Lets see if we can get a good debate started out with this.

My favorite period is the really not a period :) But I do love the age of wooden ships and iron men. Tall Ships, from the English Armada to Black Beard.

So what is yours?

ooooo, good post....

I like reallly ancient history. Anything North American Precontact. I also really like the things they have been finding in the limestone caves and other caves in Europe. Stone age cultures.

Good era also.
I am a naval history buff, I would like to sail on a tall ship one day.
I guess my introduction to this era was when I studied the battle between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis. You know the whole I have not yet begun to fight thing.
CRee what about that time is that makes it attractive to you? Is it your heritage or just that it is a time you can go looking for?
I was on the historical societies search team in St Mary's Ga. We would either locate old graves for marking or go under houses in town and recover ceramic pipe pieces and other remnants from either the spanish era or the british era. St Marys is the second oldest city in the US and is only 125 miles north of St. Augustine Fl.

I am Mainly into WW2, especially with German Armored Fighting Vehicles. Pretty much anything i can get my hands onto in that time period. I also like ancient civilizations. Anywhere from the Mesapotanions to the Roman Empire. I would like to travel the Mediterranium and see the ancient cities especially on Crete. I would like to live in Italy in the future and travel around the country side.

the cold war, red scare and McCarthyism, hence "sputnik." not that i would have liked to live in that time, but i find it pretty fascinating what the fear between the US and the soviets made people do.

WWII mostly, but also the cold war, especially espionage and such things.

I like to contemplate mysteries.
There-fore the history of early civilizations interest me.

CRee what about that time is that makes it attractive to you? Is it your heritage or just that it is a time you can go looking for?

FOr both reasons I guess.....I like it because it stirs alot in my imagination about the ingenuity and adaptability of our species. Living in a close way with the natural environment. Aspects of diet, plant and medicine knowledge, craftsmanship of tools, power over and use of fire, hunting methods. I am also interested by animals in everyway, and the many extinct species that inhabited North America and the world at that time. Trades crafts clothing, household implements and things of the sort. Thay ways of making life easier at the particular time. Pasttimes hobbies. Adornments. Everything. The social and cultural ways, the religious and political. Community. The average person had extensive plant knowledge and recognition. I think it is all relevant to our modern selves.....

My favorite times are definitely the ages of swords and hand to hand combat. Thermopylae was a favorite battle of mine, the unimaginable odds beaten back by 300 soldiers. My other favorite is the battle of agincourt where a few longbows decimated a much greater army. If you've ever seen Gladiator or Troy or read Shogun, you'll know what my passion of this time stems from.

i just finished my term paper about the 'golden age of the sail' so im gunna say that that would be mine. especialy the more recont of the ships (i.e. the clipper ship) because of the size and complexity of the rigging.

ah, i almost forgot about the french revolution. also not a time period i would have liked living in, but it's fascinating how the 3rd estate started out with this great cause but it got really screwed up in the end. and maximilien robespierre, is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating historical figures of all time.

Originally posted by Beirut_Veteran
Lets see if we can get a good debate started out with this.

My favorite period is the really not a period :) But I do love the age of wooden ships and iron men. Tall Ships, from the English Armada to Black Beard.

So what is yours?

Errr...Beirut...isn't that supposed to be the Spanish Armada? :D

Vilepagan wins debate and does the dance...:banana:

I like military history from any period, but particularly medieval Europe, the Napoleonic period, the American Civil War, and WWII.

Originally posted by WindWip
My favorite times are definitely the ages of swords and hand to hand combat. Thermopylae was a favorite battle of mine, the unimaginable odds beaten back by 300 soldiers. My other favorite is the battle of agincourt where a few longbows decimated a much greater army. If you've ever seen Gladiator or Troy or read Shogun, you'll know what my passion of this time stems from.

WindWip,

Allthough I suspect you've already read it, I'm going to recommend that you read "In a Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman. It's an excellent book that really gives you a feel of what it must have been like to live in France in the fourteenth century.

OMG I said English Armada?!?! I told you I was slipping, note to self, throttle back on the Dew.

I'd have to say the enlightenment up threough the french revolution is my favorite. I love discussing philosophy so I have a blast studying that time period. I'm also fascinated by revoultions, and love looking at how intellectual ideas fuelled them. I for one, woul have loved to live back then. If I had been a guy I could have made lviing by sitting around entertaining rich people with how smart I am. our society doesn't value philosophers like Europe, mainly France, did back then. and I get to psend all next year's history class on this time period. woohoo!! :D

The Three Kingdom period of China, from roughly 165 AD to 260 AD, and then the Tang dynasty. Samurai Japan. Classic Greece, Egypt. Middle East in its most prosperous couple of hundred years. Middle Ages of Europe up until Renaissance. Modern history in general. There are probably other good periods. I'm not into ancient history, or WWR II and Cold War.

