Books "for Quizbowl"

[Warlockoftheeast]

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html

Anyone have any thoughts on Bibliotheca for mythology?

[Christ, I Know]

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html

Anyone have any thoughts on Bibliotheca for mythology?

I mean, sure, that could help, but a combination of Graves/Hamilton/packet studying should be enough to cover high school-level Greek mythology pretty well.

[Mike Bentley]

Dan Passner alerted me to this deal on Sunday:

www.half.com has a deal where if you order more than $10 in actual products, up to $25 in shipping is taken off of your order with the code FREESHIP. This is a pretty good deal if you want to buy maybe 8 quizbowl books for $10. If you look on a place like Amazon.com, you'll likely find some pretty good source books for list prices approaching 1 cent, but the caveat is that you usually need to pay $4 shipping (and if you have a Prime membership, the lowest these books are priced is around $4, so you're paying the same amount). With this half.com deal, you can find a lot of good books from one seller (betterworldbooks is a good one) for $.75 + $2 shipping. I ended up getting around 7 $.75 encyclopedias and then one other book that put me as close to $10 as possible. This works out to a savings of around $20 compared to Amazon.

Note that it's often still cheaper to get these types of books at a friends of the library sale, but the selection will be more limited and it takes more of your time/gas money.

[cornfused]

Dan Passner alerted me to this deal on Sunday:

http://www.half.com has a deal where if you order more than $10 in actual products, up to $25 in shipping is taken off of your order with the code FREESHIP. This is a pretty good deal if you want to buy maybe 8 quizbowl books for $10. If you look on a place like Amazon.com, you'll likely find some pretty good source books for list prices approaching 1 cent, but the caveat is that you usually need to pay $4 shipping (and if you have a Prime membership, the lowest these books are priced is around $4, so you're paying the same amount). With this half.com deal, you can find a lot of good books from one seller (betterworldbooks is a good one) for $.75 + $2 shipping. I ended up getting around 7 $.75 encyclopedias and then one other book that put me as close to $10 as possible. This works out to a savings of around $20 compared to Amazon.

Note that it's often still cheaper to get these types of books at a friends of the library sale, but the selection will be more limited and it takes more of your time/gas money.

Oh my God, this is great. I just ordered $10.38 worth.

[nhscody]

For history, I can't recommend anything more highly than this textbook: http://www.amazon.com/History-Western-Society-John-McKay/dp/0395708419/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1340371107&sr=8-6&keywords=Western+Society+5th+edition

It's made for a standard European history course in college, but it really covers much more than that, including some lit, lots of art, etc.

[Corry]

I can only speak about history, but in my experience, pretty much any history textbook is a good resource for quiz bowl, as long as the subject that it covers is specific enough! You're not going to learn much from a standard world history textbook, since it'll only have room to cover subjects that everybody already knows about. This might also ring true for U.S. history textbooks, since everybody in high school has to take that class. But once you get into slightly more specialized subjects, textbooks become a lot more useful. For instance, even the vaguest, most watered-down European history textbooks still include enough details to give you a working knowledge about the subject in tournaments.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html

Anyone have any thoughts on Bibliotheca for mythology?

I mean, sure, that could help, but a combination of Graves/Hamilton/packet studying should be enough to cover high school-level Greek mythology pretty well.

I personally like Apollodorus a lot for greco-roman myth - he is one of few classical authors who will give you different versions of myths in one text. For his Library and Epitome, as well as other searchable classical texts (in translation) I tend to use:http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

Ben is certainly correct in that Graves and Hamilton are great sources - though notably Graves seems to draw a lot from Apollodorus (Graves sometimes seems to copy him nearly word for word), so they will give you about the same knowledge. As for other sources for Greco-Roman myth, Eurpides/Aeschylus/Sophocles plays good for learning myths in depth, and of course anyone looking to really know Greco-Roman myth should probably read the Aeneid, Odyssey, and Iliad (or at least summaries of them).

[Tale of Mac Datho's Pachycephalosaur]

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html
...anyone looking to really know Greco-Roman myth should probably read the Aeneid, Odyssey, and Iliad (or at least summaries of them).

In my experience, people read the Aeneid much less than the Iliad or the Odyssey. There may be fewer clues used from it, but if you do read it, then you'd probably have a good chance at an early buzz. I've gotten several buzzes on "Calaeno the harpy," for example, so I definitely recommend reading a good translation (like Fagles). I have not seen a whole lot of scholarship asked in tournaments, but it may be a good idea to skim The Serpent and the Flame, by Bernard Knox, and Discolor Aura, by Robert Brooks. They aren't quick reads (and they may be a bit tedious if you don't know some Latin), but you might pick up some allusions and some points on early clues.

[The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on Scottish and Eastern European History?

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on Scottish and Eastern European History?

I like this book for Russian history:
http://www.amazon.com/Romanovs-Autocrat ... 0385279086

Very clue-dense.

[bt_green_warbler]

For Scottish history, try Smout's History of the Scottish People.

[bt_green_warbler]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on Scottish and Eastern European History?

I will now outrageously misinterpret Jacob's question to note that this volume has two chapters about Scottish immigrants in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

[Einhard]

Any books particularly good for science questions? I know the basic concepts fairly well, but I have no idea how to get the really early clues about the biology and chemistry tossups.

[shrey96]

I'm not sure about books (other than intro-level college textbooks), but I've found MIT OpenCourseWare to be extremely helpful for quizbowl science.

[The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books on Scottish and Eastern European History?

I like this book for Russian history:
http://www.amazon.com/Romanovs-Autocrat ... 0385279086

Very clue-dense.

I actually took a Russian history course last year, but that book looks interesting. I'll definitely take a look at it. And any recommendations for Polish/Hungarian history would be good as well.

[David Riley]

The most recent Hungarian history that I have is Peter Sugar's History of Hungary. It's been my experience that most go out of print rather quickly but you might check Amazon, and be sure to read the reviews. The Cambridge Concise History should be a good overview, and there are any number of books on St. Stephen, Matthias Corvinus, Kossuth and the Austro-Hungarin Empire.

I don't know any Polish histories but I can probably find out....LARGE Polish population here.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I daresay my knowledge of Hungarian history is well above the 90th percentile of this forum, but virtually all of it comes from internet sources. Hungarians love their own history and have documented it extensively on Wikipedia and other websites. There's bias, but it's so comically transparent that you can easily screen it out.

Honestly, the only book I've read that contained any quizbowl-useful information about Hungary was Kinross's book on the Ottoman Empire, which I recommended somewhere much earlier in this thread.

Anyway, a few years back, I put together a parody of NAQT's "You Gotta Know..." list, which contains:

[*] You Gotta Know These Rulers of Hungary
[*] You Gotta Know These Hungarian Rebellions

As far as I recall, these are mostly accurate, though the rebellions one seems to be missing the Vatha Rebellion, which is probably more important than the Samuel Aba rebellion, though it never comes up in quizbowl. But they're likely far too deep for high school.

[The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi]

Bruce, you do realize I'm in college, right?

EDIT: I do appreciate the history information. Thanks a ton!

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Bruce, you do realize I'm in college, right?

EDIT: I do appreciate the history information. Thanks a ton!

Yeah but this is the high school section, there's high schoolers reading it, and if I make some kid write a tossup on Pal Maleter for his housewritten high school tournament because I don't make it clear to him that this is way too hard for high school, I'll rightfully be condemned.

Incidentally, don't write a tossup on Pal Maleter for anything easier than Chicago Open.