Best north africa history books according to redditors

We found 235 Reddit comments discussing the best north africa history books. We ranked the 49 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about North Africa History:

u/bobi897 · 51 pointsr/worldnews

No, these regions would not be described as peaceful decades ago. Places that have large amounts of terrorism/ fighting may have not had those elements a few decades ago, but they were ticking time bombs. Regions just don't erupt into war and destruction over night, there are deeply rooted historical reasons for the current state of affairs in the Middle East and most are rooted in the European colonialism of the region during the 1800s and 1900s.

i would recommend this book if you want to learn more about the history of the arab people and the middle east in general.

u/HiccupMachine · 37 pointsr/AskHistorians

First time commenting in AskHistorians, and although I'm not a historian, I am a huge Hannibal/Roman Republic fan so maybe I can offer my services.


Hannibal was one of the greatest generals of all time (opinion) for multiple reasons, two of which most apply to your question:


> 1. His battlefield ingenuity

>Hannibal used multiple ingenious tactics to stomp the Romans. From large scale ambushes to the double envelope at Cannae, he was always able to keep the Romans on their toes. Due to this fact, we can safely assume that due to the sheer number of "good" maneuvers, he must have known what he was doing. The Battle of Cannae was his masterpiece - he took a smaller, less cohesive army and triumphed over a Roman army on their home turf. Hannibal had mostly resorted to ambushes before, but he didn't even need one at Cannae. From the initial placing of his troops and their subsequent movements, it is clear that this was a well thought out plan determined to use the Roman advantages and hybris against them. Roman soldiers and generals were consistently the best of the ancient world, but they prefer to fight hand to hand combat, up close and personal with large shields and short shorts, so they would want a close fight. Their war-like culture encouraged daring feats in battle and rewarded accordingly. The Roman army was controlled by two consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. Sources tell us that they had very different styles - Varro, the younger and more ambitious, wanted to make a name for himself and was more aggressive, while Paullus was more reserved. The day of Cannae it was Varro's command and he brought out the troops in battle order against the advice of Paullus. Hannibal knew all of this, and wanted to take advantage of Varro's aggressiveness. Like, they had Roman senators just chillin' at the battle cause they were so convinced their larger army would be victorious. Anddd then 80 of them died. Talk about arrogance, what if George W. Bush and 79 of his bros just decided to go watch the invasion of Iraq... from the frontlines... shooting guns... Insane.

> 2. His ability to bring all types of people together

>He had no baggage train like Alexander, yet he was deep into enemy territory with an army mixed of Gauls, Iberian, Libyan, and Numidians. Keep in mind, at this point in time the Roman army was primarily consistent of Romans, with some allied Italians. This is a huge disadvantage for Hannibal - his army speaks a variety of languages and the majority have no personal ties to him whatsoever and mostly fighting for money. I guess one can make the argument that the Gaulish soldiers probably had some vendetta against Rome, but thats beside the point. Any type of army cohesion would be incredibly hard to create, and as such the morale of Hannibal's army from the get-go was weaker than the Romans. This needs to be highly emphasized when looking at Cannae especially.


So where does this leave us? Let's look at the initial army placements - Romans in their typical 3 line arrangement, and Hannibal with his front forward and his wings slightly back. The Carthaginian center was made up of Gauls and Iberians, and both of his wings consisted of his hardened veteran Punic infantry, who most likely fought in phalanx formation. The Gauls and Iberians did not; the Iberians used a large shield and short sword and the Gauls were probably using some Roman equipment from the previous battles. And his cavalry was placed on both flanks. They deserve less focus than the infantry because there is nothing special to say about them besides the fact that they basically always beat the Roman cavalry, as we shall see, but note how they reacted to their victory.

Hannibal's center is more maneuverable due to the differing in fighting styles of his troops, for in order for his plan to work, he must put his Iberian and Gaulish, who are not Carthaginian, in his middle. Typically, the center of an army is the strongest point, but Hannibal threw that out the window. And where did Hannibal reside? It is mostly overlooked and sometimes given attention, but he was directly behind his center, encouraging and yelling out orders.

As the battle goes, the Roman attack the front, and Hannibal feints a retreat - feints as a decision. Varrus assumed that his larger, superior army could smash Hannibal's center... and look at that! They are backing up! It is only time before they fall and the Carthaginian army will be fall and run back to the Alps!

And then Hannibal gives the halt command, his Gauls and Iberians hold their ground. His veteran infantry on his flanks make a pincer move and double envelope the romans. While a smaller army and less deep, the Carthaginians have effectively completely surrounded the Roman army. Excuse me if that doesn't make you giddier than a schoolgirl because I have the biggest smile on my face right now.

Oh yeah, and those cavalry units? Of course they beat their Roman counterpart for the 50th time, and they return and effectively charge into the back of the Romans. Why is this important? Sometimes in these battles, if one cavalry triumphed over another, they would not necessarily turn and help out their infantry. Sometimes they would leave and plunder the enemy's camp, which is more rewarding for them, but thank goodness Hannibal's brother leads the cavalry and turned immediately after defeating the Romans. A full surround, 50,000 men around 85,000 men. And then they were slaughtered mercilessly.


Back to your question:
> 1. Did Hannibal tell his center to fall back?

>Yes, 100% due to the layout of his army, the maneuvers of his center and the lack of movement from his flanks, his personal placement of himself, the recalling of his cavalry, and the fact that he was just an all-around badass are all reasons why we know without a doubt this was all planned.

> 2. Did he assume it would happen?

>Probably, as well. Keep in mind he had his weakest and least trustworthy troops in his center, and so had to place himself there to personally watch over them. His plan would have been completely foiled if his center fell, and took all measures to assure that it would not. In fact, if his center had fallen, modern historians would probably think much less highly of him because - assuming it collapsed and the invasion was over - it would have been an awful decision. Why would spread his smaller army out, so it's less deep, and put his worst troops in the center, the seemingly most important part of an army. Oh because he's a genius, that's why.


Hope that helps!

Sources - The Ghosts of Cannae by Robert L. O'Connel, Hannibal by Robert Garland

*edited for grammmmar and format

u/SynapticStatic · 25 pointsr/history

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.

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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.

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

u/MantheHunter · 21 pointsr/Conservative

Muslims also enslaved whites when they could. A white man’s place depended greatly on how he responded to the beatings, and whether or not he converted to Islam. White women were used as sex slaves.

https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Thomas-Million/dp/0374289352

u/Celebreth · 16 pointsr/AskHistorians

I'll straight up recommend Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. I'm personally about 80% through the book, and so far it's FANTASTIC. It details Carthage from the extreme beginnings (Tyre and the Phoenicians) to the end (The razing of the city by Scipio Africanus.) Most of our sources aren't primary, unfortunately - we have many sources (Livy, Polybius, etc) who have their own sources which are, unfortunately, lost to history. However, their sources (if you read between the lines - Polybius especially is incredibly biased in favour of Rome) are considered to be reasonably accurate, so that helps.

