Bill Thayer's Web Site
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Public service message, first posted here on 24 Feb 22: A Ukrainian historical researcher who has contributed to this site has advised me that The Ukrainian Red Cross Society is accepting donations from abroad in relief of civilian populations in Ukraine and persons displaced due to the Russian war against that country,
and has set up a page for those wishing to donate
. (And yes, I've donated a bit myself, about $350 thru Oct 2023.)
Welcome to
Bill Thayer
's Web Site
where you will find mostly history:
An
American History
site, which has slowly turned into one of the larger ones on the Web. Started as my small wartime contribution after September 11 when like many other Americans I found myself drawn to the history of my own country, its principal subsites now include
American Naval History
(28 complete books currently onsite),
Native American History
American Railroad History
, and
American Catholic History
, several books on
West Point
(plus over 3500 entries from
Cullum's
). In addition, large sections on
Illinois
Iowa
Louisiana
, and
North Carolina
are joined by books and articles on the history of a number of other States, Freeman's monumental
4‑volume
biography of Robert E. Lee, a book on Washington's presidency and one on Wilson's, a contemporaneous account of the Baltimore Riot of 1812, a book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the log kept by the Spanish commander at the siege of Pensacola in 1781, the journal of a Mormon pioneer, journal articles on a variety of subjects, and many other items. More is on its way.
[ 1/31/26:
6303 webpages
(including 96 complete books)
— 39,738 pages of print,
1781 photos,
316 maps and plans,
590 other illustrations
My
History of the Americas
section is of course hardly an appendage to United States history, but the other way 'round; still, I'm a North American, so we can expect the broader part of the site to be smaller. Right now, Bourne's
Spain in America
Galdames'
History of Chile
, and a large section on the
History of Brazil
, including a full-length book on the subject in addition to a number of journal articles; W. S. Robertson's
Life of Miranda
and Guillermo Sherwell's
Antonio José de Sucre
, belonging mostly to the history of Venezuela; and a section on the
History of Canada
[ 12/21/17:
173 webpages
(including 7 complete books)
— 2712 pages of print,
64 photos,
16 maps,
20 other illustrations
Readings in European History
collects material on
Italian
Ukrainian
British
French
Lithuanian
Dutch
, and
Latvian
history. If most of the books here focus on specific topics, the sections on Ukraine and Lithuania include comprehensive histories of those countries, and the Italian history section is home to Thomas Hodgkin's
8‑volume
Italy and Her Invaders
[ 2/15/26:
888 webpages
(including 37 complete books)
— 13,848 pages of print,
461 photos,
162 maps and plans, 256 other illustrations
Readings in African History
collects some very disparate resources, most of them for now also falling (and previously counted) under European history of one stripe or another: but along with a good portion of native North African historian Muhammad
al‑Idrisi's
Geography
, you'll find Bevan's excellent book on the Ptolemies and other ancient Egyptian material, some Roman history, a book on American entanglement with the rulers of North Africa, some World War II material; and then there's two books on the remote African outpost of Tristan da Cunha, 2400 km from the continent.
[ 11/12/24:
166 webpages
(including 9 complete books)
— 2105 pages of print,
126 photos,
5 maps and plans, 6 other illustrations
Readings in Asian History
is my orientation page to a few resources, also very disparate: Vahan Kurkjian's
History of Armenia
, Deane Dickason's
Wondrous Angkor
, E. D. Sokol's
The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia
, and some smaller items.
[ 7/2/25:
80 webpages
(including 3 complete books)
— 898 pages of print,
80 photos,
12 maps and plans, 62 other illustrations
World War II Resources
cuts across what has already been listed above to collect accounts of various aspects of the war.
For now, the Blitzkrieg in France, a British disinformation operation, the naval war (mostly in the Pacific), the Mulberry ports that made the Normandy landings possible, the career of General Giraud and the North African landings, British commando raids in Europe and Africa.
