# Recommend me some history books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [January 6, 2025, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641 "2025-01-06T16:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![batsto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@batsto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batsto)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/1 "2025-01-06T16:45:40Z")
I did this back just before Covid and got some great suggestions, but that was a long time ago so I’m hoping folks have some new ideas for me. What I _don’t_ like: overly general surveys (“history of Ireland”, etc.), military history (I will read about the causes/effects of the war, but my mind goes blank when reading about hardware, troop movements, and battle strategy). Also a book I can finish in a reasonable amount of time, so typically \<500 pages (I work two jobs, so my reading time is fairly limited. A 900 page book may take me months to get through) Not really interested in biographies of a single person. Some I have read and enjoyed: pretty much all of Candice Millard’s books; “1877: America’s Year of Living Violently” (Michelle Bellisiles); “Devil in the White City”; "All the Shah’s Men (Stephen Kinzer); “King Leopold’s Ghost”; “When Montezuma Met Cortes” (Matthew Restall) So what should I be reading that I’m not? ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/2 "2025-01-06T17:34:55Z")
Here is a best history books of 2024; anything strike your fancy? > **[The Ten Best History Books of 2024](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ten-best-history-books-of-2024-180985531/)** > > Our favorite titles of the year resurrect forgotten histories and examine how the United States ended up where it is today ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/3 "2025-01-06T17:37:52Z")
Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers, saw Vietnam from both the ground and the highest corridors of power. His memoir, _Secrets_, was a compelling read (and though it comes in at 12 pages more than your limit, it goes fast) > **[Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers](https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/secrets-a-memoir-of-vietnam-pentagon-papers)** > > Book — Non-fiction. By Daniel Ellsberg. 2003. 512 pages. A riveting behind-the-scenes account of Ellsberg's decade of disillusionment leading up to Nixon's resignation. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/4 "2025-01-06T17:42:15Z")
I mentioned elsewhere that I’m reading Hampton Sides’ book about James Cook’s last voyage of exploration. Very interesting and well-written. If you like exploration I can’t recommend White Nile by Alan Moorehead highly enough. ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/5 "2025-01-06T17:45:12Z")
What era of history do you like? ---
**Author:** ![batsto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@batsto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batsto)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/6 "2025-01-06T17:59:11Z")
I tend to read more modern era—say, 1400s or later but I’ll read pretty much any era. I don’t know that I have a favorite. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/7 "2025-01-06T18:06:31Z")
If you’re interested in American elections, I recommend David Petrusza: > **[David Pietrusza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pietrusza)** > > David Pietrusza is an American author and historian, and is considered an expert on US Politics in the 1920s. > He has written a number of books, including Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR's 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal, which won the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for US History, received a Kirkus starred review and was nominated for the 2022 Kirkus Prize and the 2022 New Deal Book Award. > This article about an American writer is a stub. You can help Wikiped... ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/8 "2025-01-06T18:18:57Z")
_A New World Begins_ by Jeremy D. Popkin. Slightly over 500 pages but a solid, easily digestible history of the French Revolution. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/9 "2025-01-06T18:36:12Z")
Bill Bryson’s [_One Summer: America, 1927_](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262366-one-summer?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_14) is fun and informative, though Bryson is by no means a professional historian. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/10 "2025-01-06T19:09:16Z")
Rachel Maddow’s _Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism_ is mandatory reading for what lies ahead, as the best history is. It covers the right-wing movement in the Depression, when capitalism seemed broken. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/11 "2025-01-06T19:10:29Z")
_The Military Experience in the Age of Reason_, 1988 by Christopher Duffy You could not pick a worse title for a more interesting book. Duffy is fascinated by the Early Modern Era (1500-1700) and pulls you along for the ride. In particular here he focuses on why and how Europe went from fielding dirty bands of spear chucking gangs to our modern understanding of a professional military force. Not just weapons and tactics, but everything a human has to deal with on campaign. While he dives into specific examples it’s often only to color the commentary about all facets of the common regular soldier’s life in different nations and decades. These frequent diatribes would be distracting but they’re so damn interesting I’ll more often bookmark them to read again later or quote in future online arguments. The title makes it the last book anyone would take poolside on a vacation and yet that is exactly where I would take this when I want to read it again. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/12 "2025-01-06T21:06:31Z")
I recently finished [1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed](https://a.co/d/f83u2HB) by Eric Cline about the Bronze Age Collapse and [The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began](https://a.co/d/3tjPjPm) by Valerie Hansen. Both were enjoyable reads. ---
**Author:** ![Moonrise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonrise/32/14764_2.png) [@Moonrise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonrise)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/13 "2025-01-07T10:44:02Z")
[_Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America_](https://www.amazon.com/Fur-Fortune-Empire-History-America/dp/0393340023) by **Eric Jay Dolin** (2011) Pretty much what the title says. I particularly liked the focus on both sides of the trade, i.e. not just the European colonizers, mountain men and coureurs des bois, but also the various natives tribes they encountered over the centuries, starting with the Iroquoians and then later Lakota, Blackfoot and Chinook for instance. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/14 "2025-01-07T14:12:06Z")
How about a historical murder mystery: > **[The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18531.The_Reckoning)** > > In 1593 the brilliant but controversial young playwrigh… On Cromwell’s Protectorate regime > **[Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Repub…](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43204812-providence-lost)** > > Librarian's Note: This is an alternate cover edition of… On outsiders’ reactions to Nazi Germany: > **[Travellers in the Third Reich](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34594504-travellers-in-the-third-reich)** > > Without the benefit of hindsight, how do you interpret … On post-WW2 Germany: > **[Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945…](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53288891-aftermath)** > > Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been red… On the rise and fall of the GDR: > **[The Saddled Cow: East Germany's Life and Legacy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/767754.The_Saddled_Cow)** > > As "The Times" correspondent in East Berlin, the author… Anything by Simon Schama - but would these be too general: > **[Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/527523.Citizens)** > > Instead of a dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebull… > **[The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch…](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21073.The_Embarrassment_of_Riches)** > > At the apogee of its powers in the seventeenth century,… ---
**Author:** ![batsto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@batsto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batsto)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/15 "2025-01-07T14:31:44Z")
a lot of good suggestions here…and the only one that’s been suggested so far that I’ve already read is Simon Schama’s “Citizens”, which I loved. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-history-books/1012641/16 "2025-01-07T14:37:42Z")
Previous thread on this topic [What are some of your favorite history books? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255) I have an interest in World War 1 - The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East\* Eugene L Rogan - A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire\* Gregory Wawro - Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika\* GIles Foden All three books describe the experience of the common soldiers and other people caught up in the mess that was the War to end all Wars, something often missing in military history.