Our other sources of information on Carthage are mainly archaeological - we've found the ancient ruins of Carthage (including the MASSIVE seam of ash from the ending of the city), the slag heaps from their mining operations in Spain, their pottery all over the Mediterranean, artifacts in North Africa, etc. Again, I DO highly recommend that book - it's very well researched, and while it's a bit dry, it's very good.

u/StudyingTerrorism · 14 pointsr/geopolitics

Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.

Books - General History of the Middle East


u/Soft-Rains · 14 pointsr/AskHistorians

I would argue they were treated much more similarly than many would think, with Roman slavery being horrible and somewhat comparable to the Atlantic Slave Trade (even if I think its healthy to be more uncomfortable with the race based slavery that has an ongoing legacy)

This is a bit of a pet issue of mine since I feel that there are quite a few reasons why the horrors of ancient slavery (in particular Greece/Rome) are ignored. I (or we) don't know enough to entirely answer the question but I do think its important to inform that we do know that Roman slavery was pretty nasty.

The overwhelming majority of Roman slaves were not household or city slaves but field slaves and other labour intense occupations who worked in horrible conditions. Mining in particular was a death sentence, if I recall correctly from Carthage Must Be Destroyed for a 500+ year stretch at any one point there were over 40,000 mining slaves in Spain alone. That's with a mining life expectancy of 3-5 years. If you read some of the descriptions of Roman field slaves it is reminiscent of the conditions of plantation slaves in the America's.

There was also the lack of rights for slaves throughout much of Roman history. Owners could essentially do whatever they wanted to their slaves, sex could not be refused and it was a fact of life that slaves could be raped. There is a range of sentimentality of these house slaves that we see on things like grave stones but again these slaves are a small minority of slaves.

Now a lot of this (the horrible conditions, rape, ect) is similar to the slavery in the America's but without the racial/religious aspects of the Atlantic slave trade (at least in America, the racial aspect gets more complicated in other places). I don't think we have the hard numbers to properly compare and contrast to my satisfaction but my perception of the issue is that they really are similar. People generally don't think of mining slaves when they think of black slaves but Brazil in particular had hundreds of thousands of slaves die in the mines with an even lower life expectancy than the Roman slaves in Spain. I do think that this is an example of one trend which is that as horrible as Roman slavery was from what I've read the comparable hard labour job would often be even worse in the America's (because of things like tropical diseases/conditions, racism, profit margins, ect) .

Tldr: Surprisingly similar in many horrible ways but on average slaves in the America's would be treated worse.

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Of course there should also be the usual disclaimer about Rome being a very long lived empire so even "ancient Rome" arguably spans over a 1000 years and especially post Christianity there are some changes.


Sources: Carthage must be Destroyed, Slavery in Brazil (not the best source), and Roman Slavery

u/georgedean · 14 pointsr/AskHistorians

That comment was supposedly said by Maharbal, one of Hannibal's lieutenants, after Cannae. Cannae was the third and most devastating in a series of victories Hannibal won against Roman legions immediately after arriving in Italy. Rome was genuinely crippled after the battle and the City was almost entirely undefended. Hannibal hesitated to march on Rome though, as he didn't trust his army's ability to maintain a siege against the most heavily fortified city in the world. Because he didn't deliver the coup de grace, Rome gradually recovered and ultimately defeated Hannibal and Carthage after a war of attrition that lasted nearly twenty years. You can read Livy's account here (the exchange with Maharbal is in 22.51).

Even though the hesitancy to march on Rome is sometimes seen as a strategic blunder, the decision wasn't so obviously wrong at the time. Hannibal hoped to strip away Rome's Italian allies after demonstrating his ability to crush Roman armies. He underestimated the nature and durability of those Italian alliances, but he continued in Italy for another sixteen or seventeen years, defeating nearly every army that was sent against him. He only left when Scipio Africanus invaded Africa and Carthage recalled him to defend the homeland. Hannibal's tactical brilliance is absolutely undeniable--he is one of the most imaginative and successful generals of the classical world--and his strategic missteps are I think somewhat over-exaggerated.

If you're interested in Hannibal, the two best classical sources are Livy and Polybius. I would also recommend The Ghosts of Cannae. It's a highly engaging and readable account of Hannibal's invasion written by an historian with a great deal of military expertise, and it goes into some detail about the precise tactics Hannibal employed.


u/PIK_Toggle · 13 pointsr/IAmA

Not OP, but I asked the same question years ago and I compiled this list:

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  1. This is the best book on the subject that I've read. It is as fair to both sides as one can be. In fact, I came away with a better understanding of how and why the Palestinians feel the way that they do after reading the book.

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  2. The Arab Spring. This is a great journey through all of the countries affected by The Arab Spring. It helps understand where we are now.

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  3. The Prize. Technically, it is the history of the oil industry. As you should expect, it covers a lot of ME history, too.

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  4. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS This book helps you understand how radical ISIS really is compared to AQ.

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  5. Michael Oren has two good books: Six Days of War and Power, Faith, and Fantasy. Despite Oren's affiliation with Israel, his books are fair and interesting reads.

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    A book on the fall of the Ottoman Empire is another good place to start. I have not read this one yet. I've heard that it is a good read.

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u/x_TC_x · 12 pointsr/AskHistorians

It was a situation that developed gradually, over nearly 15 years - and was as related to 'terrorism', as to multiple other issues.

Actual fundamental issue was Qaddafi's opinion along which Arabs were 'free' to do to the West what the West was doing to the Arab world, particularly through its support for Israel.

It could be said the story began in 1972, when Libya opened an initiative to establish a union with Egypt and Syria, aiming to create a super-state that could confront Israel on equal terms (through the combination of its total economic- and military power). Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat did not really like this idea, but welcomed Libyan financial support; Syrian President Hafez al-Assad entered closer cooperation with Libya. As a result of this initiative, some of Egyptian military units were put under Libyan control and deployed in Libya, and Qaddafi came to the idea to use them for his designs - many of which were considered 'too radical' foremost by Sadat, not to talk about Western powers. For example, he ordered an Egyptian submarine to sink the liner SS Queen Elisabeth, or delivered four Egyptian Il-28s to the (Soviet- and Cuban-supported) government of South Yemen etc. This caused first tensions.

