For my professional project, I’m writing the history of the campus radio station. As part of the process, I need to read some other narrative history books to get ideas about structure and content.
Specifically, what I’m looking for are books written for the mass audience. So far, I’ve read Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, and that’s along the lines of what I’m looking for. They don’t necessarily have to be about communication or even about American history. They just can’t be monographs.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky is a great book. Well, it is two stories, the first explaining the frenzy in Paris as the Nazis were invading and the second detailing what happened during the occupation.
What makes the book particularly interesting is that the author herself was a Jew that fled Paris with her husband and kids- she wrote the novels in the French countryside while in (essentially) hiding from the Nazis. The third part of the book is actual letters from her husband and such, as she was taken to a concentration camp.
So you get to works of historical fiction actually written in the period by someone experiencing the situation and then a little dose of regular history in the end.
If Thunderstruckp was helpful, you might also want to check out Devil in the White City by the same author.
Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, is also a terrific example of history for a mass audience. The author combines his meticulous research with excerpts from journals of those involved and photos before, during and after the voyage. Great book – one of the best non-fiction reads I’ve experienced.