Yeah, That Happened: Topics in History

[Oxynia]

By request, here's a place to discuss major events (or even minor ones) in world history with your fellow Greecie enthusiasts.

[chonies]

THANK YOU! I am so excited. I am not a history scholar by any means, but, um, I love the series Connections. I thought about the (perhaps speculative) connection between the Black Death, underwear, and the rise in literacy more than I'd care to admit when Ebola was still #1 in the news.

I don't have a favorite historical era, but I love plagues, diffusion of inventions and food, and contact between cultures. I'm a true delight at all cocktail parties.

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

Thanks for setting up this thread, Oxynia! I'm nerding out and I love it!

I don't have a favorite historical era either, but lately I've been reading about Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the Cambodian genocide in 1975. I'm going to watch The Killing Fields tonight and I'm trying to show some self-restraint by not ordering a crap ton of books on these subjects.

I sort of have this cycle I go through, I internet binge on a subject of interest for several days until I finally max out the amount of information I can understand, order several books from Amazon or check them out at the libe, and then I finally OD on info and don't read anything about it for a long, long time. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Oh, and somewhere along the way, I'll wonder why I've accumulated so many books.

Next up for me when I've exhausted my threshold for information, I'll be delving into the Farm Crisis in the 80s.

[Baby Fish Mouth]

I have a Master's in history and find there are precious few people with whom I can actually discuss it, so this is nice!

My field is 20th century U.S., especially the politics and culture of the 1960s. But I'm also an Anglophile and my guilty pleasure is the British monarchy.

I want to plug one of my favorite authors, Sarah Vowell. She writes about American history in a funny and relatable way. Her book Assassination Vacation is one of my favorites.

[NappingAthena]

I have a BA in history. My era is 20th century history, especially World War II. BUt lately I've gotten into reading books about World War I. I also like the Civil War, and anything about monarchy, especially the British.

[Deleted]

Yay! Another thread I can nerd out in!

I also tend to OD on subjects that draw my interest. Last year it was orphan trains, the year before that the 1918 flu pandemic. The Civil War has been a longstanding interest of mine. That mostly stems from getting dragged to the Gettysburg battlefield by my family when I was a kid, plus the Ken Burns documentary.

I minored in American Studies in college. It's kind of history but kind of not, it was more focused on culture and the reasons why things happened. I LOVED those classes.

I've always been fascinated by historical sites, my vacation destinations are often determined by how many old forts or houses or prisons I can visit. I went to San Francisco primarily to visit Alcatraz. It was seriously the highlight of my trip.

[chonies]

I actively scream and run from the room re: the battles and politics of the Civil War, but I do like reading about the way it reappears and is romanticized in popular culture. Oh, and I've also been to what feels like a million Civil War sites, including Vicksburg (the GPS tour is especially recommended) and Andersonville, which has an excellent, excellent museum about POWs.

Oh! I also like reading about Genghis Khan.

Another thing that's not about history exactly is the idea of common knowledge. I taught several students from Korea and Saudi Arabia, and they had a vague-at-best idea of what/where/when/who WWI was, while my Italian student was erupting like a volcano with facts. I have a shamefully limited grasp of core Canadian and Australian history, and I feel I should know more.

[Ripley]

My bachelor's degree was in Public History, involving historic homes, museum studies, and archival work. I still had plenty of time to take other history classes, and I always loved Elizabethan England and the US domestic history of World War II (Studs Terkel's oral history "The Good War" was my favorite history book for years). Lately I've been reading more about WWI (I just finished "Last of the Doughboys" -- loved it -- and now I'm listening to an NPR audiobook with many NPR stories regarding WWI).

[Baby Fish Mouth]

chonies, hopefully you've read Confederates In the Attic?

Civil War and history reenactors in general are fascinating. I would probably be one of them if I didn't enjoy the comforts of living in 2014 way too much.

[chonies]

Aug 15, 2014 18:04:33 GMT -4 Baby Fish Mouth said:

chonies, hopefully you've read Confederates In the Attic?

Civil War and history reenactors in general are fascinating. I would probably be one of them if I didn't enjoy the comforts of living in 2014 way too much.

Eff yes I have! It was the thing that let me tone down my inner screaming every time the wo-ah came up.

Parallel to other people's love because of contact during childhood, I went to a high school named after a major CSA general, I lived close to Lee-family stuff, Manassas, Arlington Cemetery, and more, and yet I never really thought of it as real--I didn't really know anyone who was truly southern or had any kind of connection to it. It was just historical clutter, statistics, the occasional controversy over building sites, and once in a while a Beauregard-Jackson-Pickett-Burnside stereotype. I've even seen Sickles' pickled leg. That is, until I read Loewen and Zinn and Horwitz. And then I moved to Mississippi, and that was interesting because there was the provocative use of that flag, but also people who interpreted the war in a different way. And by different, I don't mean "aggrieved" or "overly defensive," just in a way I hadn't thought of before.

To be honest, I do love public history, and have intentionally visited Stafford Hall and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA, so I suppose it's an era in history I like to hate-study . I'm kind of interested in the allegiances of various Indian tribes during this era because I remembered reading about Stand Watie when he got a stamp, but it's low on my list.