During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War (also 'Yom Kippur' or 'Ramadan War'), Qaddafi would have loved to have Libyan military involved on the side of Egypt and Syria; but, these kept him out of the loop until the war began, and then the Libyan military proved ill-prepared and too small for that kind of a conflict. Indeed, it proved even unable to intercept US aircraft underway to Israel. Therefore, Qaddafi claimed the entire Gulf of Syrte for Libyan territorial waters. Eventually, he became so incensed over Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat's 'lack of cooperation' with him, that not only the plan for an union was shelved, but Qaddafi began fiercely criticising Sadat, and four years later provoked a short war between Egypt and Libya (which Libya lost).

In period 1973-1981, and along that claim for the Gulf of Syrte, Libyan armed forces several times attacked various foreign ships and aircraft passing off the Libyan coast - several times even well away from the claimed area. For example, in September 1973, two Mirages attacked an Italian Navy warship with 30mm cannons, killing one of Italian sailors. In period 1979-1980, Libyans repeatedly caused tensions over Maltese independence and Malta's cooperation with Italy; in 1980, Qaddafi attempted to stage a coup in Tunisia etc. On the other hand, Western powers were maintaining a close watch on Libyan military build-up, and some of their reconnaissance aircraft are said to have flown not only along Libyan borders, but deep over Libya too. Correspondingly, Libyan military attempted to intercept these and there were several related incidents. For example, on 16 September 1980, two MiG-25s intercepted an USAF Boeing RC-135 ELINT/SIGINT-reconnaissance aircraft over the Mediterranean. When the US crew ignored their orders to distance, one of them fired an air-to-air missile - which missed. Five days later, five Mirage 5s intercepted another RC-135, and had to be forced away by two F-14 Tomcats of the US Navy.

Meanwhile, in December 1979, Libyan demonstrators chanting pro-Iranian slogans stormed and burned part of the US embassy in Tripoli, and in February 1980, demonstrators sacked the French embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi. After Great Britain expulsed several Libyan diplomats the British embassy in Tripoli was fire-bombed, in June 1980.

Eventually, Libya began accusing the USA of planning anti-Qaddafi coups, and began deploying agents to the USA to assassinate various Libyan emigrants. Furthermore, Qaddafi began supporting various militant and terrorist groups around the world, ranging from different Palestinian groups, to the IRA in Great Britain and the Red Army in Japan. Clearly, not only the USA considered this an act of state-sponsored terrorism; other Western governments did the same. But, the administration of President Carter was too preoccupied with the US embassy crisis in Iran but to do anything against Libya, while such governments like those of France and/or Italy tended to ignore Libyan activity because of their economic interests in the country.

Overall, by the time Reagan entered the office, in January 1981, the situation was already quite tense. Unsurprisingly, Regan issued a new set of Rules of Engagement for US aircraft operating off Libya, and then ordered a 'Freedom of Navigation' exercise 'inside' the Gulf of Syrte, in order to challenge Libyan claims, for August 1981. That's how the next direct clash took place, resulting in the famous downing of two Libyan Su-22 fighter-bombers by USN's F-14 Tomcats.

Immediately following that incident, no Libya-related terrorist attacks were observed. But, through 1982 and 1983, Qaddafi began supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and then 'persuasive circumstantial evidence' emerged that Libya was behind the act of mining southern approaches to the Suez Canal, in 1984.

Foremost, during 1984 and 1985, a series of hijackings of passenger aircraft took place in the skies over the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This phase culminated in the hijacking of the Italian passenger liner Achille Lauro, and terrorist attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna, in 1985.

Now, while the US intelligence agencies found very little evidence for Libyan involvement in most of these affairs, Qaddafi's public support for terror exposed his country to a military retaliation. Reagan - i.e. US intelligence services - actually knew that it was Syria and Iran that were actually behind most of terrorist attacks in question. But, Libya was isolated on the international plan and its military lacked similar capabilities to those of Syria and Iran. Correspondingly, he picked Libya. Intention was to provide an example: you run campaigns of terror against us, we hit back with military force.

By early 1986, the US military launched operations of provoking Libyan military over the Gulf of Syrte, and Washington began providing aid to the government of Chad (northern half of which was occupied by Libya since 1981). These two affairs then culminated in a series of US-Libyan clashes in March and April 1986 (Operations Attain Document, Prairie Fire, and El Dorado Canyon), and then Libyan military defeats in Chad (Toyota Wars), in 1987-1988.

Finally, in 1988, Libyans (apparently with some support from Iran and Syria) bombed the Pan Am's Flight 103 (see Lockerbie) and UTA's Flight 772. However, instead of launching a punitive military action, the USA and France decided to find a solution through international diplomacy and courts. Libya was put under massive economic sanctions and embargos, and several of its citizens indicted for involvement in terrorist attacks.

Sources of reference:

  • El Dorado Canyon: Reagan's Undeclared War with Qaddafi, particularly useful for detailed description of Regan's decision-making process in relation to Libya, but also related US military operations;

  • Libyan Air Wars, Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3, for the 'full story' - i.e. all of these affairs put within their context (then, the US-Libyan confrontations of the 1980s were very much a part of far more complex affairs, as described above) - and a very detailed description of the Libyan military build-up (including not only the air force, but ballistic missile capability and even WMDs) and US, French, Italian and other military operations against Libya of the 1970s and 1980s.
u/The_Turk2 · 12 pointsr/AskHistorians

Rather than giving you foreign policy/political-science books; the two books I highly recommend for interested people, to getting a proper understanding of today's Middle East, would be these two books:

"The Arabs: A History" Eugene Rogan

A History of the Modern Middle East William L Cleveland, Martin Bunton

If you want to understand the situation today, its important to take a historical approach to it, rather than a political-science one, written by pundits and politicians, who carry a lot of the interests of their respective backers.

They are standard University texts, very well written, and updated as well. To understand the "present", one must first understand the "past". And so if you want a truly unbiased understanding of the Middle East in 2015, its important to understand how events got to there.

u/bobmounger · 9 pointsr/The_Donald
u/Frodiddly · 5 pointsr/ancientrome

One of the best and most dramatic works I can recommend is The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, by Robert L. O'Connell. The battle of Cannae was a turning point for Rome, and O'Connell captures the horror and drama of the battle and surrounding events excellently. I HIGHLY recommend it.

In terms of Roman historians... It really depends on what period you're looking at. Want an awesome insight into the military? Go with Caesar's Commentaries of the Conquest of Gaul. Punic Wars? Check out Livy. Definitely check out Plutarch's Parallel Lives as well.

Of course, the quintessential book on the Roman Empire is Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. One can hardly consider themselves a Roman scholar without reading it, and nearly every historian will refer to it at some point.

Oh! And there's an interesting one I came across, for a bit more of a lower-look. By a Roman no less!
Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome*, by Apicius is very interesting. Might not be worth it to put on your list, but definitely check it out.

