From Reliable Sources

From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods
by Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier


From Reliable Sources is a lively introduction to historical methodology, an overview of the techniques historians must master in order to reconstruct the past. Its focus on the basics of source criticism, rather than on how to find references or on the process of writing, makes it an invaluable guide for all students of history and for anyone who must extract meaning from written and unwritten sources.

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier explore the methods employed by historians to establish the reliability of materials; how they choose, authenticate, decode, compare, and, finally, interpret those sources. Illustrating their discussion with examples from the distant past as well as more contemporary events, they pay particular attention to recent information media, such as television, film, and videotape.

The authors do not subscribe to the positivist belief that the historian can attain objective and total knowledge of the past. Instead, they argue that each generation of historians develops its own perspective, and that our understanding of the past is constantly reshaped by the historian and the world he or she inhabits.

A substantially revised and updated edition of Prevenier's Uit goede bron, originally published in Belgium and now in its seventh edition, From Reliable Sources also provides a survey of western historiography and an extensive research bibliography.

Shogun

Shogun: A Novel of Japan
by James Clavell

Shōgun is a 1975 novel by James Clavell. It is the first novel (by internal chronology) of the author's Asian Saga. A major bestseller, by 1990 the book had sold 15 million copies worldwide. Beginning in feudal Japan some months before the critical Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Shōgun gives an account of the rise of the daimyo "Toranaga" (based upon the actual Tokugawa Ieyasu). Toranaga's rise to the Shogunate is seen through the eyes of the English sailor John Blackthorne, called Anjin ("Pilot") by the Japanese, whose fictional heroics are loosely based on the historical exploits of William Adams.

Smithsonian Magazine - Jan/Feb 2016

Smithsonian: The Holy Land, January/February 2016
Volume 46, No. 9

Unearthing the World of Jesus

Surprising archaeological finds are breaking new ground in our understanding of Jesus’s time—and the revolution he launched 2,000 years ago

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unearthing-world-jesus-180957515/#peVBJf7RZSQch3Gl.99
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The Oxford History of the Biblical World

The Oxford History of the Biblical World
edited by Michael D. Coogan

In this impressive volume, leading scholars offer compelling glimpses into the biblical world, the world in which prophets, poets, sages, and historians created one of our most important texts--the Bible.
For more than a century, archaeologists have been unearthing the tombs, temples, texts, and artifacts of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. Using new approaches, contemporary scholars have begun to synthesize this material with the biblical traditions. The Oxford History of the Biblical World incorporates the best of this scholarship, and in chronologically ordered chapters presents the reader with a readable and integrated study of the history, art, architecture, languages, literatures, and religion of biblical Israel and early Judaism and Christianity in their larger cultural contexts. The authors also examine such issues as the roles of women, the tensions between urban and rural settings, royal and kinship social structures, and official and popular religions of the region.

Understanding the biblical world is a vital part of understanding the Bible. Broad, authoritative, and engaging, The Oxford History of the Biblical World will illuminate for any reader the ancient world from which the Bible emerged.

Shadow Divers

Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
by Robert Kurson

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.

For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.
But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.

Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.

Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.

In the Wake of the Goddesses

In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth
by Tivka Frymer-Kensky

The current return to spiritual values has spawned a surge of interest in the ancient goddess-based religions as a remedy to a long tradition of misogyny in the Western religions.

But how accurate are these current representations of the goddess in polytheism? And did Judeo-Christian religion really turn its back on women? These are some of the questions that scholar and feminist Tivka Frymer-Kensky sets out to answer in this iconoclastic study of gender in religions past and present. Her argument, illustrated with fascinating accounts of myth and ritual dating back to the early days of Sumer, Assyria, and Greece, is that although polytheism did accord females an important role, the strict division between male and female actually served to keep women in a subordinate position. The goddesses were progressively "ghettoized": their sphere was eventually relegated to home and hearth, while male gods took over as patrons of wisdom and learning. This dualism was displaced by the Bible, which embraced a surprisingly egalitarian view of human nature in which women were not considered to be inherently inferior.

In a provocative work of biblical scholarship on gender and sexuality, Frymer-Kensky shows that the ideal of monotheism may offer far more to us today than a return to the gender-based worldview of the goddess religions.

