will be bypassed by new information technology. A lot of apparent success these days is not efficiency but corruption by government favoritism.
Have you seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khhsboVsyrw
Kind of a strange side note.
I am not familiar with the book ommm232 suggested (although it is certainly one I will be looking into as well), but I would also highly recommend Eric Hayout's The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities, which also delves into the differences between seminar papers and articles and how to transform the former into the latter. It has been immensely helpful in my own work as I try to improve both global and local elements of my writing.
Best of luck!
Check out the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor it's a fine little book that outlines a bit of the second-level nature of reading literature.
Once you've read a few hundred/thousand books, you can see the patterns in how authors develop/present ideas and learn the intellectual context in which they lived, so you can see how an individual author played with the dominant ideas of the era.
lol I'm 27, and Library at Night is one my favorite books about books.
Not that that makes your comment any less hilarious ;)
Not quite, but I appreciate it. Heard a lot about that book. I actually just found this, which looks like the exact thing I was searching for.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-History-Literature-Histories/dp/0300205317/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520025194&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+literature
This might be it, but would be interested in other suggestions
Definitely A Song of Ice and Fire. Please do suggest to him, though, that this would be a brilliant time for him to expand his literary horizons. Start with some compelling but intellectual novels such as 1984, Brave New World. Then... anything! Camus, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy...
Check out the 1001 Books you must read before you die, it might be worth getting him in itself.