You could buy a delorian

Personally, I like his work but you have to see it for what it is. Hes a “fan of history, tslking about history”. He’s basically us. Not an academic source. Just a guy who retells stories he finds interesting and wants to talk about.

I think he does a good job of clarifying “this is my feeling about” vs “this is what the community says is a fact”

But if you are viewing him as citable source, I’d be wary there.

Best believe I’ll continue to subscribe to his stuff, but, for example, I would never cite “well Dan Carlin said it went like this” as a counter in a debate.

I don’t see how TBH.

By late in the war, the Allies had air superiority.

Even WITH a few German jets in the air, the Allies owned the skies.

The big issue was German production and logistics. It was bad.

Sure WWII Germany knew how to build a jet, but they couldn’t build them or deploy them at any relevant scale.

They can no longer produce precision parts or high quality steel needed to build any serious numbers of jets or even quality traditional planes.

The can no longer get high quality fuel. The lack of good fuel means the plabes they do have can’t run as fast/hard. So allied planes are outperforming them.

Put all this together and its easy to see how allied air power took control of the skies late in the war.

So could the allies have gotten jets? Maybe. But so what?

If they’ve already taken control of the skies, getting a wonder plane that gives them more control of the skies doesn’t really change much.

> For most of history, war was seasonal: as such, some, if not most soldiers will leave for the winter, and return when the war resumes; …

>….so skipping planting won't cause starvation, feeding a large force in one place for long is extremely expensive without railroads

Great respone. Also made me immediately think of an example where this was true even today

Afghanistan - The Fighting Season

>assassinations out of the US

Wait wait wait, I hate to be terribly cliche here but

Is nobody going to say…

Franz Ferdinand?

The Herhausen assassination.

A terror group assasinated a German banker in 1989.

The part of unique interest is the method. The banker travelled everywhere in a heavily armored car. So, they rigged up a IED.

They put a bicycle where his car was going to pass, filled a satchel on the bike with explosive, and rigged up an infrared laser as the trigger. When the bankers car passed through the laser … boom.

But the key point, the explosive didn’t kill the banker. The car would have possibly survived that.

They’d put a copper plate in front of the explosive charge, so when the explosive blew up, they turned the copper plate into a giant molten copper bullet, flying at (through) the banker’s car at hypersonic speed.

This technique, using an “explosively formed penetrator” is common in military weapons, like RPGs and anti-tank rockets,

But building one into an IED and using an infrared laser to activate it, these were breakthrough techniques in 1989. This may be the first time they’d been used.

I mean, the riding on a pony line is relevant too.

Riding on a pony with a feather in his cap seems like

Everybody in the upper strata is buying Maybachs and Rolls Royce,

Fuckin Colonial rides into town in a rented Chrysler 300 200

Stuck a diamond rhinestone hat pin in his baseball cap and thinks he's all red carpet ready

Two EXCELLENT books about the Iraq War

The March Up

and

The Strongest Tribe

Both by Author Bing West.

Now, the March Up is an interesting read, but you can take it or leave it. The Strongest Tribe on the other hand is downright educational. Its an engaging read, but its educational enough that (if I was a person that made these kind of decisions) I would put it on the mandatory/professional reading list for politicians, diplomats, and military leaders above E-7 or O-4)

First, for important context, who is Bing West?

From wikipedia

>Francis J. "Bing" West Jr. (born May 2, 1940) is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration.

But ok the real key points here are - the guy was a Marine infantry platoon commander in Vietnam. He was right there in the S***

But also made it up to Col.

But also worked in the White House.

But also worked for the RAND corporation.

The important here is, he has real world experience at all these levels, but also he has the street cred to get access to people.

When he and Gen Ray Smith decide "hey, 1st Marines is in on the Iraq invasion, pushing all the way up to Baghdad, let's ride along and write a book about it" (The March Up), they have the connections to get permission to literally buy an SUV and ride along with the convoy the whole way

and based on his street cred, his "I was an Lt in Vietnam" means he can sit down with the infantry enlisted and junior officers and they'll talk to him.

But his I was a Col, creds mean he can get interview time with the General too

and his White House cred means he can get to the point interviews with the actual Bush administration decision makers. No doors were closed to him.

AND he speaks from actual subject matter expertise.

Like, when everyone was all sunshine about the rewriting of American counterinsurgency doctrine under Peter Pace, Gen pace assembled an entire think tank to make that rewrite happen. Bing West was one of the academics on that staff. He literally helped re-write "the book" on counterinsurgency.