The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality

The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality 
by James Barr

In this book, Professor Barr presents a reading of the story of the Garden of Eden, not as a tale of the origins of sin and death, but as a tale of a chance of immortality, briefly accessible to humanity but quickly lost. Old Testament scholars have long been aware that the traditional reading of the story of Adam and Eve as the 'Fall of Man', though hallowed by St Paul's use of it, cannot stand up to close examination of the text. However, they have not succeeded in formulating an alternative interpretation which rivals the force of this traditional reading or is relevant to such a wide range of biblical and theological issues. Professor Barr's new interpretation has such force, and with its challenges to many conventional views it is likely to cause a considerable stir among traditionalists and to excite those dissatisfied with aspects of traditional thought. Central to the book is its stress on the role and prevalence of the idea of immortality, commonly thought to be a later Greek and un-biblical import into Christian thinking. Reflection on immortality also leads to a reconsideration of ideas about death in the Hebrew Bible; about Sheol. the Hebrew underworld; and about the soul. Professor Barr brings out the importance of time for the Hebrew Bible and the concept of length of days, showing that the threat is not so much death as such, but the manner and time of death. His study of chronology leads to a reconsideration of the story of Noah's ark, and the book ends by seeing resurrection and immortality as complementary, rather than conflicting, ideas.

The World Until Yesterday

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?
by Jared Diamond

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.

This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us.

Collapse

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 book by academic and popular science author Jared M. Diamond, which reviews the causes of historical and pre-historical instances of societal collapse—particularly those involving significant influences from environmental changes, the effects of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners—and considers the responses different societies have had to such threats. While the bulk of the book is concerned with the demise of these historical civilizations, Diamond also argues that humanity collectively faces, on a much larger scale, many of the same issues, with possibly catastrophic near-future consequences to many of the world's populations.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 transdisciplinary nonfiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

Barcelona

Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City's Past
by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Barcelona, like Spain itself, has in recent years attracted the gaze and fascination of the world. Chosen as the host city for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, the international spotlight will soon focus on this beautiful, two thousand year-old city, furthering Barcelona's hopes for a lasting place on the world stage. But success has never come easily to this Spanish metropolis. Not blessed with a natural port, and checked throughout history by a series of natural disasters and military defeats, Barcelona has struggled hard to become the industrial and commercial first city of Spain, and the biggest urban center on the Mediterranean seaboard. And Barcelona's relationship with the rest of Spain has always been strained by its status as the capital of the separatist Catalonian state.

As this comprehensive and vividly written history makes clear, all of Barcelona's fluctuating fortunes are mapped out in its remarkably rich architectural and artistic heritage. While many associate the city with the distinctive, fin-de-siecle signature of the architect Gaudi, Fernandez-Armesto reveals Barcelona's many other faces. Tracing the legacies of the Roman occupation, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern age, he illuminates the inherent tension that makes Barcelona one of the most vibrant, beautiful, and misunderstood cities of Western Europe.

The Last Dive

The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent Into the Ocean's Depths
by Bernie Chowdhury


Chris and Chrissy Rouse, an experienced father-and-son scuba diving team, hoped to achieve widespread recognition for their outstanding but controversial diving skills. Obsessed and ambitious, they sought to solve the secrets of a mysterious, undocumented World War II German U-boat that lay under 230 feet of water, only a half-day's mission from New York Harbor. In doing so, they paid the ultimate price in their quest for fame.

Bernie Chowdhury, himself an expert diver and a close friend of the Rouses', explores the thrill-seeking world of deep-sea diving, including its legendary figures, most celebrated triumphs, and gruesome tragedies. By examining the diver's psychology through the complex father-and-son dynamic, Chowdhury illuminates the extreme sport diver's push toward—and sometimes beyond—the limits of human endurance.

Two Years Before the Mast

Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834. A film adaptation under the same name was released in 1946.
While an undergraduate at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim). He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840.
Dana arrived in Alta California when it was a remote province of independent Mexico, and no longer Spanish colonial Las Californias. He gives descriptions of landing at each of the ports up and down the California coast as they existed then. The ports served (south to north) the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Pueblo de Los Angeles (and Mission San Gabriel Arcángel), Mission Santa Barbara (and Presidio of Santa Barbara), Presidio of Monterey, and Presidio of San Francisco with their very small settlements and surrounding large Mexican land grant Ranchos. He also describes the coastal Indigenous peoples, the Mexican Californios' culture, and the immigrants and traders influences from other locales.
The headland bluffs near Mission San Juan Capistrano presented an obstacle to taking the cow hides to the beach for subsequent loading onto the ship. So Dana, along with others of the Pilgrim's crew, tossed the hides from the bluffs, while spinning them like a frisbee. Some hides got stuck part way down the cliff and Dana was lowered with ropes to retrieve them. The headlands, along with the adjacent present day city, took on Dana's name as Dana Point.
Being an intelligent and educated person, he learned Spanish from the Californian Mexicans and became an interpreter for his ship. He befriended Kanakan (native people of the Sandwich Islands—Hawaiian Islands) sailors in the ports, one of whose life Dana would save when his captain would as soon see him die. He spent a season on the San Diego shore preparing hides for shipment to Boston, and his journey home. Dana also makes a tellingly accurate prediction of San Francisco's future growth and significance.