TL;DR: If I have to pick two to add, take the Ghosts of Cannae and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By a Roman, pick from what's relevant.

u/The_Sammich · 5 pointsr/exmuslim

I also recommend reading - White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves by Giles Milton. Not only is it an informative true account about little known white slavery in Africa it's also really well written and reads like a novel.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704

u/400-Rabbits · 5 pointsr/AskHistorians

It's time once again for the AskHistorians Book Giveaway! This month we picked two winners: Eric Hacke and Alec Barnaby! The selection of books we have available this month are:

u/HighOrdinator · 4 pointsr/AskHistorians

I would recommend Richard Miles' Carthage Mvst be Destroyed. It may focus too much on Carthage for your liking, but much of the beginning sections are focused on a summary of Phoenician civilization. In particular there is some good information on their religion, how they interacted with their neighbors and the establishment of various colonies.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143121294

u/Oscar_Geare · 4 pointsr/CredibleDefense

He's Austrian, I believe.

This was an interesting conversation to follow.

u/Cozret · 4 pointsr/history

The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan targets this time period and should be on your reading list. I'm just getting started on it, and it's already quite detailed and insightful.

u/nabataea · 4 pointsr/arabs

Its about this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P77P1V4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

There seems to be a distinct "Yale school" of Arab history, which states that the Islamic conquest developed out of Bedouin raids. This book basically falls in line with that school.

u/SmokeyUnicycle · 4 pointsr/WarCollege

What is your background on this topic? I typically assume that people have only a cursory understanding when talking to them online, but this seems not to be the case here.

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>Yes, which is exactly what happened - and then a number of times - during the Iran-Iraq War, especially so during most fierce battles, in 1986-1987.

As in barrels exploded? Or as in the N+1th shot exploded the barrel, these are not the same thing.

>I'm not of the sort 'pedantic argument', or 'mathematically, this is inaccurate', but of the sort, 'goes out, finds Iraqi T-72-tankers, interviews them'. We're living in the times of the internet, after all: it's anything but hard to find them (ironically, reactions by people like Paul and James were very similar to yours - when they were on the receiving end of similar recommendations, back in mid-2000s).

I have no idea who these people are, why are you referring to them by their first names?

What are the recommendations and reactions?

To go find interviews/Iraqi tankers online?

There's a whole book based off of Iran/Iraq war interviews, the one on the F-14s, it's not exactly well regarded as a reliable source.


Nor, honestly can the anecdotes of people who performed so profoundly poorly in combat really be considered that definitive a way of finding out the truth about the events that occurred.

I'm not saying they don't have value, but I'm not sure that pointing at them and saying "there is the truth, reconsider" is advisable.




>Why? Because prejudice and supposition makes people thinking they never took care to carry enough spare barrels with them into training, and especially into the battle?

Well, to be honest this is kind of a form of arguing backwards;

Even when the Iraqis could see there targets and were in range they rarely landed hits.

There must be an explanation for this.

Zaloga and a T-72 blog are not definitive sources, I'll readily admit but I wouldn't consider some hypothetical tanker anecdotes as trumping them either.


You're correct in that I haven't done any serious research on the Iraqi army training. I don't claim to be anything close to an authority.

>try to find yourself few tankers of the former 10th Armoured Brigade (first Iraqi Army unit equipped with T-72s): gents in question have 'books' to say about the type.

Do you have any links?

I would love to read them, I'll look myself when I have time but a starting point would go a long ways.

>My co-author Martin Smisek has found loads of relevant papers (including reports about related negotiations and contracts for Libyan orders, plus Syrian and Iraqi complaints) in archives of the Czech Republic during research for Volumes 4, 5, and 6 of this series: http://www.harpia-publishing.com/galleries/AMV4/index.html - and Volumes 1 and 2 of this series: http://www.amazon.com/Libyan-Air-Wars-Part-1985-1986/dp/1910294535/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462253442&sr=1-4
Further to this, there are several biographies by top Iraqi and Syrian military commanders (in Arabic) citing similar issues (even the former C-in-C SyAAF, Moukiiad, is discussing this issue in his auto-biography, published in Damascus in 2001, because he was the boss of Syrian military commission for acquisition, in the 1980s).

I see.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/islam

Are you sure about that ACloseCaller? Check this out
[Slavery by Sultans] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704) and [Arabs enslaving Blacks] (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201362472519107286.html)

u/Groumph09 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions
u/octaviusromulus · 3 pointsr/ancientrome

So I did an episode on my podcast about the Carthaginians, and while I didn't talk a lot about their government, I read a fair bit about it in the book Carthage Must Be Destroyed.

As far as their government goes, the Roman authors called it a "Senate" though it wasn't really "Senate" in the Roman sense. The Carthaginians themselves called it a Council of Elders, and while money was a factor, I believe having a pedigreed family name was also key. I suspect they didn't just let in any old Joe whose net worth was above a certain line.

It's also important to note that Carthage also had a Popular Assembly too. Before the Second Punic War, it was the Popular Assembly that supported the Hannibal's shenanigans in Spain.

u/PinkZeppe · 3 pointsr/Documentaries

There's a brilliant book on this subject called 'White Gold' by Giles Milton https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1495273413&sr=8-8&keywords=white+gold. It tells the story of how a million white slaves were sold into North African slavery, and follows a young English lad, William Pellow, caught by the Barbary/Moroccan sailors and sold into slavery, alongside Americans, Dutch, French etc.

Most were tortured into converting to Islam, and if did then their home nations wouldn't see them as Christians and wouldn't try and rescue them.

Strangely, this slave trade was still going on after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, and were only rescued after the Royal Navy bombard the Sultan's towns and ports.

u/bebop8159 · 3 pointsr/MapPorn

So I recently came across this awesome book:

https://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294

It's basically about how Carthage got a bad rep in Ancient times amd by scholars today. Good read!

u/SnowSnowSnowSnow · 3 pointsr/samharris

I knew nothing of Islam when a Muslim started praising it in another (non-reddit) BBS and I was intrigued to start researching the history of Islam. Most of the depictions in media were benign or positive such as in V is for Vendetta and The Wind and The Lion. I bought into the premise that Islam is 'The Religion of Peace'. Then I started researching the history and ideology. My Muslim associate expressed a fondness for gin and how he would never bother with the Hajj. By my reading of the Qu'ran those were heretical practices, thus he was an apostate and worthy of death per Islamic law. He didn't appreciate my interpretation.

