Comments | beboots: MOAR history recommendations, you say??

beboots

MOAR history recommendations, you say??

Jan 26, 2011 21:09

So beckyh2112 and I have been chatting a lot about history stuff since I made that post a few hours ago (about Two-Spirited People), and I thought that hey, it might be a good idea to recommend some history books for people! There are a lot of history books out there - too many to fully digest, let alone really pick out the good ones - so I thought that I’d ( Read more... )

linkspam, histories, scholarly pursuits, procrastination station, recommendation

Comments 2

mightyinkas January 28 2011, 01:43:21 UTC

The Dirt on Clean! Bill Bryson! Yes yes yes! In high school, I checked out The Mother Tongue from the library so many times that my mother finally bought it for me. Great, great book... and the chapter on swearing helped me win a bet in my art class. LOL Bryson's bio of Shakespeare is pretty good, too.

I also really like Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter, because, first of all, hey, that title. It's interesting on the inside, too. :D

beboots January 28 2011, 02:16:58 UTC

I love Bill Bryson. The Mother Tongue remains my favourite, but the Shakespeare one was good, too. One of the things that really stuck with me in that one was the critiques of people's assumptions about his background: assuming that he didn't own any books because there weren't any in his will, for instance. If that logic is followed, then Shakespeare never wore anything below the waist, either, because there were no trousers in his will too. ;)

I also read "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and it blew my mind. Also instilled doubts: I no longer take the universe and its existence for granted anymore. >_>

"Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue"? Sounds awesome! :D I shall add it to my "to read" list! :)