Sterling Seagrave’s The Soong Dynasty. The ultimate book of the history of China in the first half of the 20th century.
John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. A history of politics of war, of politics of disease, and of how the studies started with this disease lead to a number of world-changing discoveries.
Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. An absolutely stunning book, about one of the most amazing feats of survival I’ve ever read. First published in 1959, this is one of the enduring tales of the sea, right up there with Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. (Another recommendation.) It tells of what I like to call one of the glorious failures of history: Shackleton and his men intended to cross the Antarctic continent from one end to the other, instead his ship, the Endurance was caught in the pack ice, and sunk, leaving him and his crew to try to survive in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Once he got his crew to a point of relative safety, he and a picked crew, then sailed in an open boat, through the most harrowing seas, to get rescue. Absolutely amazing.
For history, try Thucydides, Xenophon, Livy, and Caesar.
Max Hastings’ autobiography, Going to the Wars, is an interesting read, as is Martin Middlebrook’s The Falklands War 1982. For something completely different, try Shaw’s Fighter Combat.
Witness by Whitaker Chambers
The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming
The Rise of Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann
A thread from last December with some recommendations. I proposed The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars and The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.
An enthusiastic second for Destiny of the Republic, one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. James A. Garfield is now one of my personal heroes.
I am about halfway through American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation by Eric Rutkow. I have had to put it down several times to attend to other things, but it is very engrossing.
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
Arc of Justice is about a black doctor who moved into an all-white neighborhood in 1920s Detroit (it doesn’t end well) and the court case that followed.
It’s a very interesting read. While it focuses on that one incident it does a very good job of describing race relations in the U.S. then, and sheds a lot of light on why we (as a country) are where we are.
The Mother Tounge - English And How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson is a great read.
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid McCulloch is a great look into the shaping of today’s western world. As born-again atheist I found it illuminating, and the former seminary student who decided instead to join the Army (still a christian to this day), loved it so much he never did return it to me! What I’m saying is, it’s really meant for everybody.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 - 1815, by Gordon S. Wood taught me so much about the early US I had never known before. The depth and level of detail is amazing.
I also heartily second Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.
And in my experience: Any biography will do in a pinch.
For the true crime category try:
The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (July, 1988)
For adventure
Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan (Oct 17, 2002)
Gipsy Moth Circles the World by Sir Francis Chichester (Jun 1968)
The Mental Floss History of the World. A very readable book for an obviously dense subject.
I just finished Zeitoun. Quite the page-turner.
I recently read Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds, written by (as you might have guessed from the title) Robin Olds. He graduated from Westpoint in 1942 as a Second Lieutenant, and had achieved the rank of Major by the time the war ended 3 years later. He was a triple-ace by the time he retired, with 12 kills in WWII flying P-51s and P-38s, and 4 kills flying F-4 Phantoms over Vietnam. Lots of war stories, lots of thoughts on leadership and responsibility, and many instances of Olds getting himself in trouble because he had no sense of tact and people kept insisting on letting him speak in public.
In this same tradition, there are some other good ones out there.
Baa Baa Black Sheep by Greg Boyington, the top ace of the Marines in WWII with 28 kills, inspirer of the TV series, perpetual drunk
God Is My Copilot by Robert Scott, one of the Flying Tigers
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Ted Lawson, copilot of one of the planes on the Doolittle mission
Samurai by Saburo Sakai, the highest scoring Japanese ace to survive the war
Jumping in to reccomend “Q”, by Luther Blisset. It’s a Historical novel beginning with the theses posted by Martin Luther and the german peasants war, continuing by detailing various anabaptist movements afterwards from a first person perspective and ending with the appointment of Pope Paul IV.
Jumping out again, goodbye!
House of Rain, Craig Childs
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
1491, Charles Mann
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
The Lost City of Z, David Grann
Skeletons on The Zahara, Dean King
I’d recommend any book by William Poundstone, though I’d put Prisoners Dilemma and Gaming the Vote at the top.
I also liked A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens by Lawrence E. Babits, which I read for a history class in high school. Gives the background and details on the Battle of Cowpens during the American Revolution. Somehow the author manages to make marching formations sound riveting (granted, they were marching and maneuvering in formation in the midst of a battle. For a marching band geek, that’s pretty danged thrilling to think of.)
If you ever saw The Patriot, with Mel Gibson, the final battle was based partially on this engagement.
And on another Mel Gibson note, another book that I read for the same class: We Were Soldiers Once…and Young by Joe Galloway and Lt. General Hal Moore (Retired). Tells about one of the first airborne cavalry battalions, and a pair of battles this unit (and a sister unit of theirs) was involved in around the Ia Drang valley during Vietnam.
Just a word of warning though, reading this book, particularly any parts involving Rick “Hard Corps” Rescorla, will cause you to spontaneously grow a beard and a chest full of hair. That dude was the sort of freaking badass that they used to make Micheal Caine movies and Scandinavian poems about.
Didn’t like the first that much - how could Ambrose make Lewis & Clark’s adventures seem boring? - but the second was pretty good.
Just finished a book called Etymologicon which I quite enjoyed. Fun if you like words and where they came from.