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Recommendations for General Histories

Polaris

Penultimate Amazing
Polaris
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Apr 8, 2006
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I've decided to go back to basics for a while with my reading, and I'd like to know if anybody has recommendations for some general histories of various events.

So that this isn't just a self-serving thread, if anybody else has some requests I or anyone else can help with, jump right in.

The topics:

History of the World
Antiquity
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Rome
Ancient Greece
Ancient Mesopotamia
The United States
Europe
World War Two
The Vietnam War
Russia
Japan
China (ancient and/or modern)
India (ancient and/or modern)
Islam
Christianity
American slavery
The Middle Ages
The Crusades
The Cold War

I'm sure there are others, but I think that's enough.
 
A recommendation...

Best single book on the United States from 1932 to 1972:

"The Glory and the Dream," by William Manchester.

It's a narrative history of the United States for those wild 40 years, focusing heavily on the character of the nation as well as the politics. There's a lot of good material in the book on life, popular culture, technology, across a wide range, from the beginning of Howard Johnson's in the 1930s to Bobby Fischer's tirades in 1972. Well-researched, well-written, great character studies of the important people.

The book was also a big influence on me on how Manchester tied things together...important people are followed from their early days to their big moments. You see John Glenn as a kid, Adlai Stevenson at the Newfoundland Conference in 1941, Frank Sinatra as a young singer, and even the death of John Birch. It's one of my "Universal Problem Solvers," and one of the books I would take to that mythical desert island.
 
For a general useful knowledge book, including all histories, I like "The New Dictionary Of Cultural Literacy". It's a reasonable, 660 page book that gives a nice overview of what one should have learned (and ideally retained) by the time one graduated college.
 
History of Civilization (all vol. 1-14 IIRC) W. and A. Durant
History of the English Speaking People W. Churchill
 
These might be, in my experience, the best single-volume histories (aimed at a general audience without being dumbed-down) available in English in the following areas:
  • On the Middle Ages: Norman Cantor's The Civilization of the Middle Ages
  • On the Crusades: Jonathan Riley-Smith's The Crusades: A History
  • On Christianity: Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity

Be sure to look for the most recent edition in each case.
 
ceo_esq said:
These might be, in my experience, the best single-volume histories (aimed at a general audience without being dumbed-down) available in English in the following areas:
  • On the Middle Ages: Norman Cantor's The Civilization of the Middle Ages
  • On the Crusades: Jonathan Riley-Smith's The Crusades: A History
  • On Christianity: Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity

Be sure to look for the most recent edition in each case.
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I'll check out Riley and Johnson, but I'm a little leery of Cantor after I read In the Wake of the Plague. He hypothesized that the Black Death came from outer space, and spent an uncomfortable amount of time on the sexual preferences of the rulers of the time.

Luciana Nery said:
I assume you know a lot about Latin American history? After all, we share the continent, there are all those immigrants, etc. But if you haven't, this Concise History is a nice introduction. Also, may I suggest Africa, so here is another good book (The African Experience) to start with.
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You assume too much. I have a basic knowledge - Pizarro/Atahualpa, Simon Bolivar, Cinco de Mayo, etc...but "a lot", uh uh. I have Everything You Need to Know About Latin American History, by Himilce Novas, but I'll look for you suggested titles too.
 
I know it doesn't sound like a history book, but this volume taught me more about the ebb and flow of human history than any other: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky.

What if everything you think you know about human motivation is wrong? What if there are simple themes underlying the most complex events? Salt lets you in on the idea that there is more to history than historians are able to tell.
 
Glad I could help...

Polaris said:
Until I feel it's a good time to go back to specific histories.



Thanks, I'll see if I can get it through the Arlington Library.
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The bibliography on my web page on World War II can help you with that war. Too many books on that to recommend any specific ones. I can tell you to avoid anything by David Irving. He has a penknife to grind (that Hitler was great and harmed no Jews), and is a very sloppy researcher, twsting facts to support his position.

