Thought I'd start a thread for your favorite (coin/history) related books you've read this year! The following are ones I've completed, in no particular order. I recently picked up several Phoenician coins and I wanted to learn more about its people. This is a good guide, though extremely biased. A lot of what he writes is controversial, so it needs to be balanced with other papers. I found this useful for learning more about the Athenian coinage, though I was a bit disappointed with this book. I felt the other (Hellenistic) book was more engaging and several of my questions (about imitative coins and the emergency coinage) were only touched on lightly. This was a much better book, maybe because it covers the time period I focus on. Definitely a good introductory book on the era. Not a book to pick up lightly or curl up for a nice afternoon read, this must be among the all-time most influential history books. It took me awhile to get through it, but I'm glad I did. I especially loved how Gibbon wasn't afraid to give his opinion about things. I picked this one up based on recommendations here, and to be honest - though interesting - it really isn't something I'd typically read. This is more of an "art history" book than history. It definitely gives me a perspective when I see Roman busts in a museum, but I wouldn't recommend it. The dialog is clunky, but the history is well-researched and, after a slow start, it does flow and become gripping. This is a great take on a little-known person who nearly stopped Alexander. And, of course, perhaps the best book on the era after Alexander the Great. This is how history books should be written. It's gripping and tries its best to be historically accurate. Party tip: drink every time he mentions Eumenes. This is one of the first books I read, since I was curious what was so special about the first 12 Caesars that everyone has to have them. I picked this up right after finishing Gibbon, and was interested based on the dual aspects of being partly based during the Siege of Istanbul, as well as the connection with my favorite playwright Aristophanes.
These are what I'm currently working on. I typically read multiple books at a time because I can't focus. I'm fascinated by how such a small island can have had so many kingdoms. Several of my purchases have been from Cyprus, so I wanted to learn more. A fascinating take on a turbulent time. This is the first book I'm reading that's focused on the period. I picked this up based on a recommendation on CT. Fascinating information, though I doubt I'll ever be able to afford most of these coins. This one is slow going since I'm getting used to reading in Italian, but it's wonderful so far.
Great thread idea! I'm always on the hunt for more brain candy! When I say read I mean listened, but read Mary Beard's twelve Caesars when it came out and loved it. Thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful telling of the diadochi in ghost in the throne. If you liked that Philip and Alexander by Adrian Goldworthy was an excellent read. Read gibbons last year. I highly recommend Stephen fry's Mythos trilogy: As well, had a great time relistening to Herodotus, Plutarch, Zeno and Thucydides, to name some that come to mind.
Great books, the Hellenistic kingdom bij Thonmann was great indeed, I also collect mainly from the Hellenic period. The Athenian Empire I also bought but did not read fully yet. Here is another recommendation:
I re-read this book again by my former professor at Berkeley Erich Gruen. It highlights the same material in his upper division history course called The Hellenistic World, and makes the period come to life - the death of Alexander, the rise of the diadochoi, and the demise of many of the kingdoms after endless warfare and finally the emergence of Rome, the 800 lb. gorilla. Since he assigned 19 primary source works for his class, I spent a lot of time reading that semester!
I'm currently slogging my way through Bernhard Maier's The Celts. It's a well detailed, thoroughly researched, and rather dense tome - not light reading at all. Maier traces the history of the Celts from the Hallstatt culture of the 6th century BC to the modern Celtic speaking peoples of the UK and Ireland. A good companion to the Maier is a six-part BBC documentary, which is very general in historical details, but big on cinematography. In the documentary you can view many of the artefacts, artwork, and archaeological sites analyzed by Maier. It also has a lovely soundtrack. Here's the first of the videos - you can search the rest...
I read this one (in a French translation) : It is the real story of how an Italian 15th c. humanist discovered buried in some Alpine monastery a single forgotten manuscript of a then unknown Latin poem : De Natura Rerum by Lucretius. This poem explained among other things how the universe was created : a purely natural process by which atoms of diverse kinds falling in vacuum collided with others and aggregated with some of them to form material bodies like stars and the earth with everything that's on it! It was a Latin adaptation in verse of Epicurus' Physics, a fundamental text which is unfortunately lost... Needless to say that such a forgotten manuscript was more dangerous for mental sanity than Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon: this one was real, and could make the reader doubt of the biblical view of Creation. After reading it, you couldn't think the same way as before.
