Reddit mentions: The best italian poetry books

A flippant response might read "Your list, with 'The Annotated' [0 - 4] prepended to each entry". Less glibly, I concur with /u/dvdvh, that it is necessary to build a broad recognition of the landscape of history before one goes exploring the geological forces that shaped it. This can be accomplished by picking your favorite time, place, or culture, querying a suitable encyclopedia entry, taking notes if desired, and expanding from there; I personally find the histories of Hungary [5] and Uzbekistan (Sogdiana/Transoxiana) [6] to hold criminally low profiles in the lay-historian's mindset.

For historical perspectives orthogonal to any one physical dimension, I would recommend military histories, which, truer to your own suggestions, can be classical original sources, e.g. Xenophon's "Anabasis" [7], so long as one is willing to research details assumed known by the authors. B. H. Liddell Hart's "Strategy" [8] specifically takes the position that military science prerequisites a knowledge of precedents, and so provides it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer-Annotated-H-ebook/dp/B005Y0MWUC

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Translated-Annotated-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B00SIWHOWO

[2] On this point I must bend "The Annotated" to "The Reader's Companion to": https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Cervantes-Companions-Literature/dp/0521663873

[3] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019953621X/

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky-Annotated-critical-Biography-ebook/dp/B0057JQ206

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Uzbekistan

[7] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anabasis

[8] https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell-Hart/dp/0452010713

It wasn't apologetics so much as just reading the earliest Christians while I was studying at a Protestant seminary (on my own, of course - they would never have read the Fathers so closely). The place of Rome in the early Church was pretty obvious to me such that Orthodoxy was never an option. Books that help prove this point are:

Chapman, John. Studies on the Early Papacy

Fortescue, Adrian. The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451

Rivington, Luke. Roman Primacy, A.D. 430-451

Scott, S. Herbert. The Eastern Churches and the Papacy

I also read a bunch of modern Catholic theologians and I'd be happy to suggest sources. But my conversion took years. It was something I spent all my free time thinking about for about 3 years.

I think Lutheranism is highly problematic. Luther's philosophical and theological starting points - rooted in nominalism - tend to lead to pretty disastrous theological positions. And the Reformers did reach out to the Orthodox. The Orthodox turned them down. They saw that they were preaching novelties, just as the Catholics saw.

Why Stay Catholic is not a book about papal authority in the early Church. It sounds like this is the lone book on Catholicism you've read and you're trying to get as much out of it as possible.

Nevertheless, books you should check out:

Chapman, John. Studies on the Early Papacy

Fortescue, Adrian. The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451

Rivington, Luke. Roman Primacy, A.D. 430-451

Scott, S. Herbert. The Eastern Churches and the Papacy


You should also read the article by Brian Daley, SJ titled "Position and Patronage in the Early Church: The Original Meaning of 'Primacy of Honour'" The Journal of Theological Studies, NEW SERIES, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Oct. 1993): 529-553.


Let me know when you dig in and read these. I'm glad to discuss them.