What is your favorite part of history to read/learn about? (3 Viewers)

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mt15 said:
This is what is interesting to me about history, the personal side. How did people live, what was their day to day life like?
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that is one of the main ways that school got it so wrong in our generation. I hated history. It seemed to me like if you ever did anything important in the world that you got a big stamp on the calendar and forever after kids would be forced to memorize that date and nothing else. :jpshakehead:
 
Surviving Saint said:
Vietnam War. I have quite a bit of books on it. A few on WWII but I never got real big into it. Mostly 3rd Reich and Bataan stuff. I guess I like the jungle warfare aspect of it.

My grandfather served but never talked about. The only thing I ever learned from his experience was that his best friend was killed right beside him. They were fighting the enemy alongside each other and decided to switch places. He saw his best friend die immediately after. He told my mother and she told me so it was never a topic he discussed or wanted to.
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Have you read Chickenhawk by Robert Mason? Excellent account of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an army helicopter pilot.
 
Zack Lee said:
that is one of the main ways that school got it so wrong in our generation. I hated history. It seemed to me like if you ever did anything important in the world that you got a big stamp on the calendar and forever after kids would be forced to memorize that date and nothing else. :jpshakehead:
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If you ever had the good fortune as I did to have a history teacher in high school who wasn't simply focused on dates, names, and places but instead focused on the actual people who made history, then history truly comes alive as it should. He gave anecdotal stories about his characters always prededed by "Did you know..." We said "of course You would know, you were probably there!"

Thanks again Mr. Landes, you instilled in me a lifelong love of history :)
 
Zack Lee said:
IIRC they knew the radar system was helping the British but they had no idea how much. It might have been a totally different world had they kept targeting those stations. Losing focus is exactly how I have pictured it. For all of the success they had in France due to speed and planning, they were all over the map (literally) after that (and thank God)
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Yeah, I think that's true - and largely due to Hitler's meddling.
 
It's anyone a member of GoodReads? It's a great way to share and discuss the books you're reading.
 
Could be a good idea to set up a group for the forum.
 
I've always enjoyed ancient history. Not just Greece and Rome, but per-Christian Europe as a whole. The steppe peoples (from the Scythians to the Mongols) have always been very interesting to me. Tribal societies that grow into empires...that kinda thing.
 
Primarily post-Roman and Medieval European history, especially as it relates to warfare.

I'm also very interested in both the Sengoku/Warring States period of Japan, as well as the later Meiji Restoration. The Meiji Restoration in particular is really fascinating because it's essentially a very insular, very xenophobic, very traditional culture suddenly forced onto the world stage and very rapidly modernizing and industrializing itself in a Western fashion.
 

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