Research is a big part of what I do here. I like to go into a story with an open mind and interpret it in my own way. A list of all articles can be found here.
Here are some of my sources. These books are all great reads and very inspiring. If you really want to dive into these stories even deeper, give these books some of your time. And check out these other websites as well. They have helped me create and improve this site.
Favorite Articles
These are a few of my favorite articles (so far). I consider an article a great one if it can grant significant perspective on life, or if its just fun or exciting to read.
Romantic - The History of a Word
Western Civilization prior to World War I
The Ever Increasing Size of the Known Universe
A Brief History of European Forests
Classic History Personal Blog
Every historian has their own personal bias or at least their life gives them some initial perspective. I thought it would be helpful for anyone reading my articles to understand what my life is like or at least what I am thinking about throughout the years. The personal blog section of this website should give some perspective into author of these articles.
Book Recommendations
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley - A somewhat mind blowing book about how much our lives have improved over the entire course of history. Matt explains how all of the negativity in our culture about the future is almost certainly wrong, and how the future is almost certainly going to be downright awesome.
Cicero by Anthony Everitt - An amazing story of men who witnessed in thier lifetime Rome change from a republic to a dictatorship. Cicero also has some moving things to say about friendship.
From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun - A very ambitious chronicle of 500 years of Western cultural life. Starting with the Reformation, Barzun describes the growth of Western Culture over the past half millennium.
Classic Romantic, and Modern by Jacques Barzun - A chronicle and explanation of the seasons of our culture. In this very interesting take on cultural history, the author concludes that our culture shifts back and forth from a romantic to a rational mindset. Alternatively dominant and submerged, romanticism and rationalism both exist simultaneously within our culture, constantly challenging each other. A great short read and my favorite book.
The Story of Civilization by Will Durant and Ariel Durant - An epic 11 volume set of books ranging from Sumeria around 3000 BC to The Age of Napoleon in the early 19th century. It includes the usual political and military events that largely define history, but it also includes a significant discussion of art and literature.
The Birth of Plenty by William J. Bernstein - The story of the birth and progress of our modern economy. William describes how growth of per capita GDP, adjusted for inflation, was relatively flat for all of human history up until about the year 1820. From then on the average person has become about 2% richer every year in spite of all the wars, recessions, depressions, etc. He goes on to describe what he believes to be the four causes of our modern prosperity.
The Bach Family by Karl Geiringer - The legacy of this remarkably talented family ranges for more than two centuries from the sixteenth-century miller Veit to Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst (1759 - 1845), Johann Sebastian's grandson. All totaled seven generations of musical genius.
La Place de la Concorde Suisse by John McPhee - A look at Switzerland's elaborate landscape engineering defenses. In effect, the Swiss military has wired the entire country to blow in the event of foreign invasion.
Stories from English History - A short introduction to early English history with six vibrant tales spanning from the Celtic champion Caradoc all the way to Sir Francis Drake.
A History of Germany - A history of Germany written at the turn of the Century by H. E. Marshall.
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture by Christopher Dawson - The author describes how the passion and energy of the barbarian tribes north of the Alps was guided and further inspired by Christianity. It is the combination of these two that greatly contributed to the richness of Western Culture.
Links
Bible Hub - Bible verses are displayed along with a long list of interpretations from many sources. With so many perspectives given, you can determine what the general meaning might be.
Project Gutenberg - Thousands of books are available online, many of them difficult to find in print.
Aarne-Thompson Classification System - An index of fairy tales from Western Civilization. Some are 6,000 years old.
Archive.org - A non-profit building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. The archive also contains books, audio, and video files.
HubbleSite - Once unimaginable, we now have thousands of images captured of objects in the farthest depths of space. Galaxies, supernovae, and gas nebulas, just to name a few, can all be seen here with brief explanations.
Memory of Mankind - A wonderful project to preserve our current knowledge and experiences on ceramic tiles stored in a salt mine in Austria. The intent is for it to be a historical record written from the bottom up. That is, the tables are written by average people instead of one or two highly educated figures.
WTF Happened In 1971? - The US Dollar was taken off of the gold standard in 1971 and the era of monetary inflation began. This website details many societal changes that appear to have taken place as a result.
Ancient History Encyclopedia - An nonprofit encyclopedia accepting submissions whose content and accruacy are reviewed by an editorial team. With a stated goal of promoting Education, Public Awareness, and Cultural Heritage, this organization covers all types and time periods in history on a global scale.
Dear Moon Project - The brainchild of Yusaku Maezawa, Dear Moon is a project to help develop SpaceX's Starship vehicle and embark on a 5 day trip around the Moon with artists. The goal is to change culture in a way that will show humanity how beautiful Earth is, as viewed from Space, by means of art created during the group's voyage.
Arch Mission - An organization with the goal of archiving the knowledge and species of Earth for future generations. Records of our human civilization are not only stored on Earth but in Space as well.
The Labyrinth - A list of resources for medieval studies put together by Georgetown Univerity.
The Irvine Company - A great site showing the history of the Irvine Company in California. If you're interested at all in city planning this is an amazing story.
MIT Classics - The Massechusets Institute of Technology has an archive of many classic texts translated into English in this section of their website.
German History in Documents and Images - A comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present.
The Celtic Guide - A depository for Celtic related stories and music.
Norse Mythology - A guide to mythology and religion of the Norse and other Germanic peoples
arXive.org - A great repository of articles in the fields of physics, quantitative biology, economics, and many others. If you're looking for new research papers to discover this is a great place to start.
Classic History Works in Progress
Music List - A list of songs throughout history.
Video Collection - View all historical videos created by Classic History.
Space - Our location in Space.
Historical Timeline - A quick timeline outlining the eras in history and the changes they ushered in.
Christmas - The story of Christmas.
Updated August 2021
