Ask HN: What are your favorite history books? - LeicesterCity
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arca_vorago
The ones that cut through the stale version taught in schools.

Mostly Carroll Quigley's works like _Tragedy and Hope_ , _Anglo-American
Establishment_ , or _The Evolution of Civilizations_.

Another I consider at the level of Quigley is Anthony Sutton.

There are quite a few less academically accurate books that are good eye
openers anyway like Howard Zinn's _A Peoples History of the United States_. As
a combat vet a couple that speak to the issue of war are _God 's War: A New
History of the Crusades_ by Christopher Tyerman and _The Shield of Achilles:
War, Peace, and the Course of History_ by Philip Bobbitt (some really good
stuff about the future of nation-states in a post nuclear world.)

Those are just a few key ones off the top of my head. Personally, what I find
one of the best ways is to find a more narrow interest and find books written
by or about the key players at the top. I often find that tidbits across
various sources add up to very interesting insights.

Also, a must in my opinion for an American is the Norman Dodd interview about
his investigations on the Reece Committee and how history was targeted as
being needed to be _controlled_.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Carroll Quigley, Seconded!

[https://archive.org/details/TragedyAndHope_501](https://archive.org/details/TragedyAndHope_501)

Oh, and BTW, don't get spooked by the length or the Bill Clinton endorsement.
Quigley transcends mainstream ideology, and this book is a real page-turner!

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Jemaclus
This might be a bit more on the national zeitgeist than the others mentioned
so far, but I recently finished _Alexander Hamilton_ by Ron Chernow and am now
halfway through Chernow's _George Washington_. They're very dense, but very
readable. I'm enjoying them thoroughly.

I also recently finished _Beneath The Scarlet Sky_ by Mark Sullivan. He's
normally an epic fantasy author, but he wrote a narrative account of a true
story about a young boy in Milan who spied on the Nazis. I highly enjoyed it.

To hijack this thread a bit, though, I'm interested in reading more about the
Cuban Missile Crisis. Can anyone recommend a good book on it? (Something
digestible yet info-rich, like Chernow's books, preferably.)

------
Doe22
Here are a few that come to mind right now:

 _Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near
East_ by Amanda H Podany - Covers how international relations worked between
the different rulers of the Ancient Near East. Covers different things and in
a different way than I had heard in a lot of other ANE history.

 _Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange,
Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable
Montreal Expos_ by Jonah Keri - Lots of fun, interesting stuff about a sport I
like and a team I didn't know too much about.

 _Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-
Century Mediterranean World_ by Noel Malcolm - This one is really good,
covering the history of a single family amidst the relationships between the
Ottoman Empire and the Christian world.

 _The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code_ by Margalit
Fox - Another excellent book, this discussing how Linear B was deciphered,
with particular emphasis placed on Alice Kober, whose work was largely
overlooked since she died before Michael Ventris ultimately deciphered it.

 _The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832_ by Alan Taylor -
This one won the Pulitzer for history in 2014, so that should tell you
something. This book covers an aspect of history I had never heard before,
with a lot of focus on slaves themselves, rather than their owners or the
people around them. The roles of the British as liberators and slaves as their
aids in the War of 1812 is very interesting.

And one last one that I'm currently reading is _Heart of Europe: A History of
the Holy Roman Empire_ by Peter H. Wilson. I haven't finished it yet, so take
this with a grain of salt, but it's very interesting to hear about a large
aspect of European history I wasn't too familiar with and that doesn't fit
into the neat, centralized nation-state based history of the world that is
predominantly taught.

------
twunde
_Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi
Scientists to America_ \- Really interesting to hear about the atrocities of
the Nazis and the need of the Americans that they would actively recruit war
criminals to keep up with the Russians.

 _Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America_
\- I read this a few years after Hurricane Katrina. It provides some
historical context to the problems of Katrina, especially the levee system

 _Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln_ \- This is the
current book to read on Lincoln

 _The Island at the Center of the World_ \- If you're interested in NYC
history this is one of the books to read.

 _American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation_ This
is a must-read if you're interested in religion in the US

EDIT: formatting and switched out the Triumph of William McKinley with
American Gospel

------
guohuang
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

[http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/aRnlEw/Lies-My-Teacher-
Told-...](http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/aRnlEw/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Me-
Everything-Your-American-History-Textbook-Got-Wrong)

[http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/_5tcQA/Lies-My-Teacher-
Told-...](http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/_5tcQA/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Me--
Everything-Your-American-History-Textbook-Got-Wrong)

------
bjourne
BH Liddell Hart's tomes on WWII. Brilliant books. Although he clearly was a
little "too sympathetic" to the German cause.

~~~
lvoudour
Upvoted, I'll include _The Other Side of the Hill_ as well.

It's true, he sounds too enthusiastic with the German operations and very
sympathetic to some Nazi officers (Rommel and Manstein for example), but I
think it stems from his overall enthusiasm with strategy and military
operations in general.

While for most people a dead soldier is still a horribly murdered human, I
think his view is that battles between armies do not count as atrocities (not
an uncommon view) and officers who didn't murder civilians (or allege they
_didn 't know_ civilians were murdered under their command) should not be
tried for war crimes. Of course that's a bit too much to swallow, especially
on the soviet side.

By the way, the same argument was applied for scientists as well (see Wernher
von Braun and the operation paperclip bunch, who also "didn't know")

------
chewz
Rubicon by Tom Holland - [https://www.amazon.com/Rubicon-Tom-
Holland/dp/1400078970](https://www.amazon.com/Rubicon-Tom-
Holland/dp/1400078970)

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Germans Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution - [https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-
Soluti...](https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-
Solution/dp/0060995068)

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
[https://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-
Nazareth/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-
Nazareth/dp/0812981480/)

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates -
[https://www.amazon.com/Poison-King-Legend-Mithradates-
Deadli...](https://www.amazon.com/Poison-King-Legend-Mithradates-
Deadliest/dp/0691150265/)

To End All Wars - [https://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-
Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-
Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/0547750315)

The Northern Crusades - [https://www.amazon.com/Northern-Crusades-Second-Eric-
Christi...](https://www.amazon.com/Northern-Crusades-Second-Eric-
Christiansen/dp/0140266534)

The Fall of Constantinople 1453 - [https://www.amazon.com/Fall-
Constantinople-1453-Canto-Classi...](https://www.amazon.com/Fall-
Constantinople-1453-Canto-Classics/dp/1107604699)

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to
Tamerlane - [https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-
Conquest-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-Conquest-
Tamerlane/dp/0691165858)

The Indian Ocean - [https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Ocean-Seas-
History/dp/04154453...](https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Ocean-Seas-
History/dp/0415445388/)

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire -
[https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Summer-Secret-History-
Empire/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Summer-Secret-History-
Empire/dp/0312428111/)

------
PaulHoule
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%27s_Imperial_Conspiracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%27s_Imperial_Conspiracy)

------
mapster
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer

------
brudgers
_The Korean War: A History_ , Bruce Cumings (2011)