>Interesting side note - part of the process for reshaping COIN strategy came from square one - study, go back, find ALL the counterinsurgencies in the modern era, Vietnam, the Troubles, etc and see what did they try, what worked what didn't, and why?" and oh BTW in Vietnam he was there. So sure enough one tactic he believed strongly in, was the whole "if you want the populace to side with you, you have to prove you are invested, and prove you can provide some safety. You gotta live among them. Can't own the town unless you live in the town. Which is what they tried in Vietnam, as West wrote about in his book "The Village", and reading it I was like, "yo.... I recognize this", because sure enough, it shed light on why, on my Iraq deployment, we picked the most defensible building in our sector, bought it, sandbagged it up, and LIVED IN the city we needed to assume control of.

Bottom line, As a former Marine, former academic researchers/think tank guy/former White House cabinet level staffer, this is a guy who knows how to research, has subject matter expertise at multiple levels of war and policy, and has access to face to face interaction with people that will open up to him, all the way from Marine Private First Class up to Undersecretary of State, so his book "The Strongest Tribe" as a chronicle and analysis of

how did we fight the insurgency in Iraq, what went wrong, what went right, and what changed things for better or worse

is excellently written and insightful. (Also, he pulls NO punches. He openly discusses which decision makers made dumb dumb dumb decisions. He tells it just how it is on Paul Bremer for example.)

I actually say that the most interesting pair of parallels books which SHOULDN'T be about the same thing, and yet, they kind of are

are The March Up paired with From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (yes, aware of the many criticisms of Friedman)

But between the two books, set decades apart, in different conflicts, there is a very notable consistency in the end theme of how Middle Eastern intertribal politics cannot be forced into a Western Template.

The landscape is going to be dominated by various factions looking out for their own peoples' interests and maintaining a level of mistrust. You can't just stitch together a new pretty "national flag" and say "ok fam, just like work together eh?"

> Yeah. It's was interesting to see the hype wave as someone whom known of Tesla and his work prior to it and knew that he wasn't well known.

Mentioned this above, but short version, I think Tesla got a huge notoriety bump in pop culture for a while, not because he's Tesla, but just because he was written as the "face" in one streak of the ever popular "things your teachers told you wrong, the hero was a heel" type stories (Edison)

realistically, I think a lot of "Tesla is so well known" (in the context of modern era, not his own time)

Is less about the popular interest in Tesla, and more about the popular fascination with "Hey, did you know Edison was actually a villain?!" articles.

Not because of any hate towards Edison specially, just the popularity of a "history got it wrong, and the hero is actually the villain" article

> so those posted to the frontier may have been significantly affected (the CWGC's criteria for commemoration rightly include those falling to "disease contracted or commencing while on active service" alongside combat-related deaths.

Also on this point, worth remembering that throughout history, disease has caused more war time casualties than combat all the way up to at least WWI, possibly WWII?

A big development to change that (besides the mere luck of avoiding major world pandemics I suppose) was modern medicine recognizing the impact of disease and taking a deliberate approach to controlling it.

Even down to a very simple example: when you see recruits in military boot camp, they get hygiene inspections nightly, they get in trouble (at very least yelled at, maybe worse) for things like touching/picking at their face. (You so much as rub your eyes and a DI sees it, you were getting aggressively corrected.)

Only later did I realize, oh. duh.

They are breaking you of disease spreading habits (don't touch your face), and also conditioning you to disease preventative habits (change your socks/clothes, wash up at night. You wouldn't think washing and changing clothes should have to be reinforced, but its not the doing it, that they're conditioning. Its the never not do it no matter how tired you are. 19 hour day and you just hiked 20 miles, all you want to do is climb in the bag and sleep? Heck no nasty, you still clean your weapon and take care of your personal hygiene first.)

What period in particular are you looking for?

For podcasts, The History of Byzantium podcast is very good

As is Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast (which is excellent). Its not meant to be about "Europe" specifically, but you get dedicated seasons on English, French (several), Russian, and general 1800s European revolutions.

Also the episodes about non-European revolution (American, Haitian, South American) are still very European heavy, since A. They typically inspired or were inspired by other revolutions in Europe, B. Those revolutions in the Americas were... colonies throwing off their European rule. The Haitian revolution is French history. The wars of Simon Bolivar are absolutely Spanish history, etc.

