Adrian Goldsworthy: Opinions

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

It would not sell, that is the issue.

Goldsworthy is "good" similar as the way how John Keegan is "good" (it is notable that Keegan was one of editors of Goldsworthy and gave him much praise) - both of them introduce history in a more public tone that most newbies can understand. Academic wise they are not very popular, although it is possible that, if what Paddy Griffith said was true, there is a general rejection of studying pure military history among British academic nowadays, and any historian who attempted that would be branded as "unprofessional" and be exiled from academic. Griffith claimed he knew several people got into this, perhaps including himself.

Yes military history in Britain is not very popular among etablished scholars, but it is much worse in Germany. If you start of with a dissertation about mainly military aspects you will never make it and when you start doing so after beeing a lecturer you will loose your reputation. You can write an essay or two about some aspects but i would not suggest to write an entire book. What is absolutly accepted though is when an archaeologist is writting a book about Armour and Weapons of armies.

I as a junior scholar had to think about my topics already in the master programm. Since you usually need some form of funding you have to choose topics wisely. The most easiest way is to choose topics including the words integration, structures etc. values which occur with modern society or the mind of the european union. Cultural interchange is a classic if you choose that, let's say between Romans and Germanics etc. you will surely get a nice boni from the EU

As for my opinion about Goldsworthy. I don't like him either. I hate reading books where i get maybe 5 % new stuff from it and as someone mentioned he is mainly repeading and summarizing already known points. I also think that he should focus more on one subject. I actually quite sceptical about people who write more than one biography. The Antonius biography was bad i really regret buying it and i only read a few pages in the bookstore about the Augustus biography that there are much better ones. It is clear that it was written for commercial reasons because we have a jubilee. The best Augustus biography is still written over 15 years ago by Bleicken who wrote that with over 70 and all his life experience as a historian.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

A lot of the secondary sources I use vary as far as publication dates go. Some are more recent but most are from the early 2000's or 1990's and about equal amounts from 30 to 50 years ago. Usually when a more recent book uses a primary source heavily an older book from a few decades did it first and these older books tend to be meatier. This would be the better choice provided it is actually a good book and it is available (if not in publication try getting it used).

For example in my studies of Japanese history there aren't too many new sources or books out there. Almost all of my books and essays on the subject are from before 2010 (and a lot of them are translations of primary sources). I would do better finding books in Japanese and translating them (I mean if I could) rather than expecting a new major work to come out in English. Right now I'm only hoping that David Neilsen's essay on the Bukoyawa is published as a book so that I can read it. Most of the things I want in this respect are older books for cheaper prices or an English translation of a primary source.

My disrespect towards World War 2 history is born out of the sheer amount of sources on the subject. The problem here being that many of these sources are now horribly outdated but all too easily available. An uneducated person on this historical subject will likely never find out. That is made many times worse since most of the new material on WW2 is based on reproducing the outdated information in these old secondary sources or primary sources or simply not using the right ones. There are practically no new primary sources regarding WW2 being discovered anymore. The ones that are have been accessed by a very small amount of scholars and then never looked at again after one or two people publish something about it.

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

2. In depth studies have become horribly expensive. The other day I was looking through Brill's catalogue and their books cost a fortune! There are some extremely specific books on subjects 90% of readers don't care about and they sell for over $100 and unless you really want that (which an average consumer does not) who will buy them exactly? They are really hurting themselves for not trying a reasonable price.

They are that expansive because they are usually printed anyway by publishing houses specialized on scientific books. That implies that the most books you don't find in normal bookstores and that the audience are mainly other scientists. The second group that have to buy them, where it doesn't really matter how expansive they are, are university libraries.

As for earning money with books. Unless you are one of a handfull elder historians per country than you won't get much money from book sales. The usual contract if giving you a few thousend right away and the amount you get per sale is limited, unless you really reached the peak and are leading in a very common field like Roman History. Don't dream about it if you are specialized in something like the Seleucid Royal Family or similar non generalized things. I once had a prof who wrote an intruduction and overview about a certain cultural group he was giving a lecture every year. He had about 150 students in this lecture and the book was around 15 to 20 pounds. He said right away that we don't need to buy it if we think to support him with that because he gets around 5 pence per sale... And that was already his 5th book with previous ones quite succesfull.

Nobody should think that you can get rich with writing books.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Many of the books I needed for my research are so ridiculously expensive I just keep checking them out from the library instead, and most I just ended up getting in PDF through a friend of mine who's a scholar and had them downloaded as ebooks.

