SOURCE · [093] · READING LIST
paulgraham.com/raq.html ↗
Recommended by Paul Graham
On this list
6 BOOKs-
Life in the English Country House
From PG's RAQ history list (also his obscure favorites tweet); reads country houses as social machines that encoded class structure.
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Mohammed and Charlemagne
From PG's RAQ history list; revisionist thesis that Islam's Mediterranean blockade — not the Germanic invasions — broke the ancient world.
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The Fall of Constantinople 1453
From PG's RAQ history list; a model of focused historical narrative around a single transformative event.
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Guns, Sails, and Empires
From PG's RAQ history list; technology-first causal reasoning about European expansion.
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The Lives of the Artists
From PG's RAQ history list; the original record of craft lineage in painting and sculpture.
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Kenneth Clark's Civilisation
Kenneth Clark's Civilisation
From PG's RAQ page listing his favorite history books; Clark's synthetic sweep of Western art and civilization.
