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history fucked me up

oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built

kayforpay

I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar

archaeologysucks

You mean like this?

The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun

I grew up with this book, which is frickin’ enormous, and it was endlessly fascinating to young me to pour over the side by side comparison of events taking place concurrently under different headings and in different parts of the world.

Or if you want something you can put on your wall, there’s this:

World History Timeline

butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway

I had this book! My grandpa gave it to me and it was really freakin useful!!

mckitterick

I loved this book! Same for The Timetables of Science: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Science.

Same for The Timetables of Technology: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Technology. Great references!

lepetitpoete

okay but here’s an even cooler (free!) visualization that goes a step further and tracks ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power

Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500

✨️with a special focus on colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure✨️

You can spend hours upon hours exploring this

corvid-language-library

The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be done with it and the sooner you can stop thinking about it. Go on, up you get, it won't be as bad as you think.

corvid-language-library

You won't want to do it later either. You might as well just do it now. Even if you don't finish it all, anything you manage to get done now is something you don't have to do later (when you still won't want to do it)

#adhd

petaltexturedskies

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel every particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share.

Anne Rice, from the forward to a collection of Franz Kafka's Short Stories

hypokeimena

#had encountered this quote before but the context that it's #from a foreward to KAFKA made me cycle rapidly through at least 15 emotions in 30 seconds (via @chicago-geniza)

dumbpuppyfag

ppl act like being genuinely anti-copyright is some big radical thing but like every major copyright case of the last forever is game studios going "we estimate our lost revenue to surpass infinity billion dollars" and the judge trying to kill the defendant right there with his gay little judge hammer

dumbpuppyfag

and ppl on here will yell at you for pointing this out!! ppl will insist that copyright is there to protect small artists against big corporations, like these companies couldn't annihilate this website's art scene overnight by sending matt a cease and desist letter for pokesonas or leon kennedy yaoi or whatever. any coherent defence of copyright as a legal framework requires you to acknowledge the corrosive stranglehold it has over artistic expression and then justify that with a fantasy of getting rich in a lawsuit that you absolutely would not win. selfish shitty petit bourgeois baby mindset

#copyright

handweavers

This is kind of a specific question, but I figured you might know something about it: do you know of any good books showcasing historical clothing or costume in any south asian and/or arab countries? I’m hoping to find a book to use as character design reference for a gift for a friend of mine, but everything i turned up online about historical costume GENERALLY was very focused on europe LOL and stuff I found focusing on south asian or arab countries was like. recent. which is not helpful. No worries if not, just thought I’d ask!

hehe i do! here are a few recs:

'what people wore when: a complete illustrated history of costume' has a lot about europe but it touches on historical costume around the globe from ancient times to the 19th century. the illustrations are old and french/german so be cautious re: orientalism and racism lol but it works well as an introductory overview

'indian costumes in the collection of the calico museum of textiles' is an amazing overview of primarily north indian costume from the 18th to 20th centuries with extant garments AND deconstructed sewing patterns, plus information on textile influence in north india via turkish and persian cultures in this period. i found a physical copy of this in a used bookstore and it's my favourite book on the subject

'arab dress: from the dawn of islam to modern times' is a book that details the history of costume in the muslim world with extensive writing but there are plates at the end of the book that illustrate the topic. there's a free pdf here

wiigiwaamcore

Why "Precolonial" Indigenous North American History Matters: A Mini Syllabus

Okay I had this half-finished lying around so I prettied it up into something vaguely usable and added links wherever possible (most of them being totally legal...)

This is not a full treatment of Indigenous history before European contact. It was originally created to be a 15 week class, so it was not intended to cover everything but to give a taste of various regions and histories. Unfortunately, certain essays I would highly recommend are in the Oxford handbooks I listed at the end, and I have been unable to locate free-to-access versions.

Each section includes a question to consider that is intended to suggest ways that these precolonial histories have reverberations into the present. In a course I'd be able to draw them out more clearly, but keep them in mind as you read, if you like. Finally, please keep in mind that few of these sources will read like a "straightforward history" of "precolonial [xyz region/tribe/nation]." Be open-minded and critical-thinking!

Part 1: Foundations

Questions to consider:

Why didn't we learn this stuff?

Why should we learn this stuff?