Big point here, the Revolutions entire podcast series makes a great unintentional education on modern European history, because

Reason 1, it gives the chronological story of "how did Europe go from pretty much all monarchies, to pretty much NOT monarchies?" (only 12 out of 44 European countries still have monarchs, and only 1, the Vatican, is still an actual "absolute monarchy" i.e., the monarch has final say decision making power)

Reason 2, those revolutions are all connected. Its less about a list of national events, and more about a string of dominoes.

The process of Europe as a whole doing away with rule by monarch, is sort of like one big, 235 year, rolling brush fire. The podcast walks you through the entire thing, from "it was a hot day with some dry grass" to "when we sift through all these ashes"

Agree with u/en43rs 's answer, so I'll just add some follow on thoughts in line with that

First thought, if you start your question with "Besides the Romans" I'd feel like every logical reason that makes you want to exclude the Romans as a too obvious answer, excludes the Greeks for the same reasons.

Then, as previously noted, you really can't begin to scope this question until you narrow it down to what type of impact you're looking for.

Let's start with Language for a moment though.

Beyond the root influence of languages (Greek, Roman, German, Chinese, etc) lets take a look at modern spread of languages as we know them today.

How many nations speak English? Spanish? Arabic?

The point of that question is not to say "oh look how great an impact those countries had on the languages we speak today". The point of that question is to hint at... hmm... WHY do the countries that speak their languages speak them? How did that happen? I.e., how many nations fell under those empires control, to the point of still having assimilated to their culture even today.

Spain recalibrated the entire future of the majority of the Americas, and the number of Spanish speaking countries in the West is pretty much a road map of that.

And HOW great was the impact of the Spanish Golden age and the territory they took over?

Well, there is a pretty fair argument that for all the attention American and French colonial slavery gets, the reality is the Spanish were major drivers in the Trans Atlantic slave trade.

Also, what about the physical, ethnic, genetic impact?

What do the Spanish and the Mongols for example, have in common?

The fact (at least I would argue) that the entire ethnic/cultural/genetic make up of entire regions was drastically, and irreversibly changed by the massive part of the native populations they either displaced or exterminate though conquest.

Put simply, there are ethno-cultural groups that used to live in regions, but don't, and maybe no longer exist at all, because the Mongols, Conquistadors, etc outright killed them. (Killed as in on the spot killed, or killed as in rounded up and sent to the silver mines until they were used up, etc etc)

what part of Russian history are you looking for? Russian history covers a ton of ground.

I know you asked for a book, not a podcast, but if you just want some great familiarization in a coherent (but massive) timeline,

Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast (free) go straight to Season 10, which the Russian revolution from the leading before it (episode one starts 1864) about 100+ episodes later to the struggles of the USSR

(and FWIW, Duncan lists his sources on his website, so if you want to dig in yourself you get a good reading list)

Interesting note about that, because Arabic presents that same transliteration issue, a lot of U.S. units working in Middle Eastern countries had to pass out a standardized "you will spell names like this" guidance.

Because there was nothing keeping Soldier 1 from spelling a name Mohommad, and Soldier 2 from spelling it Muhammad, and then when the guy showed up on a base to look for a job, or clear security, whatever, Soldier 2 wouldn't be able to find "Muhammad" in the computer system, and the databases would be all messed up.

> The British called the capital of China "Peking"

Also worth noting, a lot of slightly "off" spellings/pronunciations of Chinese are just transliteration problems.

Basically, if some other country (like China) has words not in your language, that don't even have a "correct English spelling", because that country doesn't use an English alphabet, better yet doesn't even use a phonetic alphabet,

then all the "English spellings" of those words are just someone coming up with their best attempt to write something that tells English language speakers "it sounds like this."

Now, someone important at some point will try to come up with a whole system that doesn't JUST spell out words, but spells out in general "ok if it has this sound, we'll spell it like THIS."

Way back when, some British guys, a Mr. Wade and a Mr. Giles, came up with a system like that, and it caught on, and the world (or the English, which close enough) adopted the "Wade-Giles" system of spelling Chinese words.

Unfortunately, Wade-Giles honestly isn't that great. It has some spellings that don't do a great job of telling you what the words actually sound like. Which is why many years later someone came out with a newer (IMO better system, Pin-Yin)

But some examples of weird spelling,

A sound the most English speakers would associated with B they chose to use P, thus "BeiJing" being mis-transliterated as "PeiKing"

Another infamous one, the sound most English speaks would associated with "Ch" or maybe a Soft Q, Wade Giles chose a Ts. They also chose a T to represent what most modern speakers would associated more with a medium D.

