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Last week I finished several books - most of them were my texts for this semester, and since this semester is now winding down, it is inevitable that I would finish a few. I'll just offer a few comments on each.
This was my core textbook for Roman History. I only do the Republic and there are not a lot of texts out there devoted to just the Republic, but the whole Republic (well, really from Rome's foundation to the principate of Augustus). This was a new, recently published, text that covered exactly what I wanted. I found it to be an interesting read, covering a lot of the more recent research on early Rome. Unfortunately, I think it was beyond my students' grasp, as they had no foundational knowledge of Roman History to help. Bringmann's narrative became more complete when treating the Late Republic, but he spent too much time analyzing and arguing and not enough just presenting a straight-forward narrative which is what my students needed. Again, it was perfect for someone with a decent knowledge of the narrative already - I learned quite a bit from his particular perspective on certain issues of the Republic. Perhaps also a little problematic was the fact that Bringmann wrote the text in German and this was a translation. I think the translator did a fine job, although there were a few rough spots, but inevitably there was a Germanic quality to the whole text that alienates your basic American reader a bit.
This is the core text of my online Medieval History course. I like it because Keen takes a thematically similar approach to my own in presenting medieval Europe. He examines Europeans' efforts to create and sustain Latin Christendom from the eighth century on. In the end, he explains the end of the Middle Ages in terms of a shift from a Christendom-centric view of Europe to one dominated by national kingdoms. He also offers more information about central and eastern Europe than a standard text, so that even I learned a few things about the Middle Ages from it. It is by no means a perfect text, but it is quite accessible and not too long. I supplement it with a more scholarly text that takes a less narrative and more thematic approach.
This is by far the most readable and yet useful grammar book I have encountered, so I have brought it front and center in my Research and Writing methods course. Good has an engaging style and focuses particularly on issues to make the reader a better writer. Since Good's mian job is to teach lawyers how to write better expository prose, it is perfect for a history methods course. What it lacks is the traditional textbook's exercises, but I am putting those together myself (mainly involving sentence diagramming). I actually picked this up on the Barnes & Noble "Bargain Books" shelf a few years ago (and I did see some more copies on a recent trip to B&N), where it came in a hard back version entitled, Who's (...Oops) Whose Grammar Book Is This Anyway? If you want to understand English grammar better and become a better writer, I highly recommend this book as a 'good' place to start.
I got this book for my birthday, and I only just finished it, after getting sidetracked with a bunch of other stuff (mainly work). The nice thing was that since it is just a collection of individual accounts of various military battles, I was able to come back to it and just keep going even after a couple of weeks of no reading. I was probably already familiar with about half of the battles (mainly the ancient ones). Overall, though, each battle was retold in an entertaining style, and I found that each tactic was indeed new and unconventional (not much repetition of tactics in the author's choice of battles). This was not high scholarship, but I certainly learned a few things, and only found a few small errors in the battles I did know. I wouldn't mind writing a book like this someday.
Current Bookshelf :
I got this book for my birthday, and I only just finished it, after getting sidetracked with a bunch of other stuff (mainly work). The nice thing was that since it is just a collection of individual accounts of various military battles, I was able to come back to it and just keep going even after a couple of weeks of no reading. I was probably already familiar with about half of the battles (mainly the ancient ones). Overall, though, each battle was retold in an entertaining style, and I found that each tactic was indeed new and unconventional (not much repetition of tactics in the author's choice of battles). This was not high scholarship, but I certainly learned a few things, and only found a few small errors in the battles I did know. I wouldn't mind writing a book like this someday.
Current Bookshelf :
- Graham Priest, Logic: A Very Short Introduction
- Anthony Everitt, Cicero
- Hugh Nibley, Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity
- Garth Nix, Keys to the Kingdom #6: Superior Saturday
- Ellis Peters, Cadfael #3: Monk's Hood
- Jude Watson, Last of the Jedi #2: Dark Warning
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