Anyone has any experience with The Cambridge Ancient History? Is the autism of reading thick 19 books of 14 volume series worth the effort?
Cambridge Histories are good for research and overviews but they aren't great for survey reading unless you are a really particular kind of person
It's really helpful to be able to get an overview of the scholarship and basic contours of a certain topic (like "The Roman Slave Economy" or "Ireland 454-960"), but it's tedious as all fuck to read if you're just looking for history. They are academic articles, so they're mostly talking about scholarly problematics.
I've read certain self-contained single volume ones for "fun" before but it was nothing like reading a nice holistic survey designed for students and academic readers.
>>8085250
What do you recommend for holistic reading? Classical History preferred.
>>8085302
Cambridge Histories contain sections that scholars will gush about as best in subject, but they arent very fun for "holistic reading" as you say.
Something like Kagan's series on the Peloponnesian War, The Landmark Thucydides, the Dryden translation of Plutarch's Lives, or some research on your own using oxfordbibliographies would probably benefit you if you are reading for pleasure.
>>8085510
>The meme translation of Plutarch's memes
He said history
>>8085517
>Plutarch isnt a source
Also he is looking for enjoyable reads in history, not dry scholarship.
>>8085520
If that's how it's gonna be then you might as well go fully degenerate and recommend him Herodotus
>>8085525
I would recommend him Penguin's Selected Cicero, shit is comfy history reading. I also just picked up a mint 1958 Arrian's Life of Alexander Folio Edition trans. by Aubrey de Selincourt, which is the ideal in curling up with on a winter's day.
>>8085236
I have no experience with reading history as intensely as having read those volumes, but I've read The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen, and it's very entertaining. It's also not as thick. Mommsen's the only historian to have ever won the Nobel Prize in literature, too.
>>8085540
Love Cicero.
>>8085676
Check out SPQR by Mary Beard too.
>>8085920
>Herodotus
>History
Pick one.
>You
>Retard
>Autism
Pick both.
>>8085931
>The only valid type of history is that which meets 21st century Western academic standards
Are you fucking kidding me? Herodotus is universally acknowledged as the father of Western history. Any historian not entirely up their own ass will confirm.
>>8085951
He told tall tales, bitch boy.
>>8085236
>Ancient History
Only if you like fairy tales.
>>8085973
>hurr folk history isn't real
>hurr if it can't be published in AHR it's not history
He collected information and presented it in context, sometimes skeptical sometimes credulous. But you clearly no fuck all about what your'e talking about, so I don't know why I expect you to understand the difference between what Homer did and what Herodotus did.
>>8085992
You fell for a fairy tale. Time to face facts and swallow a bullet.
>>8085973
>this guy writing the world's first history book 2400+ years ago doesn't hold up to academy scrutiny of our own times haha what a loser
Is this what they teach classics majors now or are you just independently retarded? The development of history as a field is just as important as the events it aims to represent and explain.
>>8086006
No one in this conversation believes the things Herodotus claimed. If that wasn't obvious to you, I'm concerned about your ability to interpret and understand language.
