So, recently I've become very interested in reading books about history, of some kind. Any kind. Unfortunately I'm the kind of person who has a really hard time spending my time on something that I don't already know will be very good or interesting. I tried searching around Barnes & Noble for something, but nothing caught my eye...
So I was wondering if somebody here knew of any particularly interesting books. Non-fiction in preferred, but I'll take historical fiction as well, just so long as its based on fact (like The Killer Angels... which you obviously don't have to list, since I've read it) and not...alternate history or something.
And it doesn't need to be from or about any certain time period or location. Or subject. Military history and social history or equally interesting...
So, umm....
Anybody read any good history books lately?
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Exodus by Leon Uris is a historical fiction book chronicling the reformation of Israel as an independant nation. It's fascinating.
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I would definitely check out Daniel J Boorstein. The Discoverers and the others in that series are quite good. I've only read some of the first in his The Americans trilogy, but what I've read so far is very interesting.
Have you ever read A People's History of the United States? It's somewhat depressioning, but an important read.
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I'm not entirely sure I'd really call Killer Angels historical fiction. It blurs the lines. Michael Shaara wrote the book using a vast array of source material, including personal correspondance from the generals and every day soldiers, dispatches from Washington, and other traditional source material.
Granted, the word for word conversations of the people involved is taken with a lot of liberty, the genesis of those conversations is taken from accounts written later on by the people themselves, most especially Longstreet, Robert Lee and Chamberlain, who wrote a couple books about his time in the army. He took many lines directly from Chamberlain's journal.
I guess under the strictest sense, it IS fiction, but there is so much information in there based on research, that I'm hesitant to call it fiction, even fact based fiction.
Anyway, recommendations on other history books:
John Adams by David McCullough is utterly fantastic. It made me want to go out and buy all the collected writings of John Adams, but I simply can't afford them all. It chronicles the broader cause for independence, and all through the later parts of his life after the goal has been achieved, and talks extensively about his time in France with John Jay and Franklin.
Also excellent is his 1776, which is about exactly what it says, the year 1776. It does a fantastic job of covering the British as well as the American side of the war, and does an amazing job of covering individual battles with fairly amazing details, as well as getting inside the lives of the major power players (the generals) involved in the conflict. Especially interesting is some of the anaylsis it does on Britain's parliament and King George. Mostly though it leaves you with a feeling of luck, as in, just how damned lucky we got in a lot of that war to win. Not to diminish the great work done to win it, but as the Greeks would say, Fortune smiled upon us greatly.
I'm looking to get his older book on T. Roosevelt, which I expect will be fantastic.
I haven't done a lot of current reading lately, I've had a bit of focus on the classics and ancient history, so my next few suggestions are going way back...
History of the Roman World: 753-146BC by H. H. Scullard is an interesting read. It's an EASY read. The written style, unlike that of many contemporary writers talking about the ancient world is very easy to get through, and some of the time he even makes it sort of fun, if not interesting. However, while his scholarship on the issue is excellent, and his sources good, he personally is a horrible historian. His conclusions and analysis on Roman psyche and motivations are all wrong in my opinion. He's a classicist commentator, not historian. So, you can read it and get a lot of great information from it, but take everything that he personally says with a pound of salt, he's full of it.
Xenophon's Anabasis is a great read. You might have to find it under the name "The Persian Expedition." It's the story of how he led his Greek mercenaries out of Persia after their short lived alliance with the Persian usurper was cutoff by the current ruler. His group was tricked by the Persian commanders and their leadership was killed. Xenophon stepped up and took charge, and led them out while constantly being harrassed by enemy troops.
He writes it himself, about himself years later, but regardless of any half truths he might have added in, it's a marvelous story. It's also the basis for that movie that was just rereleased on DVD recently, about the gang in New York, but I can't remember the name of it.
Herodotus and Thucydides are must reads for the Greek historian. History of the Peolponnesian War and The Histories are great books, and while they can be a bit dry at times, I'd suggest you stay away from ancient history entirely if you aren't really into it enough to get past the dryness.
I'm currently reading the Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius. He's much much less dry than most Greek writers I've read in the past, maybe do to his partially Roman education after his capture, but he is very readable, and it's a great account of the Punic Wars, which is one of my favorite parts of Ancient History personally.
What exactly is your target era of history? I could go look through my book shelves and see if I've read, or if I have anything that matches your interests and then get back to you on it.
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I have no reall target era. I'm just looking for some interesting books about something that actually happened...
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On OSC's recomendation I picked up the audio book of Princes of Ireland last week. I've been really enjoying it. I don't really remember a lot of anchient Irish history, but it is getting into events I know, and seems to be fairly accurate. It follows a few key Irish families in Dublin through the centuries and the events around Dublin.
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One of the best books I have ever read: "Gates of Fire" by Stephen Pressfield. It is about the battle of Thermopylae, when the Spartans held the pass against the Persians.
It is speculative, in the way that all views into the past are speculative, but it is powerful, and historically based.
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"The Frontiersman" by Allan W. Eckert is like "The Killer Angels" in being all real events about real people and blurring the line between fact and fiction.
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I've done a lot of research and reading into the Spartans. I think they are one of the most interesting oddities in the Greco-Roman world, and I'm curious as to how they are portrayed in this book.
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These are all great (I assume, anyway) suggestions from ancient history and American history. Does anyone have anything for the medieval age? Rennaissance? Dark ages?
