Recommended…Reads.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
A brilliant example of Soviet studies scholarship. I’ve read innumerable books on Stalin and the USSR and I still learned things from Montefiore. Highly recommended.
The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939
The second book in his trilogy on the history of Nazism, Evans looks at the Nazi state and party apparatus and German society during the years of peace. Evans, along with Michael Burleigh, Ian Kershaw and Adam Tooze are revising our understanding of the Third Reich and illuminating that as evil as Hitler’s regime was in fact, it ultimately was intended to be several orders of magnitude worse had Germany won the Second World War.
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
A deeply partisan work of history, Dallek makes little effort to be fair (especially in the first half of the text) to either Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger, both whom he characterizes as mentally and emotionally unstable, if highly intelligent, personalities and makes an argument that Nixon’s mental state during the Watergate crisis required his removal from office under the 25th amendment. It’s difficult to imagine Dallek treating Bill Clinton or LBJ in similar fashion, regardless of their personal behavior or abuses of power because seldom does Nixon ever get the benefit of the doubt ( in comparison Richard Reeves’ devastating profile, Nixon: Alone in the White House is a work of hagiography).
Why read Nixon and Kissinger then ? Because Dallek, despite his biases, has done an outstanding job in presenting new sources and evidence and his delving into the China Opening and Nixon and Kissinger’s very complicated personal relationship, remains a first-rate work of scholarship. Therefore, I say “Read it” ( just do not let it be the only book you read on Richard Nixon).
That’s it!
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Dan from Madison:
December 21st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Glad I got you to read that Tooze book, it was the best one I read this year.
Lexington Green:
December 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I am finding reading time to be brutally scarce. I read the first 1/4 of Tooze, and it is excellent and I will finish it.
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Agreed that Tom Barnett’s new book is his best one so far. Very much worth reading, and it will provoke productive (I hope) disagreement in places.
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Osinga is brilliant, but dense. It also really needs to be issued at a lower price. Too few people will read it at the price it is going for. I was only able to give it a very fast read, and it demands more.
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The roundtable held up well when transferred to book form. If one must read one book on Boyd, I’d say it is Coram’s bio.
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The rest of these are all on my list … . A long list, more than one lifetime’s worth … .
zen:
December 21st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
hi Dan,
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It’s very good. Hard to do good econ history well so it’s a double plus effort. BTW Caught your post on getting a therapeutic massage -LOL! the numbness created by years of Muay Thai is all scar tissue impeding nerves – which deep tissue massage breaks up – that had to really hurt like all hell !
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hi Lex,
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I think Frans really was given a bad deal by his publisher – the hardcover was was very expensive even by academic library budget standards – but then professional academics, even military ones, are not publishing for sales per se but prestige and the publisher matters as much as sales. A few thousand copies by Harvard or U. of Chicago press matters more than 100,000 copies at Random House.
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After reviewing the books I’ve read this year, a far longer list than what’s here , I’ve decided that I need to get more science-related books under my belt in 2009. This past year was very heavy on military and ancient history – all good but my mind will benefit from a change-up.
Lexington Green:
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:56 am
"A few thousand copies by Harvard or U. of Chicago press matters more than 100,000 copies at Random House."
How many would he sell with a second edition on Nimble (half+ seriously asked).
Dan from Madison:
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Zen – well, the massage was pretty excruciating on my legs (I was wimpering like a little baby) but did wonders on my upper back, arms, and neck. I was amazed at how totally messed up my thighs were. I expected pain and all sorts of mayhem in my calves and lower legs since they are used so much for kicking and blocking, but my thighs were totally packed wtih lactic acid and I didn’t even know it. I guess after a while you just get used to it. Then again, this was just after a long test and some very heavy sparring, so maybe I had a little extra trauma in my legs from that. I do remember getting kneed a few times in the thighs during the sparring portion of my last test. It really smarts. I can’t wait to get back there for more, probably on Monday. Highly recommended if you have the extra jack laying around.