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I dont have a credit card. So I cant buy it online. Where can I get the book for free ? And tell me how u feel about the book ?
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I dont have a credit card. So I cant buy it online. Where can I get ... try joining your local library. then you can download e-books from their ...Truly free ebook downloads: Download great modern classics from the world's best-loved ... Please use a standards-compliant browser - you know it makes sense!
I dont have a credit card. So I cant buy it online. Where can I get ... try joining your local library. then you can download e-books from their ...Truly free ebook downloads: Download great modern classics from the world's best-loved ... Please use a standards-compliant browser - you know it makes sense!
How mislead would I be by reading a 1940's book on ancient history?
Chris
How out of date would it be now?
Answer
Depends very much on what book you're talking about. Textbooks always lag behind the state of scholarship in any field, sometimes horrendously so; if you're talking about a 1940s school textbook, it's likely to reflect the state of the historiography from around 1900-1920 and be pretty awkward. A piece of proper scholarly writing is likely to be quite good; every generation produces some classics that stand the test of time.
The main issue would be the things it is unlikely to cover, or at least unlikely to with the detail and sophistication you would see in more recent writings. A lot of history writing in the 1940s was preoccupied with the actions of governments and their rulers. It's going to feature the notorious "dead white males" very prominently. Women and lower class life will tend to play a more marginal role; you did have some early feminist and marxist scholarship in the 1940s, but this really predates the great explosion of cultural and social history that came in the 1960s and 1970s. You will often see, overtly or subtly, events and social trends attributed to race or ethnicity; there may be statements about the "Greek spirit" or "barbarian vigor" that the authors actually take seriously as realities that shaped events. You'll tend to see a two-tiered model of society, that contrasts a "rational" educated class (often unconsciously treated as though its members were modern scientifically-minded types) with "superstitious" commoners, a model demolished by Peter Brown in the 1970s.
There are also whole areas of information that the author won't have. Archaeology has a much fuller portrait of the ancient world's material culture now than it did in the 1940s. Environmental history had barely even been thought of.
Depends very much on what book you're talking about. Textbooks always lag behind the state of scholarship in any field, sometimes horrendously so; if you're talking about a 1940s school textbook, it's likely to reflect the state of the historiography from around 1900-1920 and be pretty awkward. A piece of proper scholarly writing is likely to be quite good; every generation produces some classics that stand the test of time.
The main issue would be the things it is unlikely to cover, or at least unlikely to with the detail and sophistication you would see in more recent writings. A lot of history writing in the 1940s was preoccupied with the actions of governments and their rulers. It's going to feature the notorious "dead white males" very prominently. Women and lower class life will tend to play a more marginal role; you did have some early feminist and marxist scholarship in the 1940s, but this really predates the great explosion of cultural and social history that came in the 1960s and 1970s. You will often see, overtly or subtly, events and social trends attributed to race or ethnicity; there may be statements about the "Greek spirit" or "barbarian vigor" that the authors actually take seriously as realities that shaped events. You'll tend to see a two-tiered model of society, that contrasts a "rational" educated class (often unconsciously treated as though its members were modern scientifically-minded types) with "superstitious" commoners, a model demolished by Peter Brown in the 1970s.
There are also whole areas of information that the author won't have. Archaeology has a much fuller portrait of the ancient world's material culture now than it did in the 1940s. Environmental history had barely even been thought of.
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