Interests

What particular areas are you folks interested in?

Here's some areas of interest for me: Ancient Civillizations, WWI & WWII, Church history (esp. the Protestant Reformation, the Cold War, Africa/MiddleEast/NearEast, 1960's counterculture in North America and abroad, etc.

Ditto on the Ancient Civilizations and WWII. I'm also interested in early human migrations, Dark Age Early Medieval Britain (post-Romans), Byzantium, archaeology anywhere and everywhere, historical linguistics, and probably more that I can't think of right now!

Well my faves are WWII, Civil War, Civil Rights (and everyone involved) mostly American History, NA history, German history, Celtic history. And then of course just the odds and ends that tend to pop up, lol. Oh and I do genealogy, so of course any country that I end up finding that family is from, I like to know the history of that country of course.

As I have a number of interests other than history in general, I'm usually curious about the history of those subjects, such as history of science and technology, of law, of publishing, of typography, of cartography, of language, and so on. Add to that a number of subjects that have an inherent historical dimension: genealogy, anthropology, genetics, and natural history (back to the creation of the universe).

Typical titles in my bookshelf are Astronomy before the telescope, Bokens historia, Blaeu's The grand atlas of the 17th century world, The story of writing, The seven daughters of Eve, Die Welt in der wir leben (as a kid, I was fascinated by the detailed pictures of animal and plant life on pre-historical Earth), and A brief history of time.

Since I work with computers, I also collect historical storage media: floppy disks of various sizes, magnetic tapes, cartridges, floppy ROM, punched paper tape, and punched cards. Unfortunately, I don't have space enough to collect also the peripheral computer hardware (disk and tape drives, tape and card punches) necessary to read or write those media formats...

Military History is my strong point. I've studied the past conflicts of the Battle of Mogadishu, Operation Overlord, and Operation Market Garden.

Recently my reading has focused on the American Civil War and the events leading up to it. I just finished rereading The Impending Crisis. I have a great interest in Chinese history from Ancient to the 20th century revolution. I also enjoy Ancient history, WWI and WWII. I get interested in most area. Earlier this year I read War and Peace and then to get the history read Moscow 1812. I have always considered myself an amateur historian and look forward to participating in this group.

It is fascinating to see how many people are interested in military/war history.

There are 6 posts. 5 of them mention military/war history. 4 of them specifically mentioned WWII.

I'm glad all of you have joined this group. You are this group and will define what it is used for. Just looking at the interests you have listed, I think we have a nice balance of cohesion and diversity. I think we could start some wonderful conversions. Please feel free to start new threads. I can't wait to see what this could lead to!

Oh gosh, I'm sure to leave out a bunch of things. :-)

Ancient history, emphasis on Greece. Medieval, mostly Britain but trying to expand. (Special area of interest: Wars of the Roses.) English reformation & Civil War. American colonial history, Revolution & Civil War. French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars. Legal history: old trials & transcripts & such. Exploration, especially Arctic. And whatever else catches my interest. :-)

I like my history with people in it, and love journals, letters, etc. Dry statistical history bores me to tears, even when the book contains some information I want.

(Edited to correct typo)

4 of them specifically mentioned WWII

I've been bit by the WWII-bug doubly bad. My husband's grandfather landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, so that has been great fun to research. Then on the "bad guy" side, I am related to Hermann Goering, so I've been interested in WWII since elementary school when my mom told me that bit of trivia.

Fleela,

Interesting! I live near a road named "Normandy". When I see that road, I'm reminded of WWII and Canada's involvement of it. Normandy was an area in France, interestingly enough, named after a Viking leader.

>10 markusnenadovus: Ah yes, good ol' Rollo (Richard) the "Northman".

I have a quite distant ancestor (obviously!) who crossed over to Britain from Normandy with William in 1066.

Isn't history fun?

My initial post didn't even get into the history that tracing the family tree has led me to. Last year I bought 4 history books thanks to one 9x gr-granduncle. :-) Much fun!

fleela, are you in the Genealogy@LT group?