Thus "TsingTao" beer, brewed in a place that is actually spelled QingDao and both the beer and place are more accurately pronounced as "CHing-Daow".

Also on that same Hard T should be a medium D, that's why the Rap group "Wu Tang" clan is named after the kung fu (gung-fu) movie representation of the "Wu Tang" temple that should actually sound more like "Oo Dang"

Im going to have to try the Van Gogh. If you ever get around to it, you might appreciate effen as well. They do a few flavon infused, but their straight vodka is smooth and clean

I used to always say, you might not know the diff drinking it, but you'll know the diff when you wake up in the morning.

Granted, looking back that's still biased, because, plot twist, when you're drinking the bottom of the barrel cheapest vodka on the shelf, you're probably college/military junior enlisted age, at some bar or house party, and all that sub cheap plastic bottle vodka you're drinking is also mixed with the cheapest sugar slush you can find too.

Was it the cheap vodka making you hung over? Or the red bull and raspberry blue slushie mix?

Grey Goose is "fine" but IMO its just "fine". Its the burger at a sit down restaurant. You know its floor will be pretty good. its a safe choice, but its not going to give you some high end "wow" experience.

Now, I won't say any of the following list is "high end" or special, but in terms of just drinkability, and hey I kind of enjoy this, I've liked

Ketel (for mixed drinks only)

Russian Standard (excellent value for money)

Imperia (russian standard's "premium" release, not sure if they still make it)

Stoli Elit (probably overhyped and very probably overpriced, but it is nice to drink)

Chopin (wheat only for me. The potato felt I guess "thick" in texture? I didn't like it so much)

Effen - very nice, drinkable, reasonably priced

Personal opinion on what I DON'T like, anything Scandinavian. Just never really found one I liked. Reyka was not bad, but but all the absolut, level, svedka... hard pass.

Hidden gem for you California folks,

Albertson's used to run a brand called "Origine" bit sure if its still around, but basically it was their in store brand of various alcohols. No idea who their supplier was, but IIRC each liquor under their label was just a small batch distillery offering. So their Origine vodka was just some micro distillery product out of France. It was nice.

while this is true, I tend to feel like some of the French offerings tend to be that truly clinical, tasteless nothing, while some of the Dutch, Russian, or Polish brands have a bit of "character" to them.

add to that, a significant number of medium-macro brews may have their own recipe, but pay some bigger macro to brew their stuff.

Example, Baltimore's "Natty Boh" being owned by PBR and Brewed on contract in Coors facilities

there's many reasons why this wouldn't be practical, but for a start once your trench is within 50 yards of mine, how much further are you planning to dig?

Because anything within 40 yards, I can reliably toss hand grenades into your trench the whole time you're digging.

Yes.

A big philosophy right now is to create the stadium and surrounding areas a "entertainment districts".

Idea being, you develop the entire block as a part of town people come for recreation, and on game day, the games fuel increased profits for local bars and restaurants.

Same thing for concert or festival days.

And all together the bar and food scene helps create a return on investment on the city development effort that the stadium would have asked for anyways. (Meaning, if they are going to do the effort to run subways lines, repair roads, make the area transport accessible, might as well set up business that will benefit from it other than just a stadium)

That in turn also raises the property values of the hotels and residential buildings in the area, because the stadiums and concert stages bring investment in keeping the roads nice and local area clean and pretty, and the nicer retail outlets come in trying to get a piece of that partygoer spending, so then the apts/condos in that area are suddenly in the middle of the hot new nice area

They're calling them "Multi-Use areas or something now. All I know is, the wharf music area (The Anthem concert venue, Union Stage venue), and Nationals Park baseball stadium are all close enough to each other to walk, which means the same public infrastructure supports both, and the same bars, clubs, and shopping outlets benefit from their proximity to them

DC United soccer stadium bottom - National Park Baseball Stadium top

HARD disagree here.

Yes, they aren't in use most of the time, but they don't necessarily create any problems with Walkability.

Ravens stadium and Orioles park are both close to downtown, and they don't affect walkability in the slightest.

RFK used to be near the Heart of DC and didnt affect walkability at all. Nats Park doesn't affect walkability. Neither does Cap1

Its a non-issue, unless the planning team is crazy incompetent.

And for the times that it IS in use, that's not just a sports venue, but an event/concert venue that is easily accessible by foot or public transit.

but the Commanders could actually be further, like the furthest on this list once they do the logical thing

and launch that garbage dump FeDex field into the sun