"The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt" by Toby Wilkinson

Seems to be a good chronological history of ancient Egypt and a great starting place for me.

I'm a fan of history of ideas and part of that is how ideologies, religions, and philosophy change over the years. This book is doing a great job of highlighting changes and their significance.

I'm also generally a fan of anyone who acknowledges that history is propaganda often first and foremost. For the Egyptians it seems that's almost the only use of writing.

Odd that they thought their gods only cared what was written in their tombs and didn't watch over them. But that's my christian culture/surveillance state bias poking through.

Anyone have any recommendations for what to read next?

#egyptology #history #egypt #historydon #bookstodon #nonfiction

Great lede:

“A decade ago, for the most part, phones were phones. Computers were computers. Cameras were cameras. Portable music players were portable music players. The idea that the future of the computer would be a phone, or vice versa, wasn’t merely absurd. It just wasn’t how people thought about consumer technology. At all.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/what-apple-thought-the-iphone-might-look-like-in-1995/530085/?gift=RXPOOMoryRnayHP9s6YMzwEwJzXqmXKlUlNgQGRNJE0

#historydon #history #tech

Great piece of history preserved in tapes of a 1978 radio show of the 61st anniversary with eye witnesses of the Halifax Explosion:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-explosion-survivors-lost-tapes-1.7058870

#HalifaxExplosion #HalifaxNS #Halifax #NovaScotia #HistoryDon #History

Today in 1917, one of the largest man-made explosions before the atomic bomb occurred in Halifax when two ships collided in it's harbor. One was carrying ammunition for the war in Europe and caught fire causing a blast that killed nearly 1,800 people and wounding 9,000 more.

Relief efforts were hampered by blizzards in the days that followed. But to this day Boston still receives its Christmas tree from Nova Scotia in gratitude for the aid it was able to provide to Halifax.

#history #historydon #halifax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

Reading now (finally) André Swanström's "Hakaristin ritarit" (2018; The Knights of the Swastika), an in-depth account of Finnish volunteers to the Waffen-SS.

Based on available sources, Swanström shows that contrary to previous narrative, Finnish SS-volunteers were not predominantly "apolitical", but many from fascist backgrounds and likely participated in #WarCrimes (later confirmed).

Important and chilling book.

#fascism #Finland #history #historydon #antisemitism

https://atena.fi/kirjat/hakaristin-ritarit