(Part 2) Best products from r/AskHistory

You know, it's complicated - and no matter what decision Truman had made, people would be second-guessing him on it forever.

So many contributing factors. The casualty estimates from the Operation Downfall planning were a big one. The Soviets were ready to declare war on Japan, and Truman definitely didn't want Japan surrendering to the Russians, meaning (at best) a shared occupation of the Japanese mainland. Consider what happened in occupied Germany and that position makes a lot more sense.

But personally, I think the single factor that is most often overlooked is simply the mental state of the US high command at the time. In the year prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, they'd seen atrocities from the Japanese military in the Philippines, they'd seen Japanese soldiers fight to the death on numerous Pacific islands, they'd seen mass suicides among the civilian population on captured islands, and they'd seen the advent of the kamikaze.

All of these things were basically unthinkable from an American point of view, and they were genuinely shocked and appalled by them. They had intelligence that led them to believe the Japanese were preparing their entire remaining air force for kamikaze missions in defense of the mainland, and that the Japanese civilian population was being trained to fight to the death.

Knowing what we know now, it's easy to question their mindset, but if you put yourself in their shoes, you can understand why they sincerely believed that invading mainland Japan would be a bloodbath from one end of the island to the other.

The Manhattan project was given its initial urgency because every physicist in America was convinced that the Nazis were developing an atomic bomb, and that they were probably well ahead of us. By the time the bomb was ready, Nazi Germany was collapsing, and the focus shifted to Japan. Using the bomb against Japan seemed like a good option for the reasons I listed above, and the timing was largely dictated by the looming threat of the Soviets entering the war.

The best book I've ever read on this topic is a biography of Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin called American Prometheus. Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project, and was involved in every decision regarding the development of the bomb and its use. I highly recommend it.

I'm currently reading David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard and, interesting coincidence, the pages I just read the other night claimed the Hitler was vacant, uninterested in sex with women, that he ran almost entirely on instinct, but Mussolini was vivacious, passionate, and very interested in what was going on around him. In the example they gave, Mussolini was almost giddy waiting for a parade.

If you get a chance check out a book by Antony Beevor called Stalingrad. It came out years ago but it still one of the best history books that I've ever read.

Also it's quite a different area of history than what you've been reading lately. He also has another book about D-Day if you're interested in that as well.

Observation (3) was more about command economies than capitalist ones, so it's not necessarily that relevant to the modern US. It's based on an argument made by Raymond Van Dam that the city of Rome required something like 30% of the population surplus of the entire Mediterranean basin in order to sustain its size as a city of a million people, when market forces at the time would normally only sustain cities of a population around 10,000-20,000 (barring exceptional cases like Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile). He also argues that Rome stimulated the economies of the provinces by placing huge demands on them, and captured a lot of their surplus. Thus, Rome's artificial role as the center of the Mediterranean's economy prevented the provinces from becoming sustainably wealthy in their own right, and their infrastructure started crumbling when the capitol had to be moved east to better coordinate military action on the Rhine/Danube and Persian frontiers simultaneously. (The reasons for the empire's decline are vastly more varied and complicated than that, of course, but it's a useful way of thinking about the phenomenon.)

A similar situation happened in Constantinople, which also had a command economy centered on an artificially large capitol city. Once the capitol was sacked in 1204, the provinces became politically fractured and they wasted a huge amount of resources on recovering a city that had already lost its vast stores of invested capital, rather than focusing their effort on becoming more efficient, territorially compact states. A lot of the empire's manufacturing infrastructure was concentrated in Constantinople and given protected monopolies, which was another way in which the loss of the city had a disproportionate impact on the health of the provinces.

Modern Europe and America have embraced a more distributed economic model than Rome did. We don't have an ideological commitment to the overwhelming prominence of a specific city. Even the Hapsburg empire at its height was a dynastic state, rather than a city-state with a massive hinterland. If I were to look for a potential source of problems for us that's parallel to the ones suffered by Rome, it would probably be the concentration of wealth occasioned by advanced financial instruments, which allow stockbrokers and bond traders to capture a large portion of the economy's surplus capital and keep it for themselves instead of reinvesting it in industry, infrastructure, etc.

Read this. Great, funny, interesting book about all the visitors to the Americas between Columbus (and before) and up to the Pilgrims landing, including Roanoke. Favorite line (paraphrasing): "When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth the first Native American they encountered not only spoke fluent English, but asked if they had brought beer." Great read.

An editor of our project wanted to also recommend the following book:
Francois Furstenburg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation. This editor suggests that though it is a little off the mark in topic, it is a wonderful book and is highly regarded.

Have fun reading!

It's hard to tell but a good book to read is The Richest Man Who Ever Lived which is about Jakob Fugger, a wealthy banker in Augsburg, Germany who financed the Hapsburgs during the height of their power. He was one of the main merchants who loaned money to Emperor Charles V, the man who owned almost 1/4 of Europe.

