# What are some of your favorite history books? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [March 23, 2024, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255 "2024-03-23T18:39:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NegativeZer0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/negativezer0/32/14307_2.png) [@NegativeZer0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NegativeZer0)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/1 "2024-03-23T18:39:21Z")
What are some great history books that stuck with you after you finished them? Or that led you down deeper rabbit holes of learning? I’m not even looking _solely_ for nonfiction (historical fiction is great too). I’ve been on a huge history kick lately…just all periods. I want to learn everything and have been craving more and more awesome, gripping and engaging history books. Some stuff I’ve enjoyed recently: _Accidental Presidents_ by Jared Cohen - presents an amazing background of various presidents who died in office and were succeeded by their vice president, who each became unlikely leaders and changed the course of US history in a myriad of ways. Super interesting and tons of tidbits that I never knew! _Bloodlands_ by Timothy Snyder - I admit I don’t know a ton about WW2 and the Holocaust beyond most of what you learn or hear about in popular culture. This book was mind boggling and devastating. The amount of killing and torture that Hitler and Stalin effectuated on their own people is astounding and horrendous. _The Women_ by Kristin Hannah - loved the emotion in this book. I have never dove much into Vietnam war era stories so this was super interesting. I would love to learn more about this time in world history. _SPQR_ by Mary Beard - I’d love to expand my knowledge of the Roman Empire…candidly I haven’t finished this book (it’s been a bit dry for me), but the topic is so intriguing I really want to keep at it and learn more. Any Roman History book suggestions? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/2 "2024-03-23T18:55:53Z")
> [@NegativeZer0](#): > > Any Roman History book suggestions? _I, Claudius_ and _Claudius the God_ are fiction, but they will send you down more Roman History rabbit holes than you can imagine. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/3 "2024-03-23T19:38:09Z")
Duff Cooper, _Talleyrand_ Erik Durschmied, _The Hinge Factor_ Richard Hofstader, T_he American Political Tradition_ William L. O’Neil, _Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s_ _George Seldes, Witness to a Century_ ---
**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:** [March 23, 2024, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/4 "2024-03-23T20:12:00Z")
_The White Nile_ and _The Blue Nile_, both by Alan Moorehead - outstanding accounts of the exploration of the Nile River and the search for its headwaters. _Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs_ - Buddy Levy - A comprehensive history of the exploration and exploitation by the Spanish in Mexico Rick Atkinson’s WWII trilogy. _1491_, Charles Mann - America’s history prior to Columbus _Undaunted Coursage_ - Stephen Ambrose - The Lewis and Clark expedition ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/5 "2024-03-23T20:24:54Z")
That must have been a brave boutenir… ---
**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:** [March 23, 2024, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/6 "2024-03-23T20:26:25Z")
_The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody_ by Will Cuppy. Extremely well researched and very, very snide. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/7 "2024-03-23T20:27:21Z")
I really liked The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I took a stab at it I don’t know how many times- a lot of characters and they all have ridiculous names to where it’s hard to keep them straight 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/8 "2024-03-23T20:37:21Z")
The Everyday Life in America series by various authors. There are six books, and if you Google the series title you should be able to find the series right quick. The titles run like “Everyday Life in Colonial America”, “The Reshaping of American Life”, “The Uncertainty of American Life”, “As Various as Their Lands”. The series is very thorough, and I was never bored reading it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/9 "2024-03-23T20:46:56Z")
I had a history teacher that used Charles Fair’s _From The Jaws Of History-A History of the Character, Causes & Consequences of Military Stupidity, from Crassus to Johnson & Westmoreland_. I loved that class. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/10 "2024-03-23T20:52:09Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > _The White Nile_ and _The Blue Nile_, both by Alan Moorehead - outstanding accounts of the exploration of the Nile River and the search for its headwaters. Absolute gems. Riveting and full of solid history. Some is a bit dated today, but that’s a quibble. _The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914_ really opened my eyes. _Guns of August_ is a good read, but she was conned the French doctoring documents. _Shattered Sword_ is mostly about the battle of Midway, but also why Imperial Japan went to a doomed war. _The Last Plantagenets_ - Thomas B. Costain is the last of a four book series about English History from William the Bastard to Richard III - and he presents a good case of why R3 did not kill the Princes in the Tower. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/11 "2024-03-23T20:53:00Z")
Not really a fan of the “definitive and exhaustive” massive tomes. To the academician readers they’re just compilations of stuff they have elsewhere, and the general public should be well-informed sufficiently with 600 pages of any one author’s take on a subject. Sorry Robert Caro, someone had to say it, but maybe you could’ve completed your life’s work if you’d been more succinct. I enjoy when a pretty good documentary in its own right is followed up with a book full off all the good gouge that didn’t fit into the script. Kenneth Clark’s (Western) Civilisation, Jacob Bonowski’s Ascent of Man, Robert Hughes’ Shock of the New. ---