Life in the Aztec World

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World 
by Manuel Aguilar-Moreno

Since its violent dissolution in 1521, the Aztec Empire of Mexico has continually intrigued us. Recent discoveries resulting from the excavation of the Templo Mayor in the heart of Mexico City have taught us even more about this fascinating culture. The increasing recognition that the achievements of Mesoamerican civilizations were among the most sophisticated of the ancient world has led to a demand for introductions to the basic methods and theories of scholars working throughout the region.

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World gathers the results from recent archaeological discoveries and scholarly research into a single accessible volume. Organized thematically, the handbook covers all aspects of life in the Aztec world: Mesoamerican civilizations and Aztec archeology; evolution of Aztec civilization; geography of the Aztec world; society and government; religion, cosmology, and mythology; funerary beliefs and customs; Aztec art; Aztec architecture; Nahuatl literature; the calendar, astronomy, and mathematics; economy, industry, and trade; daily life; the Aztec after conquest and today. Each chapter includes an extensive bibliography, and more than 165 original line drawings, photographs, and maps complement the text. Handbook to Life in the Aztec World provides all the essential information required by anyone interested in Aztec history or culture.

Letters of Hernan Cortes to Emperor Charles V (#1)

Letters of Hernan Cortes to Emperor Charles V (Volume 1)
Edited by John Greenway

These five letters by the Spanish Conqueror Hernando Cortes were written to the Emperor Charles V of Spain between the years 1519 and 1526. They describe the earliest discoveries of the mainland, the perilous trek into hostile country, the capture of the Aztec capital, the extension of Cortes power throughout Mexico, the expedition to Honduras, and the organization and ordering of the Spanish empire in the new world.

Cortés

Cortés
by William Weber Johnson


The book Corte’s by William Weber Johnson is a book about the character Captain Hernan Cortes who was born in Spain and lived from 1485-1547. He was the heroic explorer who helped conquer the little country of Mexico from it tyrannical Aztec leaders. As the book explains Cortés from an early age was an enterprising boy eager for exploration power and adventure, so it was no surprise when during his conquests convinced the Cuban governor into assisting him with troops to lead the expedition to Mexico in 1519. As mentioned, Mexico was being governed by Montezuma II, emperor of Aztec. After his arrival, Cortes soon learned of the Aztecs and began to make his way to Tenochtitlan, the capital city where he met with various tribes that war at war with the Aztecs and helped him conquer them.

 In November of 1519, Corte’s cleverly took hostage of Montezuma the Aztec emperor knowing full well that if he did not have any leverage against them, they would soon try to kill him. He wasn’t successful because they managed to drive him out of the city but once he had regrouped, Corte’s manages to capture the Mexican city and overthrow the Montezuma regime. After his conquest, Cortes did not return home but instead remained in Mexico City and began to rebuild it on the Aztec ruins. He then invited Europeans to come and settle there. Due to his many his conquests and battles, Cortes acquired a lot of gold and jewels which made him very wealthy and popular back home in Spain. He was therefore appointed governor and captain of New Spain (Mexico).

 Cortes was still interested in exploring, therefore in 1524, he advanced into present day Honduras where he settled for two years but by this time the Spanish government was getting wary of Cortes’ numerous conquests and decided to deport him back home to Spain. He later convinced the Spanish monarchy and they allowed him to return back to South America but with fewer privileges. In 1536, Cortés was clearly bored so he spent his last days exploring Baja Californian peninsula and the Pacific coast of Mexico before returning back to Mexico. Cortes later died in 1547. The narrative of Cortés, Montezuma, and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire has been chronicled several times, and with explanation, since it is one of the primary events in world history. There are most likely no new facts left to uncover on the conquest, but it is a thrilling, intensely moving, and tremendous story well worth retelling. Johnson is not an acclaimed historian, but he is a well equipped writer who knows the facts, and clever enough is to let the excitement and drama of the saga to unfold by itself. At the epicenter of the narrative is clearly the two protagonists Cortes and Montezuma.

