So What Are You Reading Now?

Hello everyone... I'm new here and just wondering what everyone is reading.

I am just finishing up The Lost Trappers by David Coyner, with commentary by David Weber. It was originally published in 1847 and tells some of the adventures of a trapper named Ezekiel Williams.

What about the rest of you'all?

I'm reading A Concise History of the Crusades. Very concise might be a better adjective. Still, I know next to nothing of this period, so I'm learning a lot.

Hi Sergerca,

It's also an area I'm ignorant about. But if I was to revert to my old ways (ie desert my present course in US history), I'd probably read Anna Comnena's Alexiad.

Prof Dawes says of it:

"The "Alexiad " of Anna Comnena has long been used
as a source of information by historians of the
Byzantine Empire and by writers on the First Crusade,
and numerous extracts from it have been quoted and
translated, yet a complete English translation of it has
not been published before."

http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/primarysourcesfirstcrusade.html

I haven't read it, as I said, but I always thought it looked like fun.

==========
Another good place to look for primary sources is:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1k.html

I'm reading Procopius' The Secret History. I've only just started, but, wow, those Byzantines sure were crazy.

#3 Thanks for the suggestion!

#4 I also have A Short History of Byzantium and Sailing From Byzantium, both of which I have not read, but are supposed to be excellent.

Lastly, Justinian's Flea has received great praise in every review i've read.

I'm reading The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard

Someone just recommended Justinian's Flea to me. I went and read the reviews and you are right, it was generally well received.

Let us know what you think of it.

I have read Procopius and I am not sure if it is good history or a National Enquirer version of history. It does have good stories but they may just be good stories. I am no expert in Byzantine history and I may be completely wrong in my opinion. I am rereading The Impending Crisis. I have become fascinated by the Civil War and the events leading up to it. Potter is very good and his analysis is excellent. I just finished reading Lying about Hitler. This was very interesting although I found the author to be a little pompous. After reading the book it is hard to believe how David Irving was stupid enough to bring the case. He seems to suffer from a very bad case of self-delusion. People who are not honest with others are first dishonest with them self.

Currently reading two early tracts about the Cahokian mounds near St. Louis. One by Moorehead and the other by Crook.

After that, for my after Turkey reading, it's onto "Daughters of joy, sisters of misery : prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90".

(The relative will love that ;)

I am reading The Chinese Cinderella, really good book so far, not a thick one, but have so much going on, savoring it really.
It kind of reminds me of The Boy Called It, But the abuse isnt as bad.
ThePam, I live near St Louis, the tracts sound neat!

Have just finished Sea of Faith and have moved on to some recent political history The Right Nation.

Interlibrary has finally turned up a copy of Soiled Doves: prostitution in the early west by Anne Seagraves.

I suspect it's fluff, but we'll see.

Reading Rick Atkinson's latest, The Day of Battle.

Just starting Stealing Indian Women : Native Slavery in the Illinois Country by Carl Ekberg.

It's my first non-fiction ARC. Yeah free stuff!

Well, I have got myself backlogged (as usual). Just recieved from PBS: 1776 , and I already have Flags of our Fathers, a book on Lincoln AND Ghost Soldiers, oh and a book on the Celts.....I have begun to read all of them, but just keep reading a page or two and then putting them down, argh!

Am still working on undaunted courage since I've had to put it down for over a week or so. I also lost my place and have reread a bunch as well. I'm also starting 1421 the year china discovered america for book club.

Just finished "Jamestown: the perilous adventure" by Olga Hall-Quest.

Also been reading some articles on Indian slavery in the New World.

Hello, just finished 1421 The Year China Discovered America which was entertaining and intriguing although his leaps of faith and assumptions have many a pro historian unhappy.

Am just about to start Fusiliers Eight Years with the Redcoats in America by Mark Urban.

I've got about four more pages in "Stealing Indian Women" to go. What a dynamite book. It's academic and just chock full of information on the early settlement of the upper Mississippi region -- called the Illinois Country. Think Louisiana Territory, only further north.

But what makes it so good is that it totally upends all my previous conceptions about what early European settlements were like in the 1700s. The French of Ste. Genevieve were so different from the English settlers of Virginia, for example. They lived in a small community which was very tolerant. Indians moved there to be closer to them, they intermarried (of course), and there were more slaves than free adults (principally Indian slaves), but there was almost no violence although every man had weapons, even the slaves roamed the streets and forests well armed.

And they were certainly out there and settled way before Daniel Boone or even Lewis Clark headed west. I had no idea how English-centric my school education had been. I'm appalled really.

===========

In any case, currently reading "Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in
Nineteenth-Century Greece" by Thomas Gallant. LOL!!!

It's a short pdf paper.

Just finished reading Captain John Gregory Bourke's "Popular Medicine, Customs, and Superstitions of the Rio Grande"

It's not as interesting as his usual monographs.

I've begun Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust.

Finished a paper on the Southern tradition of rough-and-tumble fighting. Very interesting, and gives an entirely different meaning to the phrase 'save face'.

"Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch:" The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry" by Elliot Gorn.

In general, the topic is the notion of masculine honor and it's defense. Gorn looks at how this tradition contrasts to that of dueling for the upper classes, as well as how it spread west with Southern dispersal after the Civil War.

Available online if anyone's interested.

Just finished reading "Marie Rouensa-8cate8a and the Foundations of French Illinois" by Carl Ekberg.

It's a very nice article that covers the life of Marie, an Indian who converted to Catholicism and later married a French voyageur. Together they farmed and raised their children until he died. Marie's own will and the tabulation of her possessions at her death, give us quite a bit on insight into that time and place.

I'm just about to start Fletcher Pratt's "A Short History of the Civil War: Ordeal by Fire"

Also starting on two French books: "French Demystified" and "Beginning French for the Utterly Confused". I don't want to speak French, but I sure would like to be able to read some source works in that language.

I just finished the two volume The Road to Disunion and am starting Roll Jordan Roll. I had done a lot of reading on the civil war and now I am focusing on the ante-bellum period.