# 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:** 2
**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, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/21 "2024-03-24T02:30:50Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > 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. This is a great point! I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll check those titles out. Speaking of: any good documentary suggestions you can offer? Anything really hook you recently? ---
**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, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/22 "2024-03-24T02:37:22Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#): > > I’ve just begun re-reading it for the third time. Wow three times! This has been in my TBR pile for a while. I can’t wait to dig into it. ---
**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 24, 2024, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/23 "2024-03-24T02:40:32Z")
A few yers ago I started watching Adam Curtis’ documentaries. A very idiosyncratic presentation style, but draws a lot of threads together to explain how things got to how they are. We never give anyone 100% credence, but he won’t bore. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/24 "2024-03-24T03:10:21Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > **_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. It is a great book. But then I read the first mystery in the series, and it was IMHO very bad. Mostly about boozing . Our Detective spends the first 90% of the book getting his man, only to have someone else fess up in the finial chapter that they did it instead. > [@Chefguy](#): > > _Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston_ is another gem. I did not read that but I read - _Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer._ ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/25 "2024-03-24T04:45:27Z")
He once killed a Grizzly Bear with only a Swiss Army Knife, Skied the Highest Glacier\* on the World, Was involved in not only a HIgh-Speed pursuit, but a Police Stand-off… _He is… The Most Tedious Man in the World!_ I don’t read History always, but when I do, It’s David McCullough… ---
**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, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/26 "2024-03-24T08:08:05Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It is a great book. But then I read the first mystery in the series, and it was IMHO very bad. Mostly about boozing . Our Detective spends the first 90% of the book getting his man, only to have someone else fess up in the finial chapter that they did it instead. _The Man in the Queue_ There’s a point to it, but it’s easily lost remote from the time and place of the book’s writing. Some of her other books, not from the Alan Grant series (he’s the detective in _The Daughter of Time_), such as _Brat Farrar_ are very good, and have been dramatized. And the other Alan Grant ones are far better than the first one. ---
**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 24, 2024, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/27 "2024-03-24T09:44:56Z")
But his books are good for the anecdotes. Like mosquitos being thick enough to snuff candles during early Panama Canal attempts. That stayed with me 😬 ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/28 "2024-03-24T10:35:37Z")
Richard Frank’s _Guadalcanal_ is one I’ve re-read several times. Dozens of books have been written about the campaign for this tiny Pacific island, but this one really nails it. > [@DrDeth](#): > > _Shattered Sword_ is mostly about the battle of Midway, but also why Imperial Japan went to a doomed war. Agreed. I have to read this one every few years. ---
**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 24, 2024, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/29 "2024-03-24T12:25:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I did not read that but I read - _Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer_ Just picked it up for free on Amazon. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/30 "2024-03-24T19:11:53Z")
Personal favourite - _Martin’s Hundred_ by Ivor Noel Hume. Beautifully written unfolding of archaeological investigations on an early 17th century settlement near Jamestown, Virginia destroyed in a raid. It reads like a detective story at times, shows great breadth of scholarship and provides genuine insights onto that period. If you want to learn something of broad scale history as it helped to shape the modern world then Eric Hobsbawm’s three volume survey of the long 19th century - _The Age of Revolution_, _The Age of Capital_ and _The Age of Empire_ - is a rich and dense intorduction. Focussed mainly on Europe (at least the first two), but pretty much one major analytical fact or interpretation per sentence, so they cover a lot of ground in both detail and scope. I’ve started this series again in audio-book, and I think this is the better way to ingest these if you are not actually trying to use them as essay references. Generally as well, good history writing has a cadence and a strong internal style, which can make listening to it rather than reading it a great experience, especially for longer works. Also, any of Tom Holland’s work in academic history is well-written and cast to highlight the most interesting and relevant elements and makes for a cracking yarn. My favourite of his is _Millenium: the end of the World …_ which uses the clock ticking over to 1000 AD to take a snapshot of the Old World and the complex transformations happening in it around that point. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/31 "2024-03-24T19:32:55Z")
