MM...another guy I'd like to have a beer with, with the obvious reservatons ( )...Ancient Irish? Which era? Pre-Viking influence? Way, way back before the emigration of the Scotti? I have met a few Irish scholars, and they spend most of their time bemoaning the popular romanticization of The Emerald Isle by ex-patriates...Am very interested. As said, the other two are hits for me...
Very true. I wonder how much of that was his attempt at creating the mindset of the English and those others who opposed Napoleon. O'Brian lovingly portrayed French culture and lived there for many years until his death. The sense that it was "now or never" if Britain was ever going to defeat Napoleon is open for discussion. Perhaps it was. What might have happened if Britain hadn't broken the treaty is, of course, unknown. At least by me.
Some of it can certainly be accounted for as representing the mindset of the Brits at the time...but he goes beyond that. As i recall, he has pre-war French acting sheepish about unspoken things to come, and much of the insinuation is in narrative form, not character accounts. It is certainly an interesting area of speculation, the now or never. If you read about the Bourbonne influence, even so far as gaining support for the abortive attempts to invade via the Bay of Biscay, it does seem a bit less of a well reasoned plan.
I mostly like military history from any era. Other than that I prefer European history from darkages to wwI and central american history during the Aztec and Inca timeperiods.
History is always best viewed when it is viewed from nontraditional perspectives. In this light I'd recomend a book that I've just read: The Botany of Desire which views the historical domestication of four plants, the Apple, the Tulip, Marajuana, and the Potato. Along these lines my alltime favorite television show is Connections from the BBC, which ties together diseperate events. Again, it does a wonderful job of breaking down preconceved artificial historical boundries. Finally, I am eternally enthralled with Origins Of Neuroscience by Stanley Finger. I took his class @ WUStL which was basically about his book which details the history of Neuroscience. Anyway, the point here is that history is too often rigidly viewed through a fixed political perspective, as opposed to a more natural flowing transdicipline approach. Breaking the histroical schema, IMHO, is the most important step to a greater understanding of history.
Frederick Barbarossa and his ill fated attempt to join the third crusade. Pretty much all of the age of Feudalism in Europe, especially the dark ages. The Late Roman Empire and its collapse, as I feel this has great significance to a new unipolar power. Atlantis? Did it really exist, and what happened to it?
JAG, I thought I was your mother, remember? The things I like about ancient Rome are all the great structures that were built like the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, the Pantheon, the Baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts, and the catacombs. As for people, I like all of the early emperors as well as the period right before that time with Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, Crassus, Brutus, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Augustus, etc. And I love the mythology of ancient Rome and ancient Greece (which ancient Greece, as you know, pretty much is the basis of most of the myths for ancient Rome). I even like the times near the end of the Roman Empire when it got sacked in 410 AD by Alaric and later by the Vandals and finally by Odoacer of the Visigoths (sp?) who sacked Rome and desposed of the emperor, Romulus Augustus (coolest name ever) in 476 AD, I think. SLA, I am almost 6'3" and weigh 190 lbs. I have long arms, so I don't really have the frame for benchpressing, but I enjoy working out.