[ 4/8/22:
11 books and a bit of other material:
3168 pages of print; 254 photos or images,
34 maps
Readings in Catholic History
mostly cuts across what has already been listed above under American history — biographies of James Cardinal Gibbons, pioneer priest Charles Nerinckx, Corean War hero Fr. Emil Kapaun, and a history of the Trappist abbey of New Melleray — but is also starting to include material from European Catholic history.
[ 10/25/24:
6 books and a bit of other material:
1656 pages of print in 119 webpages; 82 illustrations
Readings in Jewish History
includes a biography of the Rambam (Maimonides), a famous contemporary account of the 17c pogroms in what is now Ukraine, and some journal articles:
[ 12/28/22:
2 books and some other material:
362 pages of print in 37 webpages; 6 illustrations
My
Gazetteer of Italy
— currently over 1600 mostly
non-Roman
pages of churches, frescoes, etc. — is my own favorite part of the site. Since 2003, I've mostly been adding to the
Churches of Italy
section, which currently
(2/22/24) covers
712 churches in 401 pages and 1639 photos, as well as several dozen wayside shrines, with more photos of course; plus, quite separately, three entire books on the churches of Rome, covering about 900 of them, past and present, in great detail; and several books covering many of the churches of Umbria and of the city of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo. (The merest drop in a bucket, by the way: Italy's churches present and past must number at least 500,000.)
The United States, my home, I know far less well than I do Italy: for one thing, they're a much larger country. My
American Scrapbook
for now
— 1/21/10 — is mostly about Kentucky (in particular the little town of
Jenkins
), with a bit of Chicago.
LacusCurtius:
Graeco‑Roman
antiquity in some detail. It includes a photosampler of Roman and
Etruscan
cities and monuments — with a very large site on
the city of Rome
of course; many complete Latin and Greek texts, usually in English translation as well; Rodolfo Lanciani's book
Pagan and Christian Rome
, Christian Hülsen's book on the Roman Forum, Bury's
2‑volume
History of the Later Roman Empire
, Bevan's
House of Ptolemy
, 4 books on Roman Britain, George Dennis's
Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria
; Platner and Ashby's
Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome
(nearly complete) and most of Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
; about 45% of Plutarch's
Moralia
; a quick sketch of a site for teaching yourself to read Latin inscriptions; some maps of the Roman Empire, and more.
In a different category, one pretty specialized item, but for some few people it should be very useful, and it's free for the downloading:
Polytonic Greek Typinator Set
— a timesaving utility for anyone inputting a lot of ancient Greek.
5/12/23:
3916
webpages,
779 photos,
772 drawings & engravings,
120 plans,
139 maps
Also, a loose end:
A few collected
sundials
About 16 months' worth of my
diary.
Nothing terribly titillating, really; but it's the laid-back section of this website (read: "easy to put online"), and the raw material for much of the Gazetteer. A bit of London, France, and Kentucky, and lots of Italy: Rome, Milan, Tuscany, Umbria and the Marche, large tracts of which I explored on foot, so that the diary includes details that could be useful if you're planning a trip or a bike tour. Illustrated with photos not usually found elsewhere onsite,
cross-linked
to Gazetteer pages and external sites, and partly indexed by place and topic.
In a similar vein, eight
Letters from Colombia
written in 1993.
6/30/06: 330 pages, 741 photos
A bare index to the books onsite — just the books, though more than 220 of them — is available
here
The newest pages, put onsite in the last 10 days or so:
(Any numbered or lettered links are reported here just to help search engines pick up all the new pages quickly.)
15 Feb:
History of Ukraine:
C. A. Manning,
Ivan Franko
and
For earlier new stuff, see the complete
What's New
page.
Ehm Google . . .
Luigi Serra:
Aquila
(cioè, il suo libro sulla città di L'Aquila) si trova integralmente trascritto sul sito sin dal 2011, ma tredici anni dopo, non viene incluso da voi nei risultati di ricerca. Forse ce la caviamo stavolta?
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Acknowledgments and Thanks
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY
if its URL has a total of one
asterisk.
If the URL has two
**
asterisks,
the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use.
If the URL has none the item is
Bill Thayer.
See
my copyright page
for details and contact information.
Site updated:
15 Feb 26