I am now! ;) Thanks for the tip.

My interests are US History up through the end of the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two, in particular the eastern front. Lately I've also been acquiring some books on European history from the Seven Years War through the Franco-Prussian war.

I do American military history in general. I do American history in general. I do Nazi Germany. I do Stalinist Russia. I do everything else in dribs and drabs.

I love biographies of historical figures, particularly political biographies, but also of inventors, scientists, tycoons, etc. I also have an obsession with Turkish History and other Iron age civilations, (Troy, Hittitites, Crete, etc) as well as industrial history in America. Military History is another topic I too enjoy.

I took several american history courses in college and have worked in an archive at a museum, where i also did living history tours on a canal.

For those of you into WWII have any of you read the biography on Hitler called Nemesis by Ian Kershaw. It is told from a german perspective and based on journals from his adjuncts. It was a great book, really helps to understand why so many people followed Hitler.

I've been reading a bunch on history of the Americas, within recent memory. Bunches of American history (mainly revolutionary), and am starting to branch backwards to colonial era (both European and Indian), and jumping forward a bit to Civil War.. (just a few books recently). Always interested to hear about good books on any subject though, and generally not as fascinated by war as by the underlying causes/effects.

I tend to focus on military history, but from a broader view rather than a tactical level. I don't really care about which rifles the Union Army used, more about who won which battles and how that war affected the political history of the USA thereafter.

I have a hard time nailing down a time period, and whenever I've yet to read about an era/part of the world that I didn't want to learn more about. That being said, beside American military history I'd put these in my top 5 (no order):

1. Ancient military history (Rome/Greece) - don't care about the purley cultural part so much.
2. Middle Ages (mainly how Islam has impacted the world up to today)
3. WWII (who doesn't like WWII history?)
4. Communist Russia (I read Gulag: A History and was hooked.)

Military history from Xenophon to WWII to include Rome, Alexander, Dark Ages, American Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, American Civil War, WWI in Africa, WWII & German raiders of WWI & WWII.

Military history from the ancient world through WWII, concentrating on Napoleonic, WWII Eastern Front, and Aviation.

I'm new to LibraryThings so hope you don't mind if I jump in here.

I too am interested in ancient history. That started when I was very young and wanted to be an archeologist after reading Gods, Graves and Scholars. When others were strill digging in sandboxes, I was pretending to dig with Schlieman at Troy. I became interested in Napoleonic history later and am proud of my little library. Right now I am particularly interested in nineteenth century and early twentieth century Chicago and am doing a paper on the effect of urbanization on working women of the period. And then there is the American Civil War, American Revolution, the Middle Ages. Just chalk me down for history, period.

LOL RE chicago's post: my wife (a teacher of the Gifted & Talented) does a unit on Maryland archeology here in Annapolis, kids (grades 1-5) dig in a "salted" sandbox where they discover pieces of Maryland's past -clay pipes, nails, animal skins etc. They measure, record etc. I was always too lazy for archeology so I became, temporarily, a historian. I took up the tale of Troy from the old Landmark books. I've got Fagle's translation on my shelves these days. How long ago, yet how well Homer's tale travels after all these years! But I guess we just continue to rediscover, I recall prior to getting my BA listening to Henry Steele Comager chastisting the government for not understanding Vietnam when we knew the fate of the Sicilian Expedition of the Peloponesian War.

Hi... newbie here.

I used to read almost exclusively European history from the 1st Century BC to 11th Century AD... but now I've gravitated (to my surprise) to early North American history.

Since I'm ignorant about this time frame I've been jumping around. Have read John G. Bourkes accounts of life in the West circa 1870-80's. Also been reading about various fur traders (Larpenteur) and early explorers (La Salle).

I read mostly primary sources. Not sure why, except that I think they are the most fun.

Anyway, that's me.

*waves hi*