Variety is the spice of life ^_^
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"A Concise History of the Crusades" by Thomas F. Madden is a great book if you want to study up on the Crusades but don't want to read a 1,000 page book to do it. It's a very easy read, in that it isn't dry or boring, it's fairly exciting at home points actually.
It covers all the major and minor crusades, tells you who the major players are involved and who the specific enemy of the day was. It's just a couple hundred pages long, but will give you a very good working knowledge of and feel for the Crusades.
Read it, and then watch "Kingdom of Heaven." It's always fun to spot all the radically messed up historical errors in movies like that.
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Historical fiction, medieval: Sharon Kay Penman. Just read it all. Start with The Sunne in Splendour, though.
Historical fiction, late Renaissance: Dorothy Dunnett. Only if you like complex and amazing. Read all of that, too, starting with A Game of Kings.
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Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century is quite good. I'm interested in reading more of her stuff, but so far I haven't had the chance.
Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey is an autobiographical work that provides a lot of historical detail about Burma from the 70s onward.
George Scott's massive 7 volume Gazetter of Upper Burma and the Shan States is fascinating. It's basically a manual and reference work for managing colonial Burma, and is a fascinating piece of 19th century anthropological work, although that isn't what it sets out to be. You have to apply a filter when reading it to account for the author's biases, but I loved reading this.
More tonight when I'm near my bookshelves and don't have to rely on memory for titles and authors' names.
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Read Colleen McCullough - Masters of Rome series. Start with First Man in Rome, then Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's women, Caesar and October Horse. Am reading Caesar now. Very interesting novels from Rome, lots of inside into Roman culture, life, politics....
If you get a chance read Maurice Druon (French author) and his series on the Rois Maudits (Acursed kings) - starting with last years of king Phillip IV and continues with his 3 sons - the last direct Capetiens kings of France leading into begining of hundred year's war. Excellent books!
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I'll second Gates of Fire, by Pressfield. Very illuminating and, in conjunction with other books I was reading at the time, really solidified my understanding of the military/male bonding mystique.
And I'll second Boorsteins' The Americans. I had a chance to read The Colonial Experience and, while his style can be dry, I found it quite fascinating to understand the mentality of each of the colonies and their founding- ideologies that, at least in my opinion, carry over into their later history and some of the problems they had dealing with each other, as well as their respective influence on things like the formation of the Constitution and the Civil War.
And I'll add (for the umpteenth time) Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series (beginning with "The First Man in Rome".) Her work in this field is so detailed and scholarly that she was awarded an honorary PHD in history from a university (can't remember which, but I can look it up if necessary.) So far, the series extends to the death of Caesar and the beginning of Octavius' consolidation. And she intended to stop there. But some lobbying by a number of fans, including some history professor, moved her to do at least one more that will cover the rest of Augustus' rise and the death of the Republic. The series is truly awesome and deep. This is no superficial coverage of the material, nor does she place fast and loose with the facts for dramatic affect (like making Caesar and Brutus the same age and nearly brothers to make the assasination more poigniant, as one writer once did). She also doesn't fall into the trap of expressing anachronistic (and even modern) sentiments through her characters. That is, she doesn't have the women express modern feminist opinions or the men debate the socialogical underpinnings of slavery and its place in a supposedly moral society. Finally, she doesn't write men as cliches or as stereotypes. She writes them as real people, neither romanticizing nor villianizing them. Well, she does have a crush on Caesar, I'd say, and that does show through a bit. But other than that, she's good. In the end, you walk away at least thinking that you comprehend and remember this long and detailed period of Roman history as if it happened yesterday. I can't recommend it enough.
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I would go with 1776 by David McCullough, Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose, and Joseph Smith : Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman as excellent reads.
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I'm taking notes furiously on everything that's been suggested.
This applies to some of the books already mentioned, but you should take a look at some biographies or memoirs if any particular figure or time period really grabs you. I like reading about a specific person - it makes the details of their historical setting really come to life.
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley by Alison Weir was a very interesting read, if a little on the long side. She's also written about a lot of other historical figures, mainly from medieval and early modern Britain. The Six Wives of King Henry VIII is supposed to be excellent, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Also, Antonia Fraser has also written a number of biographies on many of the same people, and also on French figures like Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV. I don't think I've read anything by her yet, but I'll have to take a look at her next time I go to the library.
I really enjoyed Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. Georgiana was one of the "It" girls of the English Regency era, so it was interesting to see just how similar today's obsession with celebrities was to that of two hundred years ago, plus Georgiana had a fascinating life. Foreman's writing is extremely readable - I read this book in about the same time that it takes me to read a novel.
And it's been a while since I've read it, but Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie is a great read. It focuses on the Romanov family before and during the Russian Revolution, and it was originally written while the Soviet government was still in power, but it was re-published a few years ago, so it should be easily available.
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Almost anything by Stephen Ambrose. His character development makes his history easy to read for persons transisitioning from fiction.
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Also, David McCullough's books are easy, very interesting reads. (Minor bragging point: his son was my American Literature teacher in highschool. Most charismatic bastard I've ever met.)
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I'm reading McCullough's "The Great Bridge" right now. It is amazing to read about how engineers worked back then. We've progressed to the point that things that I would think would be unthinkable without today's equipment were done. It's also scary to see that the loss of human life was sometimes considered part of the project.
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You could always start reading William Durant. That should take care of your reading needs for a while.
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