I think the The Samurai Sourcebook would be a good place to start. Try asking on /r/AskHistorians, that subreddit is much more active and helpful. I found this post by accidentally searching for books on this subreddit instead of askhistorians, hope this helps you :)

I would strongly recommend "The Story of Civilization" by Will Durant. He is a great story teller and you will be amazed how fast you go through them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization

Here is the first book http://www.amazon.com/Oriental-Heritage-Story-Civilization-Vol-1/dp/1567310125/ref=pd_sim_b_2

I highly recommend The Tyrannicide Brief. It's the story of the trial of the men responsible for the execution of Charles I at the end of the English Civil War. When his son, Charles II, retook the throne, he put these men on trial.

It gives a great history of the legal system at the time, and the promising reforms that were put in place under the Commonwealth, only to be ruled back after the return of the monarchy.

My favorite part had to be the story of the judge who stepped down from bench, walked to the witness stand, gave evidence, then got back on to the bench to continue trying the case.

Though I fear it may not be what you're looking for, Persepolis is a great book/comic on the struggles of a young woman growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. Really helped to give me a better understanding of what life is like there. Hope it helps!

EDIT: Had some issues with linking the Wiki. Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)

This is a fun site if you want to know what some looked like http://oldphotoarchive.com/stories/the-lost-mansions-of-new-york-city-7-photos

Also a great book for reference

The following book is a great read and super relevant to your question. https://www.amazon.com/Most-Powerful-Idea-World-Invention/dp/0226726347

In short, the answer is patents. However, most people agree that companies no longer need to protect their R&D investment (beyond first mover advantage) and we no longer need patent protection.

American Lion is about the life and presidency of Andrew Jackson. It is crazy dense but well worth the read. It's also really cheap. http://www.amazon.com/American-Lion-Andrew-Jackson-White/dp/0812973461


John Adams is also a great book about the president's life.

https://books.google.com/books?id=s-sTrTHz8oMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=john+adams&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tsYaVZfYHoOWyATT2YCwDg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ

If you're interested in the Roman military, then I would recommend Chris McNabs book on the Roman army. It gives an overview from the founding of Rome to 453, with a lot of the focus on the early empire. Great read.


http://www.amazon.com/The-Roman-Army-Greatest-Military/dp/1849088136

I'm from Georgia and there was a sizable Asian population living there having been brought in a labor to build canals.

" The city hired more than 200 Chinese immigrants for the labor, many of whom remained in Augusta to form one of the oldest Chinese communities in the eastern United States."

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3039


While segregation was officially before my time (though I very clearly remember the "White" and "Colored" signs that had not yet been removed), according to my own upbringing Asians were most definitely not considered White.

As a group they were less reviled than Black folks but were still 'othered' and kept apart from Whites in social situations. I was not allowed to play with anyone who was not White. Here is a book that discusses this very topic:

http://www.amazon.com/Partly-Colored-Americans-Anomaly-Segregated/dp/0814791336


I would ask my elderly mother but she has refused to speak speak to me after discovering via Facebook that I voted for Obama. Incidentally, I also married a man of Chinese descent. She actually used the term "miscegenation" with great regularity with regards to my marriage and advocated my saving up that I might afford surgery to rid my children of their "Chinaman" features.

Regardless of public policy, in private much of the structure of segregation remains tacitly intact.

You absolutely need to read The Conquest of New Spain by Castillo. As mentioned in another post, it's a first hand account of one of the most epic adventures of all history.

The Penguin Classics book has a fantastic translation, is very readable and I cannot recommend it enough. I read it last year.

http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452103250&sr=8-1&keywords=conquest+of+new+spain

Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote a memoir The True History of the Conquest of New Spain which is a surprisingly good read. I also read Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico which was well written and accessable too.

Just to add to the above, an excellent book which reviews the historicity of the Gospels is Zealot by Reza Aslan. It examines the likely historical circumstances surrounding the three synoptic Gospels i.e. Mark which seems to have been written earliest, and Matthew and Luke which derive material from Mark and a fourth now lost document referred to by scholars as the Q-gospel. John is very different from the synoptic Gospels in theme. Mark itself was probably only written c. AD 70 in the lead up to the great Judean Revolt. Basically the scholarly consensus is that none of the Gospels was likely written by the apostle they're attributed to (along with all the other Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas etc.)

One of the best books on Hitler, by a great student of the subject

It gets pretty damn depressing when he gets to the "working towards the fuhrer" theory though.

He was known for going off for hours about German/political history(normally incorrectly) as a kind of grand standing show of his "understanding" of history and why he was the chosen one who could see it and lead Germany to glory. Also he had horrible flatulence.