Because the Qu'ran is presented longest verse to shortest it is very difficult to appreciate when verses are abrogated, so I found a chronological translation by an Egyptian Islamic scholar from the 1800's and hoooooo boy. It's easy to see how Mohammed's philosophy changed from Mecca to Medina, how Muslim apologists use the verses from Mecca to lie to non-Muslim about Islam being a peaceful religion while carefully not mentioning the principle of abrogation or the verses from Medina. The r/Islam subreddit pretty much polished off my remaining rosy glow of ignorance.

Then I read the account of Thomas Pellow in White Gold (a Cornish cabin boy) enslaved by Islamic pirates that ravaged the coastal areas of Europe killing and enslaving hundreds of thousands of girls for sex slaves, and men for labor. That shit went on for hundreds of years until Sweden and the United States (under Teddy Roosevelt) stamped 'paid' to their shit. Did you know that there are still active Islamic slave markets in Africa?

There are many many perfectly rational reasons to oppose Islam but for me Mohammed is the most glaring. The ONLY prophet of Islam? The LAST prophet of Islam? The PERFECT man? How many women did Mohammed rape? Enslave? How many people did he butcher? Never mind fucking a 9 y.o., I appreciate that what is repugnant today wasn't necessarily so a thousand years ago. But rape, butchery, enslavement? If Mohammed did it, you're good to go? You believe what you want but I wasn't indoctrinated by 'anti-Muslim' websites.

u/FlavivsAetivs · 3 pointsr/Imperator

The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.

Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).

If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.

He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.

If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.

Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.

For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.

However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:

Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston

The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster

A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp

For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.

For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.

Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:

The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch

The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.

I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.

For other interesting topics:

The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.

Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy

Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)

I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.

u/Iznik · 3 pointsr/CredibleDefense

And your details can be therefore be found here in the About the Author section. For my part, it looks like the definition of an expert!

u/Gwynsek · 2 pointsr/fight_against_islam

​

An excerpt of the description of the book:

"This is the forgotten story of the million white Europeans, snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of North Africa to be sold to the highest bidder. Ignored by their own governments, and forced to endure the harshest of conditions, very few lived to tell the tale. Using the firsthand testimony of a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow, Giles Milton vividly reconstructs a disturbing, little known chapter of history. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco who was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. ... " Read more in White Gold Paperback – by Giles Milton

https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Giles-Milton/dp/0340794704/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=white+gold+Islamic+enslavement+of+white+women&qid=1555012918&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0

u/mister_automatic · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

It's pretty metal. By "fire whirl" they mean "gigantic city burning fire tornado."

EDIT: btw, if cannae is something you're into, I quite liked this. Not as easy to read as Tuchman or Beevor, but still good.

u/MattJFarrell · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

I would have thought the First Barbary War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

US fought against Barbary Coast Pirates who were raiding US shipping and taking captives for years, demanding tribute to stop. The US paid the tribute (as did a lot of other powers at the time) for awhile, then it got to be too much. War was pretty small, as such things are counted these days. It broke out in 1801 under Thomas Jefferson. There's a great book about it called "The Pirate Coast" by Richard Zacks
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pirate-Coast-Jefferson-Marines/dp/140130849X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1376454985&sr=8-3&keywords=pirates+of+the+barbary+coast

u/amgar · 2 pointsr/Spanish

Hi, new to the sub. It just so happens that I'm reading a book on the history of Carthage. I'm only a hundred pages in and have been busy with school-work, but it did touch briefly on the Phoenician "colonization" of southern Spain and there is a chapter on Barcid rule in Spain that I haven't gotten to. This book looks more like a comprehensive primer on ancient Carthage but it might be useful if you find a copy in your local library.

Carthage Must be Destroyed

u/Animal40160 · 2 pointsr/history

Yes, this! After reading The Ghosts of Cannae I had many daydreams of seeing the book made into a movie.

u/Cdresden · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.



The Great Siege: Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford. Nonfiction.

Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe.

u/bg478 · 2 pointsr/SubredditDrama

No you're right the majority did settle in the west (ie. the Maghrebi countries + Libya), because it was viewed almost as a frontier by the soldiers in the Islamic armies who wanted to settle there. There were also later migrations that occurred for political reasons the most famous being the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in the Middle Ages.

With the Levant it was largely the same as in other countries. When the Arab Muslims arrived they established themselves as the local elite and to this day many of the old notable Palestinian families like the Nusaybah are descended from Arabs who did settle in the country during the Islamic conquests. The armies and administrators were all Arab (in the early years) but like I said mass population displacement didn't really occur and Palestinians at large are generally believed to be descended from a mix of the numerous peoples who have inhabited and moved to the land over the centuries, everyone from Greeks and Crusaders to Turks and ancient Jews. Over the centuries after conquest more and more of these people adopted Islam as a faith in order to obtain more social privileges, something that initially caught the invading Arabs by surprise. Since you'll probably ask I'm getting most of this info from the books In God's Path by Hoyland and The Great Caliphs by Bennison.

Thanks for the kind words, I have an intense love-hate relationship with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (I'm literally always either the most "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian" person in whatever room I'm in, not that I care for those dichotomous and ill defined terms) and nothing to do today so I've just been popping in to comment periodically.

u/amazon-converter-bot · 2 pointsr/FreeEBOOKS

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

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Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

u/lifelingering · 2 pointsr/Documentaries
u/olympe_d_G · 2 pointsr/france

Le lien que tu donnes ne contredit pas vraiment mon argument. Toute la question est de déterminer la surmortalité entraînée par la présence française par rapport aux gens qui seraient morts "de toute façon". Il faut donc décompter non seulement les victimes directes des massacres, mais aussi les victimes d'une politique de guerre totale (destruction des récoltes, de l'habitat, des structures sociales) qui a entraîné famines et épidémies.

Oui, ces chiffres sont des estimations, parce qu'il n'y a pas eu de décompte exact à l'époque, mais des estimations faites par des historiens spécialistes de la période et des enjeux démographiques, et qui font quand même relativement consensus aujourd'hui.