[hellheaven1987]

I as a junior scholar had to think about my topics already in the master programm. Since you usually need some form of funding you have to choose topics wisely. The most easiest way is to choose topics including the words integration, structures etc. values which occur with modern society or the mind of the european union. Cultural interchange is a classic if you choose that, let's say between Romans and Germanics etc. you will surely get a nice boni from the EU

Ya you have to think about the source of funding too, not just history but every program in all industries is like that.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Sorry for the necro (doesn't seem like many threads are totally active here tbh). I've been away for a while from the forum mostly due to school and having less time to read my books and conduct research on subjects I like but... I read through the thread.

I have to agree with what's been said about World War Two. Over the past couple of years I spent time gifting out all of my saved WWII magazines. I can honestly say that I have seen the same dozen articles on the Bulge, Normandy, Stalingrad, and etc. all of the time. It is old. I got so bored in fact, that I left that subject behind and only have been reading what books I already own. Honestly, how many times can people write about the same battle? I noticed a new Bulge book on the shelves last month and I can only wonder what makes it different from the rest?? About the only subject I hardly see getting any coverage in WWII are the armies of Germany's allies and the fighting in China including the Russian blitzkrieg at the end down through Manchuria and into the Korean peninsula.

I also noticed a few said most history sections at bookstores are bland and do not present any in-depth/newer takes on subjects and topics. I believe that this is untrue. I have found some great gems in a number of bookstores. Francis Fukuyama's Political Disorder and Political Decay is a great example of an in-depth study of a subject. I think we are just witnessing many history sections shrink as bookstore cope with people using e-readers more and more these days and genres like history shrinking while others grow, such as YA or the Fantasy/Science Fiction sections. If you love going to bookstores and live in a major metropolis/urban area I would recommend looking up used bookstores. You can find some real gems in them for very cheap. An example is discovering books on the late Roman Empire and the early Medieval period by authors like A.H.M. Jones, Peter Brown, Patrick J. Geary, Barry Cunliffe, Guy Halsall, and a number of others whom I discovered at used bookstores. After those, I've made sure to check them out whenever I came across a store because you'll never know what you may find (not to mention for cheap as well!).

Looking at World War 2 books it appears that everyone and their mama has written one. So not too sure where to start but two really in depth books are written by David Stahel; Kiev 1941 and Operation Typhoon 1941. I don't agree with many of the conclusions but the facts are all there. Which is really one of my main problems regarding World War 2 historiography; everyone reaches different conclusions using the same evidence. I think we need to get a sifter to choose which WW2 books we should read and which ones should be ignored (Anthony Beevor ). Since I came into the subject relatively late I only know of some of the latest books anyway.

I reposted this but it made sense I think

[hellheaven1987]

I like Beevor's Berlin and Stalingrade; either way time to read Goldsworthy's Fall of West.

[Stavroforos]

I like Beevor's Berlin and Stalingrade; either way time to read Goldsworthy's Fall of West.

I'm guessing it's going to be an entirely unoriginal historical survey.

[Hanny]

Problem with him, is that if you read the primary material, you find he adds nothing to it by way of an insight that not been better covered by almost any other author. D Hoyas does a better job from the same source material, so it all comes down to writing style, and Goldsworthy simply is not up to it as an author, let alone bringing it alive as interesting history with anything new in his works.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

To be honest though I have found very little anything that adds more than the primary sources. Especially when it comes to obscure topics like the late empire. At most authors seem to compile the primary sources together and just write a narrative. If the author has managed to get a lot of primary sources and just point out the discrepancies between all of these to make a nice clean narrative that can be okay although they might want to write it in a way that makes the narrative more interesting rather than dry exposition.

[hellheaven1987]

Finish Fall of West, it offers pretty good general account from Commodus towards end of Justinian rule, although as expect it is more a summary than a true academic research work. Still, it does present 3rd Century Crisis fairly well so it is worth to read that part if you are not familiar with that period.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

You don't find a lot of authors who try to interpret or expand upon primary sources because they're shunned for doing so. Look at Dr. Kim's book on the Huns, whose work is outright considered biased, poorly written, etc. when (at least in my opinion) in fact it's a fantastic book that offers lots of new insights.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

In my opinion a book can be both things. Just because the main point is driven home that well or if it's biased doesn't mean it won't have some nice arguments and good information.

Don't know why they would be shunned, I read "Sword of Persia: Nader Shah" and that's exactly what Michael Axworthy did and it was great. Not only did his narrative have multiple sources but he tells you what is good and what are the flaws with the sources. It makes a well rounded book and keeps you from falling into the trap that because it's a primary source then it all must be true.

