I love all sorts of obscure pieces of history, especially the books that include realistic portrayals of life at certain times (not necessarily kings/queens/important people). I like reading books that have a storyline that is similar to non-fiction but contains information that is from historical evidence.
Just wondering if anyone has any recommendations? I don’t mind fiction if the author has done their research!
The SDMB regularly discusses The Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough. It is a lightly fictionalized, heavily researched telling of the story of Rome from a few decades prior to Caesar through Augustus. The first book is called The First Man of Rome: https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Rome-Masters/dp/0061582417
Not exactly what you are looking for, but a great way to learn about Rome.
You might also try Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman - it doesn’t unfold in a novel-like way, but the “plot” about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary is so engrossing that you devour it.
I read a good one, titled The Sea Captain’s Wife. It is by Martha Hodes, and is subtitled A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century
It tells the story of Eunice (Richardson) Stone Connolly, born poor in New England, who was widowed during the Civil War, and while still fighting poverty and depression, met, fell in love with, and married a well-to-do man from the Grand Cayman Islands. The latter was surprising for the time because he was “a man of color”
The author did a lot of research, and was aided by family letters preserved for over a hundred years.
Try Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror about the 14th century.
Neither of these are exactly like fiction, but they are compelling reading with a plot.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale. The story of a murder in Victorian England.
Also * Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime*, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
If you’ll allow memoirs and the like: My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell.
From an SDMB recommendation: You’re Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger, by Roger Hall. It’s about a man training to be an OSS agent in WWII.
Also in that memoirish space: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, by Mike Brown. About the demotion of Pluto from planet to rock.
And less recommended, though very popular on Goodreads: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson. It’s a great story written in a weird, over the top style.
When I read Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, I kept having to remind myself that it’s non-fiction. It’s a good read if you haven’t read it yet.
Adam Hochschild’s KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST (1998), about the Belgian occupation of Congo in the late 19th century, and the atrocities visited on the natives forced into slave labor.
Read it about 15 years ago, couldn’t put it down, still haunts me. And it increases your appreciation of Conrad’s classic short novel HEART OF DARKNESS.
For something offbeat try The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich. He spent 30 years tracking down every copy of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). He writes the story exactly like a mystery novel. He get leads, tracks them down, finds clues to revelations about what really happened, and is at times stymied by false deductions before he makes the big intuitive leaps. It’s delightfully a page-turner despite the subject matter.
A gripping read about the US Navy in the 1930s is The Terrible Hours: The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History, by Peter Maas (he also wrote Serpico), about Swede Momsen and his revolutionary inventions. I also like Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, about the May 1996 climbing disaster on Mt. Everest.
Good thread here, these are the kinds of books I like. I’ll be looking for peoples’ recommendations.
At one time, a roommate of mine had been assigned a book about Peter the Great that I borrowed sometimes to read. It was not as dusty as a history at all, but more like a fictional take on Peter’s life. I can’t, unfortunately, remember either title or author at this point. It’s been almost 20 years.
Some of my favorites:
The Worst Journey in the World, about Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic, by a guy who survived. It’s a much lighter and more enjoyable read than you would expect, and reads like classic adventure fiction.
dot.bomb, about a failed dotcom company during the bubble. Extremely funny and fascinating.
Den of Thieves, about the Michael Milken/Ivan Boesky financial scandal. You will recognize it as the story that was turned into the movie Wall Street, and it’s just as dramatic and exciting in book form.
Shadow Divers, about the discovery of a submarine wreck. Revealing more would give too much away, but it’s a history within a history, about both the divers discovering the submarine, and the people who originally served on it.
Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life by Hugh Brogan. Everything you ever wanted to know about living through the French Revolution, and the Restoration, and Napoleon. Of course Tocqueville also visited the U.S. in 1831, and the book gives a great sense of that historical period as well.
I would second Into Thin Air, and add Into the Wild, which tells one story of wilderness adventure, but includes historical detail about many others.
The Fatal Shore: The epic of Australia’s founding is fascinating.
Alistair Horne’s The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 is also a great page turner. Horne wrote several other books about French military history that are just as good.
The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London by Sarah Wise. The title alone promises much, and it delivers.
Gandhi and Churchill by Arthur Herman is fascinating from start to finish; the two men’s lives were connected in many different ways.
Although I haven’t read it yet, I’ve heard nothing but good things about The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson, about the events of the 1893 World’s Fair and the serial killer who wreaked terror on Chicago during said fair.
Both White Nile and Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead. Historical accounts of British exploration of the great river and the search for its source.
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer: a disastrous assent of Everest
Astoria, by Peter Stark: exploration of the Columbia River and attempts to establish a fur trading empire
Mayflower, Sea of Glory, and In the Heart of the Sea, all by Nathaniel Philbrick
Endurance, by Alfred Lansing: the astounding survival story of Shackleton and his Antarctic exploration crew.
River of Doubt, Candice Millard: About Theodore Roosevelt’s ill-advised exploration of an unknown river.
Steven Pressfield’s historical fiction ranges from classical Greece to World War II. Among the list of Books of Interest to History Students the site owner states, “Oxford professors have students of the classics read Pressfield to gain a true feel for the period.”
Ben Macintyre’s books on Second World War espionage and deception, Operation Mincemeat, Double Cross and Agent Zig Zag fit the bill. The stories race along.
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Any of Allan W Eckert’s “historical narratives”
The Frontiersmen: A Narrative
Wilderness Empire
The Conquerors
The Wilderness War
Twilight of Empire
A Sorrow In Our Heart
are basically my favorites.
I’ve read it, and it’s fantastic…although a bit depressing. It switches back and forth between the great triumph of the world fair, and the depressing bits about the killing. The killing is somewhat soft-pedaled: it doesn’t get particularly grisly or gruesome.
“My Secret War” by Kim Philby is fairly light reading, and gives some insights into the life of one of the world’s great traitors.
“Red Star Rogue” by Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond is about the Soviet submarine that sank in the Pacific, presenting the case that it was on a rogue mission, actually taken over by KGB renegades, to fire a missile at Hawaii in order to start a nuclear war between the U.S. and China. Now, to be honest, I really doubt some of the book’s ideas, but it’s a damn fine story, extremely well told. It has a lot of the “Hunt for Red October” pizazz.
Thanks for the ideas!!
I am probably more interested history before the 1800s … preferably even older.
Off to buy some books!!