**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:** [March 23, 2024, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/12 "2024-03-23T22:15:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Absolute gems. Riveting and full of solid history. Some is a bit dated today, but that’s a quibble. _Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston_ is another gem. > [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > That must have been a brave boutenir… I had to reread my post three times to catch the error. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/13 "2024-03-24T00:07:12Z")
Sounds amazing! I’ll have to add it to my TBR list. Yours sounds similar to one of my all time favorite books: The March of Folly by Barbara W. Tuchman. “The book is about “one of the most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests”.” The section of the Vietnam War hit hard for this old boomer. I think everyone should read it, so we can recognize the signs when they come up. Even when we’re doomed to repeat it. > **[The March of Folly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Folly?wprov=sfti1)** > > The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is a book by Barbara W. Tuchman, an American historian and author. It was published on March 19, 1984, by Knopf in New York. > The book is about "one of the most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests". It details four major instances of government folly in human history: the Trojans' decision to move the Greek horse into their city, the failure of the Renaissance popes to address the factors ... ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/14 "2024-03-24T00:51:54Z")
Richard Rhodes, **The Making of the Atomic Bomb** Amazing book. Rhodes is a historian, but he goes deeply into the science - back to the 19th century and forward to Niels Bohr and James Chadwick, and eventually the Manhattan Project. At one point he goes step by step through the millisecond chemical and physical sequence that occurs when a nuclear weapon detonates. I’ve just begun re-reading it for the third time. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/15 "2024-03-24T01:48:24Z")
**_The Daughter of Time_ by Josephine Tey.** It’s fiction, but it’s the fictional story of a bedridden (momentarily-- he’s recovering from an on-duty injury) Scotland Yard detective and an American guy recently graduated with a BA in history (British, but a different period) from an American university, doing research in the BM as an excuse to be in London with his actress girlfriend. The too hook up to do serious research together on the fate of the Princes in the Tower, ultimately on a quest to exonerate Richard III. The young American’s girlfriend is in a seemingly everlasting play with the great London actress Marta Hallard, who just happens to be a friend of the detective. Miss Hallard gets them together after first getting the detective interested in the case of the last Plantagenet. Their research is real, although it might seem slow and scanty to someone with access to Google reading a book written in the 1950s, but perhaps it will give you an appreciation for the fact that they deal only with original sources, and not what someone claimed someone said somewhere else. there are things left out, but so there are in books attacking Richard. The book makes a few good points in the conversation among the characters to which other characters can respond. Josephine Tey, for herself, prefers her roses no particular color-- she is biased against the tudors, and seems to feel the… Well Read it youself ---
**Author:** ![NegativeZer0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/negativezer0/32/14307_2.png) [@NegativeZer0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NegativeZer0)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/16 "2024-03-24T02:23:45Z")
I’ve heard mention of these!! Definitely will need to check them out. ---
**Author:** ![TeroSunbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terosunbear/32/14748_2.png) [@TeroSunbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeroSunbear)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/17 "2024-03-24T02:24:52Z")
This was pretty good. It being Germany, even the shortest history gets bogged down a bit with the formation of Prussia. > **[The Shortest History of Germany review – probing an enigma at the heart of...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/24/the-shortest-history-of-germany-review-james-hawes-mystery-heart-of-europe)** > > James Hawes’s brief yet rewarding history of Germany examines its place in a continent in the throes of upheaval ---
**Author:** ![NegativeZer0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/negativezer0/32/14307_2.png) [@NegativeZer0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NegativeZer0)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/18 "2024-03-24T02:25:14Z")
I have _Undaunted Courage_ on my shelf right now…I should crack it open sometime. I tried to listen to the _1491_ audiobook but struggled with it; maybe I should give the actual book a go instead. Always wanted to get into the Atkins books! Also that history of the Spanish exploration of Mexico gets me excited. ---
**Author:** ![NegativeZer0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/negativezer0/32/14307_2.png) [@NegativeZer0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NegativeZer0)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/19 "2024-03-24T02:27:50Z")
This seems right up my alley. Just downloaded on my kindle. Thanks for the tip! ---
**Author:** ![NegativeZer0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/negativezer0/32/14307_2.png) [@NegativeZer0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NegativeZer0)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/20 "2024-03-24T02:28:46Z")
I have this audiobook ready to roll!…67+ hours seems real daunting though, so I’ve been putting it off… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255.md?page=2)