Finished my phD in History, and now I'm basically a NEET for the time being. How's everyone going? Haven't active;y used this site for a while, and it's cool to see the same familiar faces are still here. So, I'd like to ask everyone: on what subjects do you consider yourself most knowledgeable in, and is there anything about it that you think is the most interesting to know?
I'm afraid a lot of the material I worked with was not specifically leftist, and the fact of the matter is that that sort of thing is outside of my field of expertise. With that big BUT out of the way, Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is the closest I've read to a materialist take on the subject - the book places great emphasis on productive capacity, or the means of production, as the true core of a state's power. The predictions, such as a declining US due to imperial overstretch and excessive military spending and China's rise (this was written during the Deng era) turned out to generally be correct I would say. One minor nitpick I found was that the section on the Second World War indulged a bit on Wehraboo stuff, (something about the Nazi army being higher quality) but this was also the time that Guderian and Halder's bullshit was still prominent in military historiography so :shrug-outta-hecks:. In terms of time frame, the book basically covers from about when the Habsburgs were the hegemonic power of Europe to around the accession of Deng.
Wow, it's so cool he was able to write such an insightful book before Oswald capped his ass
Jokes aside, thank you! I've been asking this place for this same recommendation for months so this is now at the top my reading list