Originally posted by Vilepagan
WindWip,

Allthough I suspect you've already read it, I'm going to recommend that you read "In a Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman. It's an excellent book that really gives you a feel of what it must have been like to live in France in the fourteenth century.

I actually have never heard of it, but I'll be sure to check it out. Does it span into the battle of Agincourt? I would love to read a book on that.

Originally posted by LionelHutz
WWII mostly, but also the cold war, especially espionage and such things.
You might enjoy a book by Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. It has a lot to do with espionage, more with making and breaking codes though. I enjoyed it.

Another I might suggest to all the naval buffs is Tai-pan, by James Clavel. Its one of my favorite books, though it does tend to lend itself to trade and cultural clashes between the English and Japanese more than naval warfare.

My favorite time in history hasn't happened yet. I'd like to look back from 300 - 500 years in the future and pick a time.

A rather favorite time period would be the late 1880s - 1930s -- all kinds of brand new technology: airplanes, automobiles, radio, indoor plumbing -- a seemingly simpler time.

Originally posted by WindWip
I actually have never heard of it, but I'll be sure to check it out. Does it span into the battle of Agincourt? I would love to read a book on that.

I don't think it talks about the battle of Agincourt, but it is an excellent book on that period of history.

The book revolves around a French nobleman named Enguerrand de Coucy VII, and it's a wonderfully researched story about the period, the politics, and the lives of noblemen and peasants.

After reading threw all the different posts it's just awsome what our human history has given us. Aren't we lucky ??

Medieval/Renaissance
WWI/WWII

(More particularily, the Russian Revolution, and the European aspect of WWII. Admittedly my knowledge of the war in the pacific is very lacking.)

Age? Is that you???? Welcome back!!!!!

WW2 and the rise of Airpower. I Love those fighters, especially the P-5 Mustang and the Focke Wulfe Fw-190. My absolute fav period in history.

I've mulled this over in my mind since posting above. Like many others, I've spent much time learning about the Great Depression, WWII, and the immediate years thereafter. Plenty to talk about and we're still dealing with fallout - (I couln't resist) - good and bad from that time period.

For me, the time period after the Civil War and before the Great Depression has always had a certain allure. Many thngs we now take for granted were invented during those times - airplanes, automobiles, raidos, and telephones to name but a few. It's offen been portrayed as a more genteel time as it were ...

I like(know the most), about Rome, Ancient Greece, Dark Ages and the Renaissance. I've always found history in the Americas and Africa rather boring. Most of Asia isn't very intruiging except India, China and Japan, and the Mongols. And history after 1700 makes me yawn. Then again, I would never live then, unless I could have my precious computer with me.

Renaissance, now that's what I like. :D

Even when considering the hygenic (!?!) practices & lack thereof at the time?

Beirut_veteran

Good topic. I struggled with this one more than I thought I would but eventually settled on one of my favorite periods, albeit not romatic or swashbuckly or any of that stuff. Just a time in history which I partially lived through and would like to revisit, 'knowing then what I know now' or considering I would be backing up in time it would be 'knowing now what I didn't know then'.

It would start in 1928 and end in 1967. If that 39 year period looks familiar, well it should. It's the life span of Ernesto Che 'El Comandante' Guevara, one of the great revolutionaries, humanitarians and emancipators of the 20th century -- possibly of any century.

I'd be at his side during the days of his Latin American motorcycle journey with Alberto Granadas; his trips to the leper colonies of western Argentina and Venezuela; his days in the Peruvian prisons; his short stay in Ecuador with Ricardo Rojo; their subsequent trip to Guatemala and the overthrow of the Arbenz government; his refuge in Argentina embassy; his journey to Mexico; on board the barely sea-worthy Granma and alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains fighting the troops of Fulgencio Batista. Needless to say, I'd be there taking some of the nine bullets that riddled his 39 year old body near Higueras, Bolivia.

That means my life would also be ~39 years long. A big trade off but worth every year of it to stand next to and die alongside a true revolutionary whose dedication and devotion is still today unmatched.

Dop

my favorite period is WW2. the way the entire country came together and the amount of selfless sacrafice and heroism put forth by ordinary americans is amzing. the battles, the weapons, the personalities, the very fact that the world teetered on the edge of becoming enslaved, it is all very fascinating.

My second favorite period is the mountain men of the old west. to imagine during that period in time that a massive expanse of land wasundiscovered or explored by europeans, and the hardships they went through in carving a living off the land and making a name for themselves is incredible.

Originally posted by Beirut_Veteran
OMG I said English Armada?!?! I told you I was slipping, note to self, throttle back on the Dew.

Well, now it's English.....;)

When God eliminates all
human suffering, hopefully soon in the future!!!

I think my favorite periods would have to be Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, the Napoleonic Wars, and probably the Soviet Era since it has lead to so much of our current international affairs. I like most of history and I really don't hold a preferrence but I seem to be best informed in the areas mentione above. :)

At the moment I'm pretty obsessed with Medieval government and medicine. Also, the Oregon Trail and the Gold Rush.