Why do so many Indigenous people distrust historians / anthropologists / archaeologists?

Readings:

Michael Witgen (Red Cliff Ojibwe), "American Indians in World History" in The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History

Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Custer Died For Your Sins, chapter 4: "Anthropologists and Other Friends"

Floyd Westerman (Sisseton Dakota), "Here Come the Anthros" (music video!!)

Juliana Barr, "There's no such thing as prehistory"

Peregrine and Lekson, "The North American Oikumene"

(Parts 2-6 under the cut)

wiigiwaamcore

Wow. Look at this incredible guide I created for you all, tumblr, and yet it only has 200 notes

mychemicalraymance

"Misogynists are gay because they don't like women" actually they're incredibly heterosexual for that

mychemicalraymance

Heterosexual cultural institutions are entirely oriented around demeaning and abusing women. Like heterosexually ordered society produces and loves men who hate women. That's the rule not the exception. Gay men only have to love men not hate women. Gay men can be and are misogynists oftentimes but I would say that hatred of women is very low on the list for what constitutes gay sexuality. Hating and disrespecting women is very important to masculinist heterosexuality lol. The culturally ideal straight woman also hates women.

arasiderae

for anyone wanting a deeper dive into this topic, highly recommend jane ward’s the tragedy of heterosexuality, which examines the dysfunctions of modern western straight culture. chapter 2, “the misogyny paradox,” covers how misogyny is a pillar of straight sexuality. link below:

Book about the history of sexuality

#not aimed @ op persay since i gather theyre already familiar #but if anyone wants the link i really liked it #sorry for no alt text im lunchbreak posting and my hands are crumbling #reading list

suzannahnatters

Guys I. I wrote the book you've always known was coming... HOW TO WRITE A FANTASY BATTLE: BASIC MEDIEVAL AND MODERN MILITARY TACTICS FOR AUTHORS

The forces of good are arrayed against the minions of evil on a storm-swept battlefield, and someone is about to yell “Charge!”—Now what?

We’ve all been there. Many fantasy novels end with a climactic battle scene, yet few authors have a solid understanding of how battles are planned, staged, fought, and won. The answers are locked within dense history books—but never fear: I read them so you don’t have to.

This short, accessible book not only gives you a crash course on basic military strategy and tactics across history—it also contains invaluable tips on how to adapt real-world battle tactics into a thrilling scene for your fantasy novel. Along the way you’ll learn:

How socio-economic forces affect the ways that battles are fought.

The importance of factors such as surprise, terrain, fog of war, and more.

Different categories of fighters.

How your world-building and magic system may affect your battle.

The typical phases a battle may go through.

Where to find more advanced resources.

This book contains countless examples from real and fictional battles, collected during the ten years I’ve spent reading up on medieval and modern military history—and put into terms which anyone can understand.

Read How to Write a Fantasy Battle, and tackle that battle scene with confidence! Pre-order live now at Amazon, coming to all retailer platforms 11 July, 2025.

txttletale

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

#reading list

timetravellingkitty

KASHMIR MASTERLIST

Background

History of Kashmir from 250 BC to 1947 [to understand Kashmir's multi religious history and how we got to 1947]

Broad timeline of events from 1947 to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019 (BBC) [yes, BBC. hang on just this once]

Human Rights Watch report based on a visit to Indian controlled Kashmir in 1998 [has a summary, background, human rights abuses and recommendations]

Another concise summary of the issue

Sites to check out

Kashmir Action - news and readings

The Kashmiriyat - independent news site about ongoings in Kashmir

FreePressKashmir - same thing as previous

Kashmir Law and Justice Project - analysis of international law as it applies to Kashmir

Stand with Kashmir - awareness, run by diaspora Kashmiris (both Pandit and Muslim)

These two for more readings and resources on Kashmir: note that the petitions and donation links are from 2019 and also has explainers on the background (x) (x)

To read

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? - about women in the Kashmiri resistance movement and the 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora by Indian armed forces

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir - a compliation of writings about the lives of Kashmiris under Indian domination

Colonizing Kashmir: State Building under Indian Occupation - how Kashmir was made "integral" to the Indian state and examines state-building policies (excerpt)

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir - about the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation

On India's scapegoating of Kashmiri Pandits, both by Kashmiri Pandits (x) (x)

