Too late, shifting reading paradigm, need good history of Greece/Rome

[UTUSN]

Too bad it's taken me a lifetime to figure out something that would have smoothed while broadening and deepening my gathering of knowledge. I wasted a lot of time chasing down certain classics, like GIBBON's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire and Thomas CARLYLE's The French Revolution. Only to get bogged down in THEIR own filter of THEIR own historical period. Plus seeking out other classics when I was too young for them, eyestrain for the foolish feather in the cap, without having the background to appreciate them well.

So in one of the periodical winnowings of my bookshelves--tossing (donating) this or that stack of books that were more of a fad in a particular era of my own life--I figured out that I should have looked for MODERN SCHOLARSHIP for certain important civilizations and eras: So instead of getting bogged down in GIBBON, what I needed to do was to find EXCELLENT MODERN scholarship, along THESE lines for the French Revolution:


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71GFGCET02L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.gif

http://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Chronicle-Revolution-Simon-Schama/dp/0679726101

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (Paperback)
by Simon Schama


********************So I want a DETAILED (with all the dirty gossip) history of the Greeks and Romans, scholarly, in-depth.

NOT the superficial crap like this (from Wikipedia) :

Thomas Cahill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Cahill (born 1940 in New York City) is an American scholar and writer. He is best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization. To date, the series includes the following five best-selling books:

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (1995)
The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (1999)
Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (2001)
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why The Greeks Matter (2004)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe (2006)

[Adsos Letter]

1. Hmmm...

For Rome, these are some of the authors on my shelves:

Syme
Scullard
MacMullen
Bury
Carcopino
Grant
Turcan
Jeffers

For the French Revolution (besides Schama, who is very good)

LeFebvre (Marxist historian)
Darnton
Church
Hunt


you have helped me realize I have a deficit im my Greek section...

[KittyWampus]

5. Some on DU seem to have a romatized notion of what the French Revolution was.

[Adsos Letter]

8. ...romatized...?

:shrug:

[KittyWampus]

10. romanticized. sorry.

[Adsos Letter]

11. .

:rofl:

[KittyWampus]

12. sniffle. stop making fun of me...

:(

[Adsos Letter]

13. I'm not making fun of you....

but I am curious as to why you think I take a romanticized view of the French Revolution.

I'll give you Schama, but Church, LeFebvre, and Hunt certainly don't.

[KittyWampus]

15. not YOU, silly. Other DU'ers talk about the guillotine as if it was an orderly sweeping away

of pesty rich people.

And you are more well read on the topic than I.

[Adsos Letter]

19. I apologize Kittywampus...

I have no sufficient excuse. :blush:

[martymar64]

2. For the Greeks Herodotus and Thucycides is a good start

Nothing better than going to source material.

[orestes]

14. I second both Herodotus and Thucydides

I'm reading History of the Peloponnesian War right now. I would also add Xenophon to the list. For Roman history, Polybius is a good place to start. Plutarch's Lives are also quite good if you want stuff on specific people, and he writes about both Greeks and Romans.

[UTUSN]

17. Well, as I said, I'd LUERVE the gossip, but need MODERN filter instead of OLD filter n/t

[Danger Mouse]

3. I picked up a nice biography of Augustus not too long ago.

It's a great read. Really gets into how much of a ruthless prick he was.

[Twillig]

6. Was it this book?

That was a fun read.

Plutocrat repubs complain about taxes nowadays, I wonder how they'd
have liked to be around when the best way to raise money for the
treasury was a proscription

[KittyWampus]

4. Read the 1st on your list (Irish Saved Civilization). Have you read Gore Vidal's historical novels?

Julian, for instance.

Vidal comes from within the heart of political family dynasties. His psychological insights were well appreciated.

[UTUSN]

7. That 1st CAHILL book (Irish) sounded splashy, & heard him on an interview

and he was compelling, gave vocal emphasis to the points. Then I read it, and it was O.K. So when I discovered the series, I went for it all. I kept making excuses, but it became clear that these things were popular, superficial things, skimming a franchise.

As for VIDAL, the older I've gotten (starting from post-college), the farther I've strayed from fiction.

Basically, I'm regretting the gaps in my non-fiction historical knowledge as a background for everything else.

[Vidar]

9. I'd highly recommend The Penguin History of Greece: by AR Burn .

[UTUSN]

16. Thanks. I've always thought of Penguin as "establishment" but I need to CHANGE!1 n/t

[Mudoria]

18. Donald Kagan's "The Peloponnesian War" is a good read..