Pour le 1 million, je l'ai trouvé ici

Pour les 800 000 : "La surmortalité, du fait de la guerre de conquête et des opérations de répression, pourrait alors être estimée à 825 000 morts." Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale

Cela reste des estimations, mais fondées sur des calculs à partir des données disponibles, qui montrent de façon très claire un "désastre démographique" pour la population algérienne de l'époque, et les desseins d'extermination de l'armée française, et les conséquences directes de la guerre.

u/akward_tension · 2 pointsr/ParisComments



comment content: u/bananastich n'a pas totalement tort, désolée. Sur la conquête de l'Algérie par exemple :

"La notion de "colonie de peuplement" faisait naître des idées de "dépeuplement". Les commandants écrivaient ainsi que l'usage de la force militaire devait être calculé non plus pour vaincre l'ennemi sur le champ de bataille, mais pour refouler ou massacrer systématiquement les Algériens. (...) Les membres du Parlement appelaient publiquement à une "guerre d'extermination". Plus tard, des anthropologues, à Paris, discutèrent de la possibilité d'une extinction de la population algérienne. (...) Les actions de l'Etat colonial français ont certainement contribué à la violence extrême observée au XXe siècle et font partie de la "généalogie européenne" de la violence nazie, comme l'a souligné l'historien Enzo Traverso. (...) En 1846 le docteur Auguste Warnier, qui exprimait l'opinion des colons les plus intransigeants, attendait avec impatience le jour où la main-d'oeuvre algérienne, sous l'effet de la misère [causée par les razzias et la saisie des terres], se mettrait d'elle-même sur le marché et où les Algériens deviendraient les "instruments dociles" des colons français. Cela ne rendait plus souhaitable ni l'expulsion ni l'extermination totale des Algériens." Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, p61.

subreddit: france

submission title: L’impeccable leçon de Macron sur la colonisation [article super long et détaillé sur la colonisation en général]

redditor: olympe_d_G

comment permalink: https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/5uhkh6/limpeccable_leçon_de_macron_sur_la_colonisation/dduee24

u/Sanctimonius · 2 pointsr/history

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IYJEB0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I thought this was a pretty awesome book on a little known topic. Like OP says Carthage is usually talked about in contrast to Roman expansion and we tend to still view* them through this lens. This book tries to look at the history of a really interesting culture on its own merits.

Edit: thanks autocorrect

u/DOMDOM2 · 2 pointsr/history

Ditto on Dan Carlin. Probably the most comprehensive thing you'll find since he sources so much and does such a thorough job.

I'm currently listening to the Ghosts of Cannae audio book off of Dan Carlin's recommendation. Great stuff: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghosts-Cannae-Hannibal-Republic/dp/0812978676

u/hotcarl23 · 2 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

http://www.amazon.com/The-Arabs-History-Eugene-Rogan/dp/0465025048

We read that guy in my intro to the middle East course. Great book, bad class. Starts in the 1600s and covers major events until it was published around the time of the Arab spring. It's focused on the Arabs as a people, rather than just the Arab-Israeli conflict.

u/Impune · 2 pointsr/Ask_Politics

I would highly recommend:

  • The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan,

    or

  • A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani.

    Hourani's is a bit more thorough and is available in audiobook format, whereas Rogan's is an easier read and gives more attention to the modern day Middle East. Both offer insight into the cultural, colonial, and political histories of the peoples living within the Middle East, which is really the only way to understand how and why the states operate the way they do today.
u/Dobokdude · 1 pointr/AskALiberal

https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Thomas-Million/dp/0374289352


I've read other sources too. What I mean is when the kidnapped Europeans arrived in the Barbary States and were sold, they would be beaten if not working hard enough, given little food aside from meager amounts of bread and water, family and friends were seperated and sometimes slaves were even tortured to turn to Islam.


>Sorry Muslims, predictive text got me. And it really doesn't if you listen to the vast majority of Muslims that condemn groups like ISIS and fight them all the time.



I'm referring to what the Quran itself says, not what many moderate Muslims say.

u/eissturm · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Interesting tidbit of history: a lot of the violent religious fundamentalism has to do with the Wahhabi movement out of Saudi Arabia late in the 18th century. At the time, the Ottomans ruled over the entire Arab world, but the founder of the Wahhabi movement was a religious scholar, and believed that the Sufi religious practices of the Turks at the time were weak and an affront to god. He advocated an open rebellion against the Sufi practices of the Ottoman empire, and the thousand year old practice and reverence of the Islamic equivalents to Christian saints, calling it polytheism and justifying a jihad against the Turks and all moderate muslims.

The movement's founder was not very popular in his own village, but soon found a political ally in Muhammad ibn Saud, ancestor of the Saudi Arabian rulers. Ibn Saud used the al-Wahhab's radical reinterpretations to justify war and subjugation of other arab tribes in the peninsula and against their Ottoman rulers.

Fast forward to the modern day, and you have several groups including al-Qaeda, the Tailban, ISIS and many others who follow this movement and use it as religious justification for destroying other muslims and westerners. The Wahhabis look to the King of Saudi Arabia as a religious leader, and much of the oil wealth of the Saudis goes straight into funding these radical religious groups. Their intention is to change the Islamic world back to the way it was in the first few generations after Islam's founding, because they fully believe that other groups do not practice true faith and profane their god.

TL;DR: A highly conservative religious movement around the time of the American Revolutionary war declared all other sects as polytheists and thus deserving of extermination according to Islamic law.

Note: I am an American and much of my understanding on the topic comes from this wonderful book. I'm just passionately fascinated by the history of the region.

u/Tim7332 · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Two history books I've read recently that really knocked my socks off:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Plantagenets-Warrior-Queens-England/dp/0670026654

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones

http://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization-ebook/dp/B004IYJEB0/

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles

A recent history book I'm dying to read is this:

http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Bridge-Fall-Nixon-Reagan-ebook/dp/B00HXGD5CE/

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

He wrote the book Nixonland which I absolutely loved. If you want to understand modern American politics you need to understand that Nixon defined it in many ways.

u/FoxTrotW · 1 pointr/gameofthrones

Good book to check out about the Second Punic War with a heavy focus on the Battle of Cannae.

https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Cannae-Hannibal-Darkest-Republic/dp/0812978676

u/Proteus_Marius · 1 pointr/todayilearned

Please Richard Miles book, Carthage Must Be Destroyed.

You'll find that most of your statements were incorrect. References make up about 1/3 of the book, so have at it.

To be clear, the Roman and Greek historians account for large swaths of history still, but their automatic authenticity is largely discredited in this book with more local and timely sources that weren't available until somewhat recently.

u/johnfrance · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

Great Britian, 1922.

When the Ottoman Empire fell after the First World War, the French, British, and the Russians (to a lesser extent) divided up the territory that was formerly owned by the ottomans into administrative districts between them. When doing so all considerations of ethnic, linguistic, and historical division were ignored, except to intentionally separate common people to weaken their resistance. The Sykes-Picot Agreement is the foundation of all subsequent conflict in the region, from ISIS, al-Qaeda, Israeli-Palistein conflict, you name it. Another take on Sykes-Picot
There is an problem reoccurring throughout history that if you take over a people, kill there leaders and trash their cultural institutions and way of life, it's no simple matter to undo that. Anyways, countries began to get their independence back but then were forced to either aline with the US or the USSR to survive the Cold War.