You can find the Manchester book on E-bay and abebooks.com
 
Kiwiwriter said:
David Irving. He has a penknife to grind (that Hitler was great and harmed no Jews), and is a very sloppy researcher, twsting facts to support his position.
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I once read that Irving was not so much a great historian of the Nazis but a great Nazi historian.

Because of his sympathies, he was given access to the thoughts, memories and papers of some very important Nazi officials - better access than any other historian. However, because of his sympathies, almost nothing he has written can be believed as an honest interpretation of that information.
 
On the American Civil War, please get ahold of "1863: The Rebirth of a Nation" by Joseph E. Stevens.

It is the best book on that era that I have ever read. Many books on the civil war focus too much on the war - delving into complicated troop movements - and not enough on the social situation that accompanied the war. And many are encyclopedicly dense retellings of everything.

1863 is very easy and accessable to the lay reader. It talks about important troop movements and battles but also talks about life in New York, Kansas and the rest of the nation. You really get a sense of all of the forces that made the Civil War such a transformative experience for the nation.
 
Right first time!

Loss Leader said:
I once read that Irving was not so much a great historian of the Nazis but a great Nazi historian.

Because of his sympathies, he was given access to the thoughts, memories and papers of some very important Nazi officials - better access than any other historian. However, because of his sympathies, almost nothing he has written can be believed as an honest interpretation of that information.
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Actually, the "important" officials he got hold of were Hitler's inner circle: his secretaries, his butler, his valet, his security guards, and so on, and they told him a lot of what he wanted to hear. But as Richard Evans pointed out, these folks may know a lot about what Hitler ate and when, but they're not so good at analyzing his geopolitics.

These folks also wanted to whitewash their boss. They claimed Hitler never watched the gruesome film of the July 20th plotters being hanged with piano wire. However, Speer said it was one of Hitler's favorite films, and he watched it over and over again. On that, I'd go with Speer.

Irving was a Hitler worshipper from early in life, and he was eager to swallow what the "Magic Circle" told him. Fascinating pathology.
 
Ancient Rome -- Gibbons...imperfect, but a great book and all modern histories of Rome flow from Gibbions The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Also, if you're interested in Ancient Rome...should include John Norwich's three Volume History of the Byzantine Empire.

For the Crusades, Stephen Runciman's three volume history of the crusades is the best I've encountered ... a spectacular work of scholarship.

While not a history of ancient Greece, Peter Green's biography of Alexander is terrific.
 
For a general history of England (perhaps the only one you'll ever need), W. C. Sellar & R. J. Yeatman: 1066 And All That, Methuen, London, 1930
 
Consider "Asimov's Chronology of the World." While it lacks depth, it can be very helpful for putting things in chronological order, acquiring perspective and understanding interrelationships of events.
 
A few more suggestions: US History-- Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby is an exciting and well-paced history of over 200 years of agnostic and atheistic thought in America. It first offers an interesting discussion of what the "founding fathers" really meant concerning government and religion, followed by a series of compelling and often humorous (sometimes tragic) portraits of the many American characters who have kept secularism alive. Might also check out Samantha Power's, "A Problem from Hell" America in the Age of Genocide. Not a fun or easy read, but incredibly important. Are the words "never again" now hollow? Will we ever again be able to believe anyone who says 'never again' in the face of future holocausts? Do we have a moral responsibility to stop genocide? Why don't we? Great history. Finally, I always recommend, Bury My Heart at Wound Knee by Dee Brown. History that can't be ignored or forgotten.
 
I'll soon be reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. I hear it's fantastic. Anyone read it?
 
hgc said:
I'll soon be reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. I hear it's fantastic. Anyone read it?
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No, but I read a great book about the Plague called Black something or other. Anyway, you didn't want to be in Europe in 1347 or, if you did, you wanted to avoid being bitten by fleas.
 
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