A favorite of mine may sound like pure biography, but is actually social history addressing the question of why some of the people who’ve had the most outsized influence on history outside the realm of politics have in common claims of ill health. It’s the 1974 _ **Creative Malady** _, by George Pickering. It’s not only thought-provoking, it’s delightful to read. This guy was a superb prose stylist. Note the subtitle: _Illness in the Lives and Minds of Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning_. > **[George Pickering, Creative malady. Illness in the lives and minds of Charles...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/medical-history/article/george-pickering-creative-malady-illness-in-the-lives-and-minds-of-charles-darwin-florence-nightingale-mary-baker-eddy-sigmund-freud-marcel-proust-elizabeth-barrett-browning-london-g-allen-unwin-1974-8vo-pp-327-illus-525/865A80465047280E0FCD53E13D236F68#)** > > George Pickering, Creative malady. Illness in the lives and minds of Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, London, G. Allen & Unwin, 1974, 8vo., pp. 327, illus., £5.25. -... ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2024, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/32 "2024-03-24T19:43:49Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Some of her other books, not from the Alan Grant series (he’s the detective in _The Daughter of Time_), such as _Brat Farrar_ are very good, and have been dramatized. And the other Alan Grant ones are far better than the first one. I will accept your knowledge about the subject. I loved _The Daughter of Time_ but I found _The Man in the Queue_ to be a huge disappointment. Obviously she is a popular mystery author. ---
**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:** [March 24, 2024, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/33 "2024-03-24T20:15:46Z")
I love history books that drop me into the mind and era of the characters much like Ken Follet’s _The Pillars of the Earth_. I have always adored history and anything that can transport me to the action in the past has my vote. ---
**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:** [March 25, 2024, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/34 "2024-03-25T00:10:00Z")
Well, Daughter of Time is famous, but it lost much of its luster for me when I found the nonfiction book she cribbed all the info from. Without any mention that I can recall, although I’ve never seen the actual first edition. And the answer is outdated and wrong today. It’s 70 years old! I wouldn’t trust any 70-year-old book on history. People think that history happened and so can never change. That’s very wrong. People write history, and what they know and what their attitudes are change every year. If the OP wants more on Roman history, Tom Holland - mentioned above and who seems to write a fat book every year - has _Rubicon_, on the period from republic to empire, and _Dynasty_, on the next hundred years. He has a new one out I haven’t read yet, _Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age_. Holland’s American equivalent is [H. W. Brands](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=h.+w.+brands+books&crid=B717NJMYFKCN&sprefix=h.+w.+brands%2Caps%2C157&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_12), who focuses on American history and writes a book about it every year. I recently finished _The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War_, which took a deep look at the period from WWII to the Korean War, often slighted. But any of his books are good introductions to their subjects ---
**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 25, 2024, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/35 "2024-03-25T02:13:55Z")
That whole series is incredible. I tore through them. ---
**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:** [March 25, 2024, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/36 "2024-03-25T02:48:00Z")
> [@Ellecram](#): > > I love history books that drop me into the mind and era of the characters much like Ken Follet’s _The Pillars of the Earth_. _The Pillars of the Earth_ is a good read, but I wasn’t convinced that its characters thought the way 12th century people actually thought. (I’m no expert though.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/37 "2024-03-25T03:16:32Z")
It’s late but I wanted to add a couple. _The Guns of August_ by Barbara Tuchman, how Europe stumbled into WWI and how it became the bloody stalemate it ended up. _The Path Between the Seas_ by David McCullough, maybe a bit long about the French attempt but still fascinating history. Maybe a bit dated now, but Bruce Catton’s Civil War trilogy _The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword,_ and _Never Call Retreat_ are readable still. And while not strictly a history book, William Shirer’s _Berlin Diary_ is still compelling, as is _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2024, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/38 "2024-03-25T14:38:04Z")
_Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln_, by Doris Kearns Goodwin _American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics_, by Kevin Hazzard _Operation Sea Lion: The Failed Nazi Invasion that Turned the Tide of War_, by Leo McKinstry _Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America’s First Humanitarian Mission_, by Stephen Puleo ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/39 "2024-03-25T15:06:23Z")
_Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era_, by James M. McPherson _The Proud Tower_, another great book by Barbara Tuchman, containing excellent summaries of the Dreyfus Affair and late-19th to early-20th century Anarchism. _Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon_, by P. D. Smith. Centering around the career of physicist Leo Szilard, it examines the entire concept of “doomsday” weapons, from turn of the century science fiction to Szilard’s concept of a cobalt-salted omnicide bomb. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2024, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/40 "2024-03-25T15:18:55Z")
For World War 2, Anthony Beevor has several books worth reading: Stalingrad, the Fall of Berlin 1945, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. His history of the Spanish Civil War is good too. Another good WW2 historian is Ben McIntyre. He concentrates on espionage and intelligence gathering. If you are interested in the history of art and architecture, Ross King is your man: I really enjoyed Brunelleschi’s Dome (about the building of Florence’s cathedral), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, and Leonardo and the Last Supper. If you are interested in economic history, I’d recommend A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by WIlliam Bernstein. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255.md?page=3)