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

In my opinion a book can be both things. Just because the main point is driven home that well or if it's biased doesn't mean it won't have some nice arguments and good information.

Don't know why they would be shunned, I read "Sword of Persia: Nader Shah" and that's exactly what Michael Axworthy did and it was great. Not only did his narrative have multiple sources but he tells you what is good and what are the flaws with the sources. It makes a well rounded book and keeps you from falling into the trap that because it's a primary source then it all must be true.

I was fascinated by Tom Hollands "The Shadow of the Sword. The battle for global empire and the end of the ancient world." Despite the fact that he has a way of writting which outmatches almost everyone in the genre it is a book considered for a wider audience, but actually to complex as an overview. But more importent since it is an popular literatur book he is giving his own opinion. And as always he writes from more than just the western perspective. Whole chapters just to try to understand the thoughts of ancient iranians or arabs.

Besides that i would like to see a history book be written which uses sources of the minor authors as well. There are actually quite a number of good sources, but it is of course easier to just look in to the main writters. There are treasures like Menander Protector who for example wrote down reports of Eastern Roman diplomatic expiditions to the Chazars etc. They give first hand impressions about those and other peoples which are too often ignored since they don't play part in the canonic line of history.

An example can be read here: http://www.sasanika.org/wp-content/u...enander6-1.pdf Really interesting stuff but not easy to obtain since as i said not to many found interest in this kind of source and more importent there are too little authors who really have read all the minor ancient authors to bundle them and gain real value out of them.

[Gäiten]

I was fascinated by Tom Hollands "The Shadow of the Sword. The battle for global empire and the end of the ancient world." Despite the fact that he has a way of writting which outmatches almost everyone in the genre it is a book considered for a wider audience, but actually to complex as an overview. But more importent since it is an popular literatur book he is giving his own opinion. And as always he writes from more than just the western perspective. Whole chapters just to try to understand the thoughts of ancient iranians or arabs.

Agreed, this a great book, opened a new point of view how to understand this certain difficult era.

[Stavroforos]

Tom Holland is an amazing writer, Rubicon​ is what got me to really want to study history in university.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I haven't read the Shadow and the Sword but his subsequent documentary "Islam: the Untold Story" had me cringe a little. I don't really see the need to question the existence of Muhammad. For example he says that there were no references to Muhammad in documents until ten years after he died but then that leads one to wonder why there was a need to invent Muhammad in the first place. Surely the Caliph ten years after him could claim all of those deeds for himself. Though the existence of Muhammad is a topic for another thread I can't help but question what Tom Holland was thinking at the time.

EDIT: so this piqued my curiosity and I rewatched the documentary. I don't think he so much questions whether Muhammad existed but rather if the sources regarding his life are accurate. I don't think we should question most of the sources. Like for example if he was a merchant or not seems like a really unnecessary question, there is no source which contradicts that so why put it into question. But Tom Holland's questions and the documentary aren't even that bad. Academia is all about questions even if they sound stupid or not. For every important historical event there are probably equal amounts of stupid or seemingly irrelevent anecdotes.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Actually I read Persian Fire and I found it to be more or less general but not as dry as the stuff I've read from Adrian Goldsworthy. The facts were all there but I mean the writing itself was general and straight forward espcially the parts where he very briefly goes on about Cyrus the Great. Though the book was good the very brief parts about Cyrus were not really satisfying to me. That could be because Herodotus is more or less the go to source on the topc and I find Herodotus to be only helpful in giving us a very straight forward account.
I haven't read any other stuff from Tom Holland so would you say that this is a fair assessment?

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

Actually I read Persian Fire and I found it to be more or less general but not as dry as the stuff I've read from Adrian Goldsworthy. The facts were all there but I mean the writing itself was general and straight forward espcially the parts where he very briefly goes on about Cyrus the Great. Though the book was good the very brief parts about Cyrus were not really satisfying to me. That could be because Herodotus is more or less the go to source on the topc and I find Herodotus to be only helpful in giving us a very straight forward account.
I haven't read any other stuff from Tom Holland so would you say that this is a fair assessment?

In my opinion Persian Fire and Rubicon are far less complex than Shadow of the Sword and are more the popular books we expect. Persian Fire has a nice introduction though. Asking how the Persian looked at the Greeks is something scholars do less than they should.

As for the Mohamed question. It really isn't the essencial question of the book. Something i got out of it is that the canon of history is written by main sources.