 Cortés is depicted as an enthralling combination of tireless ambition, religious fidelity, and amazing tenderness. Montezuma, also very religious, was less a proactive leader than Cortés, and his introspective nature probably warranted his doom. As Johnson illustrates, this was also an earth shattering clash of civilizations that is still evolving centuries later. This is an amazing work of popular history, perfectly designed for general readers. In this literary piece of writing generally Johnson has greatly used factual research. In fact he recommends several other sources, a number of which are out of print. The book is not revisionist; rather it seems to provide a balanced and non biased opining on Spanish and Aztecan beliefs, practices and cultures. The attention to detail is impeccable, with the provision of a narrative which flows well and is interesting. The book is not ones stereotypically boring history piece but instead a broad, descriptive analysis of Mexican history and how they acquired their independence. This book effectively transports the reader from the former Empirical regime of Montezuma II to the Spanish regime that still stands to date.

Much like Christopher Columbus, Cortés character is still subjected to public scrutiny and criticism simply because it is difficult to establish whether he was truly a hero or an antagonist. According to Johnson’s book, Cortes id viewed as a man who travelled around the globe in search of weak, undemocratic colonies to conquer, he went about his business not mindful of the natives’ cultural practices and beliefs. Although Cortes brought freedom to the Mexican state, his methods of liberation are still questioned. The book generally demands that a reader reads it first then establishes an opinion for him or her self.

 Although this book is generally for people looking to delve into the historical past of Mexico, it also appeals to those with a genuine interest in world history and enlightens the mind on global occurrences that are not often discussed. This book is adequate for analytical readers and scholars alike in perfectly illustrating how a man with twisted interests manages to conquer a territory, leaving tracks of emancipated but socially, politically and economical distraught people. This man overthrows a regime and forces his native political structures and religious views of a people. In this day an age we can draw examples of leaders with misguided interests but still a noble and worthy cause regarding their people from this book. As much as Corte’s went about operating with impunity, brutality and neglect, he was much more interested in bringing down an imperial government that did not put the wills and needs of its citizens as a priority. He did assist Mexico in attaining independence but not without a price i.e. Spanish rule. In general it is safe to say that all interpretations and judgments are left to the reader as he is after all the beneficiary of the historical piece.

The Broken Spears

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. León-Portilla's new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.

The Aztecs

The Aztecs: A History
by Nigel Davies

"THE AZTECS is quite simply the best general political history of that nation now available in english...Purchase of this book is a real must for persons with a serious interest in the aboriginal peoples on Mesoamerica, Mexican history, or the comparative study of early civilizations."--LATIN AMERICA IN BOOKS.

The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience

The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience
by Emory M. Thomas


This volume, first published in 1971, has made us look again at the events surrounding the Civil War. The Confederate Southerners likened themselves to the American revolutionaries of 1776. Although both revolutions sought independence and the overthrow of an existing political system, the Confederates battled for a political separation to conserve rather than to create. The result, however, was a transformation of the antebellum traditions they were fighting to preserve.

Hallowed Ground

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
by James M. McPherson

“[I]n a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract.”
—President Abraham Lincoln

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans. 

The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other place in the United States, Gettysburg is indeed hallowed ground. It’s no surprise that it is one of the nation’s most visited sites (nearly two million annual visitors), attracting tourists, military buffs, and students of American history. 

McPherson, who has led countless tours of Gettysburg over the years, makes stops at Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill, and Little Round Top, among other key locations. He reflects on the meaning of the battle, describes the events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater context of American and world history. Along the way, he intersperses stories of his own encounters with the place over several decades, as well as debunking several popular myths about the battle itself.

What brought those 165,000 soldiers—75,000 Confederate, 90,000 Union—to Gettysburg? Why did they lock themselves in such a death grip across these once bucolic fields until 11,000 of them were killed or mortally wounded, another 29,000 were wounded and survived, and about 10,000 were “missing”—mostly captured? What was accomplished by all of this carnage? Join James M. McPherson on a walk across this hallowed ground as he be encompasses the depth of meaning and historical impact of a place that helped define the nation’s character.