The modern Iran is the fault of the US and Britian. Iran was one of the most modern and liberal places in the world during the 50's, had a brilliant film industry, was really a modern wonder. But when Iran decided to nationalize their oil industry so the profits could go to bettering the country rather than into the pockets of the Brits that owned the contracts the CIA and MI6 staged a coup of the Iranian government. They installed a puppet, he was wildly unpopular and the resulting unrest and instability gave rise to the modem Islamic nationalism currently in charge of Iran. It's really a shame, Iran could have been absolutely on par with France or Germany right now, had this not happened to them.

If there is one thing I know about politics, it's that the more unstable a place is the more extreme politics will come out of it. This is probably just intuitively obvious, but when a place starts to lose its stability people will abandon the 'standard' set of political solutions and start reaching for more and more politically extreme ones. The particular character of the ideology developed just takes the flavour of whatever already exists there and really takes it off the chart. See the rise of the Nazis following a crippling war and economic downturn, the communists came to power in Russia after years of political turmoil and the massive causalities of the war as well. Look at Greece in the last few years, huge economic strife and now their parliaments has both Neo-Nazis and Communists.
So take a region like the Middle East, and subject it to 100 years of political turmoil, consistently have western powers come in and knock governments down ever once in a while, finally demolish a long standing strong man in the region and something like ISIS springs up to fill the power vacuum. The imminent cause of ISIS was removing Saddam followed by failing to create a political situation that respected the actually ethnic topography of the country, but the root is early 20thC interference by the British and French. ISIS themselves recognize this as the root cause, and some section of ISIS see their mission as undoing that original agreement.

Also:
[Afganistans woes date back all the way to 1813, where Great Britain and Russia completely screwed the place when both were trying to build empires.] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game)

If you really want to get into understanding this Id recommend The Arabs: A History by Eugene Scott. It starts in around 1500 and goes right up to W. Bush, and really gets into the deep roots of why the Middle East looks like it does today.

u/TheIncredibleShirk · 1 pointr/exmuslim

White Gold by Giles Milton

'White Gold, is the story of Thomas Pellow, a Cornish cabin boy who was captured at sea by a group of fanatical Islamic slave traders—the Barbary corsairs, taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Salè in Morocco and sold to the highest bidder. Pellow’s purchaser happened to be the tyrannical sultan of Morroco, Moulay Ismail, a man committed to building a vast imperial pleasure palace of unsurpassable splendour built entirely by Christian slave labour. After enduring long periods of torture Pellow converted to Islam and became the personal slave of the sultan for over two decades—including a stint as a soldier in the sultan’s army—before finally making a dramatic escape and return to Cornwall.'

https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Giles-Milton/dp/0340794704

u/cleverseneca · 1 pointr/Christianity

I know the whole second Punic war's first history was written 70 years after... Second some 120-130 years after. the only actual physical evidence that Hannibal existed? a passing reference on a piece of tablet that was a dedication.

Source: Ghosts of Cannae

u/StLBucketList · 1 pointr/funny

i picked up his one on the fall of rome and couldn't finish it. it was terrible.

i highly [recommend] (http://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294) that. i highly recommend that.

u/randomnewname · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

If you're looking for must reads /r/AskHistorians has a great list.

My all time favorite history book is A History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill. It's a little dated in all it's facts but it is written beautifully and I love reading his description on America's Revolutionary and Civil Wars. You can find it in a 4 volume unabridged or 1 book abridged set.

My favorite peoples in all of history are the Normans, and I enjoyed The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris. It's not just about the Battle of Hastings, but everything that lead up to that point and the resolutions which followed it. Plus the Normans were just badasses.

You ever learned about the Siege of Malta? One of the greatest stands in history, and a merging of the old world and the new (melee mixing with gunpowder), makes for an amazing story.

Maybe something lighter (sort of...)? I enjoyed German Wars: A Concise History, 1859-1945. Cheap book and gives you a simple understanding of how Germany became a country and it's mindset leading all the way to 1945. It focuses on the battles but gives lots of information on all the participants, their capabilities (and how they were able to reach those capabilities), and lots of the little deciding factors like the weather, roads, logistics, etc.

1700-1800's is an amazing time period to read because it was documented so thoroughly. I would recommend perusing that askhistorians list, going to your local bookstore and giving some of them a read, as some historians will write much different then others, and see which book you can sit through. The French Revolution and the age of Napoleon would be mandatory reading. Another is the subject of how Italy became a state; after the western Roman Empire fell it was one of the few places in Europe that still recorded it's history, and how all the city-states interacted and warred with each other is very interesting.

u/Judah_Earl · 1 pointr/UnresolvedMysteries

Severed: The True Story of the "Black Dahlia" Murder by John Gilmore, and I know it's not popular on here, but Zodiac by Robert Graysmilth.

I'd also add [White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves] (https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704) by Giles Milton. An excellent read about a part of history nobody wants to talk about.

u/Wicket_Man · 1 pointr/Anthropology

There has been an increase in readable ethnographies. Some are done by journalists instead of anthropologists but it is the same type of work. But I think the nature of the research is to blame, imagine trying to summarize Tuhami in a short article so that the public can read it. It is quite a feat. Although there are some applications that the public should be aware of. The one that comes to mind instantly is anthropology in the workplace or applied to international business

And this is why anthro is not seen as a viable career choice.

u/glorious_cheese · 1 pointr/news

The Ghosts of Cannae does a great job of describing Hannibal's methods.

u/Greenjourney · 1 pointr/Documentaries

Whaaat?

The USA has made tons of very famous non-American-history-based movies such as Troy, Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, The King's Speech, The Pianist, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, 300, Letters from Iwo Jima, Zulu, Valkyrie, The Last Samurai, Seven Years in Tibet, Ben Hur, Defiance, Munich, Hotel Rawanda, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Invictus, Empire of the Sun, The Lion in Winter, Elizabeth, Enemy at the Gates, Blood Diamond, Amadeus, Les Miserables, The Last King of Scotland, 47 Ronin, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tora Tora Tora, The Queen, The Young Victoria, Marie Antoinette, The Other Boelyn Girl, Elizabeth the Golden Age, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Das Boot, Master and Commander, All Quiet on the Western Front, Casablanca, Apacalypto, A Passage to India, Red Cliff, Hiroshima, The Killing Fields, Dunkirk... I could go on forever here.

The slavery-history movies I've seen are pretty much all based on white Americans enslaving black people. 12 Years a Slave, Roots, Amistad, Django, Free State of Jones, Prince Among Slaves, The Retrieval, Huck Finn (Disney), Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, Glory, Nightjohn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mandingo, Freedom (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (PBS), and The Confederate States of America.

I guess exceptions could be biblical movies like The Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt, which deal with non-American slavery. Gladiator and Agora deal with Roman slavery. Oooh, and Sparticus of course.

