Quote:
Originally Posted by Belfaborac
On a closing note, before I hit the sack, I feel I should point out that enjoying Single Malt Whiskey before and whilst browsing Amazon is not necessarily a particularly good idea. It would seem that I am now the owner of a complete set of The Cambridge History of Japan....
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Okay, I feel kind of guilty now because those things just cost you well over a grand for all six volumes unless you managed to find dirt-cheap used copies (and even then I suspect high 3 figures or above in equivalent CAD).
I seriously hope you enjoy and really get your money's worth from them. But they are very good indeed (occasionally a couple of sections are a little dry, but generally very accessible overall) and I'd have bought copies myself if I could afford them.
I suppose this would be a bad time to encourage you to also at some point read
James Burke's excellent
Connections and
The Day the Universe Changed, which tie into his very good tv series, if you "just like to know stuff"?
He does this marvelous job of synthesizing all sorts of knowledge about stuff from political maneuverings to military campaigning to territorial expansion to cultural impact to societal change etc. etc. of scientific discovery and technological innovation starting from pretty far back, in a way that wraps it all up into a coherent, interconnected and interdependent whole.
His newer books are also generally good, but
Connections was where it all started and where the really important linkages that you learn the most from to begin with are.