Of Gardens and Graves - translations of Kashmiri poems

Social media

kashiirkoor

museumofkashmir

kashmirpopart

posh_baahar

readingkashmir

standwithkashmir and their backup account standwithkashmir2 (main account is banned in India wonder why)

kashmirlawjustice

kashmirawareness

jammugenocide (awareness about the 1947 genocide abetted by Maharaja Hari Singh and the RSS)

To watch

Jashn-e-Azadi: How We Celebrate Freedom parts 1 and 2 - a documentary about the Kashmiri freedom struggle (filmed by a Kashmiri Pandit)

Paradise Lost - BBC documentary about how India and Pakistan's dispute over the valley has affected the people

Kashmir - Valley of Tears - the exhaustion with the conflict in the post nineties

In the Shade of Fallen Chinar - art as a form of Kashmiri resistance

Human rights violations (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Land theft and dispossession (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

A note: I know annoying Desis are going to see this and go "Oh but Kashmir is Pakistan's because-" and "Kashmir is an integral part of India because-". I must make my stance clear: Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris, the natives, no matter what religion they belong to. Neither Pakistan nor India get to decide the matter of Kashmiri sovereignty. The reasons given by both parties as to why Kashmir should be a part of either nation are bullshit. The United Nations itself recognises Kashmir as a disputed region, so I will not entertain dumbfuckery. I highly encourage fellow Indians especially to take the time to go through and properly understand the violence the government enacts on Kashmiris. I've also included links to learn more about Kashmiri culture because really, what do the rest of us know about it? Culturally and linguistically Kashmir differs so much from the rest of India and Pakistan (also the amount of fetishization of Kashmiri women...yikes). This is not just a bilateral issue between these two nations over land, this actually affects the people of Kashmir. And if you're still here, thank you for reading

#kashmir #reading list

mesetacadre

Reading suggestions for someone who leans anarchist that wants to know why it's dumb?

Anarchism Or Socialism?

The Foundations of Leninism, ch. 4 The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The State and Revolution

On Authority

Where do tanks come from? (Probably the weakest of the list)

The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

#marxism #reading list

read-marx-and-lenin

What are your thoughts on the whole Xiaohongshu migration, if you have any?

I think it's good for people in the US to be breaking down cultural barriers that have been put up artificially to divide us. I think that the US media is probably going to spin this in some Sinophobic direction, but it's going to be a bit harder since they can't pretend that there's some secret Chinese influence like they did with TikTok. This time it's obvious to everyone involved that the app is Chinese and people are still flocking to it anyway. It's a big middle finger to the US government, saying "we aren't scared of China, we aren't mad at China, you're not going to manipulate us so easily".

read-marx-and-lenin

Twenty-five years ago today, every U.S. media outlet, along with then President Bush and the U.S. Congress were whipping up a full scale fre

Most of what we hear about Tiananmen in 1989 focuses on student activists, since they dominated Tiananmen square itself and waved banners de

A note of reflection on the June 4th Tiananmen protests written by three members of Qiao Collective whose families were closely involved in

More than thirty years later, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 remain a touchstone of a Western mythology spun to challenge the fundame

Western governments have levied false allegations of genocide and slavery in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A closer look makes clear th

oh also another piece of data that debunks the whole "muslim nations are just defending china because they want to cozy up to a rival superp

dre759

Addding on because the following addresses both: Atrocity Fabrication And Its Consequences by A.B Abrams

(Internet Archive PDF link included)

I’ve shared this book on Tumblr a thousand times but that’s because it’s the most effective and concise debunking of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” (chapter 3 for that) and the “Uyghur genocide” (chapter 10 for that) I’ve read.

Here are some samples from each chapter respectively:

The book is formatted in a way that it is possible to read these chapters as standalone. Although I do highly encourage anyone who reads the book to go through it in order if they can.

Checking out the brief introduction chapters are pretty essential. But if you’re more interested in debunking the above two narratives than jump ahead to the previously mentioned chapters.

junglejim4322

Pdf of The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

junglejim4322

This is seriously one of the most important landmark writings on palestine and I recommend especially people who feel like they don’t have a full grasp on history and context in the area to read it. As far as I remember it’s a very easy read too

#palestine #edward said #reading list