I can't think of any movies at ALL that deal with the Arab slave trade though. Which is weird, because it's by far the longest-lasting slave trade, from roughly 600 until the 1900s (and in some places it continues today). There are some documentaries on modern human trafficking, but as far as the Spanish, English, Italian, French, Portuguese, and African people enslaved in Africa and the Middle East over a couple thousand years, there are no big time blockbusters like Amistad or 12 Years a Slave.

It's a shame, because there are some great stories that could be told there. The Zanj revolt. The kidnapping of almost every single person living in Baltimore, Ireland, in 1631. The story of the Reverend Devereux Spratt, who was just trying to sail from Ireland to England, and wound up a slave in Algiers. The roughly 500 ships lost to the fearsome Barbary pirates, who enslaved or killed anyone aboard. American President Jefferson's war with the pirates. Thomas Pellow's tale.

Good articles/books here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml

https://www.city-journal.org/html/jefferson-versus-muslim-pirates-13013.html

https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Thomas-Million/dp/0374289352

u/beeznik · 1 pointr/byzantium

There is just so much out there. Reading about Carthage is really interesting. I can suggest:

https://www.amazon.it/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294

Was a really good read. I find reading about my favorites empires' enemies is pretty useful.

u/settler10 · 1 pointr/history

Thomas Pellow as chronicled in Giles Milton's excellent White Gold

u/Sevruga · 1 pointr/todayilearned

This is an interesting book on the same history. Interesting to see the role of the young American nation - not a period I had really known anything about.

http://www.amazon.ca/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Thomas-Million/dp/0374289352/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426586596&sr=1-2&keywords=White+gold

u/gh3ttoduCanada · 1 pointr/army

Mini series on William Eaton, Preston O'Bannon et al's trip through North Africa in the Campaign against the Barbary Pirates. Maybe using Pirate Coast by Richard Zacks as primary source.

u/weopity77 · 0 pointsr/CringeAnarchy

certainly many things justify the systematic extermination of groups, an important one being the survival of the nation-state, but that didn't happen here - what happened here was systematic deportation which is exactly the same fate that would have befallen the turks had they been been utterly defeated in ww1. the armenian men were mostly put in labor camps, the old and women and children were deported. the turkish people had to the right to defend themselves from enslavement just like anyone else. the british, french, and russian empires have treated their colonial subjects the same exact way all through out their history. the fucking british had concentration camps in kenya in the 1950s and 1960s for fucksake. the british taught the world how to create concentration camps when they deported the men across the fucking ocean and then marched the boer women and children across the veld and put them in concentraion camps where fully half of them died by 1902.

the entente in ww1 intended to completely destroy turkey. to carve it up and crush it ethnically. russia was to get the caucuses, instanbul, and the turkish straight, the french were going to take anatolia and enslave the turks there, the kurds were going to get a nation, and the turks were going to be enslaved or deported from all that territory and presumably left with a tiny rump territory they didn't actually control. do you have any idea what russians, british, and french have done to ethnic minorities under their colonial control over the centuries? mass murder, rape, and utter enslavement. what would have happened to the turks that lived in areas that were majority armenian or kurdish?

the armenians threw in their lot with the entente in this conflict that we would define (if we applied your definitions evenly) as a war of mutual extermination. the armenians had an army of 50,000 fighting against the turks in 1918. many hundreds of thousands if not millions fought against turkey or gave aid to the entente during the entire course of the war.

your problem is you've never read an objective account of ww1 in the middle east, you don't know what the intentions of the entente were because they were never allowed to carry them out simply because russia collapsed and the french and british were exhausted by the end and you aren't well read enough to know their secret intentions, and similarly you aren't aware of colonial policy of the entente because you are crucifying the turks for doing exactly what the entente and armenians and kurds would have done to them had they won a complete victory.

if you'd like to learn about history and not just parrot back propaganda, here are two decent books for a neophyte.

https://www.amazon.com/Ottoman-Endgame-Revolution-Making-1908-1923/dp/0143109804

https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Ottomans-Great-Middle-East/dp/0465097421

u/Hishutash · 0 pointsr/worldnews

> Did you read the Wikipedia entry? They imported a estimated 28 million slaves from Africa, the population was much lower then this.

Where is the evidence supporting any of this? I'm sorry but a link to some dubious wiki entry that you could have edited in yourself a minute ago isn't acceptable.

> You'd expect to see much more black Arabs given these numbers, and I do know how genetics work

Go to gulf states. The Arabs there are predominantly dark skinned and their African ancestry is often visible.

> I also know that black skin is created by a series of dominant genes

That's like saying blue eyes can't exist because the genes for brown eyes are dominant over genes for blue eyes.

> Oh and they also castrated allot of those Turkish slaves.

How many is a "lot"?

> So now you assume I'm racist because of my country? Mature.

Considering that the foundational ideology governing Israel is virulently racist (zionism), its very mature. And I'm not even mentioning Israel's barbaric history of genocide, ethnic cleansing and endless oppression of the region's Arab population.

> The word has all the negative connotations a prescribe it, it happens to be one of those words shared by both Arabic and Hebrew. A slave is a slave and it just so happens they only call blacks slaves, no hidden context there.

That tell us how clueless you are about Arab and Islamic cultures. Muslims proudly proclaims themselves to be slaves of Allah. It has positive connotations. Your ethnocentrism doesn't prove anything.

> Arabs treated Africans really bad for centuries when Europe had no contact with them.

Not remotely as bad as the Euros (including Ashekanazi Jews who were major slavers).

> Then in the 300 years the Europeans did treat blacks bad the Arabs made a fortune selling them slaves, it was such a lucrative business it changed Morocco's economy.

The Arab slave trade was based in East Africa you dimwit. The Moroccan slave trade was primarily built on white European slaves and it was committed by Berbers not Arabs. Get it fucking right.


> I notice you didn't find any mistake in my portrayal of how Blacks are currently treated in Arab countries, I assume you agree it's correct.

I ignored it because it's obviously zionist propaganda. Black people are treated far better in Arab countries than they are in Israel where they're treated like scum.

> Which brings us to the great Arab lie, the "we treated Jews\black\whatever much better then Europe". Perhaps, but you treat them much worse now.

If can't even tell the difference between berbers and Arabs why should anyone believe your hogwash about some "Arab" lie. Go peddle your anti-Semitic nonsense in /r/Israel where it belongs.

u/BigRonnieRon · 0 pointsr/IAmA

http://www.amazon.com/Tuhami-Portrait-Moroccan-Vincent-Crapanzano/dp/0226118711

First review.

No there is no distinction. Auditory subvocalization is projected into the external environment.

I find the whole matter somewhat dubious at best and wildly unethical at worst, but a plausible antropological/ethnographical argument can be made.