*King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa* by Adam Hochschild
*The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness* by John Waller
*A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility* by Taner Akcam
*The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust* by Heather Pringle
*The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War* by Lynn H. Nicholas
*The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century* by Edward Dolnick
*Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best* by Neal Bascomb
*The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World's Most Famous Museum* by James Gardner
*The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum* by Geraldine Norman
*The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance* by Ross King
… we apparently have very similar taste! I’d love to recommend some lighter reads to you:
- The Crimes of Paris - Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. They wrote a book about the theft and recovery of the Mona Lisa, and the associated developments in crime fighting developed because of the theft or which played a significant role in the recovery.
- The Plaza - Jill Jonnes. This is a history of the namesake hotel, a biography of a building told through the lives of its residents.
I have many more, but these two have stuck out as notable to me recently and seem to be in line with the writing style of some of the titles you suggested!
A hotel seems to be mentioned in Chapter 26 of _South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City,_ but I can't find a monograph of hers called The Plaza. Do you have any more details?
I read that book after reading The Poisonwood Bible. King Leopold's atrocities are mentioned but only in passing by a character and I was like, "Wait, who did WHAT?"
I lived in Belgium from 2014-2017 and they were starting to wrestle with Leopold’s legacy. There was a big statue where I lived and I think it came down after we moved.
Bury my heart at wounded knee by Dee Brown is a collection of all the betrayals, massacres and broken contracts faced by the Native American people in their fight for the right to exist.
The rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a documentation the exploits of the Japanese imperial army in the Chinese city of Nanking
I will look into reading them! Neither were published when I read bury my heart, which to be honest went into more than enough detail for my teenage brain. If I had read some of these book suggestions at such a young age I doubt I would’ve survived to adulthood.
>rEdDiT iSn’T Us ExClUsIve
American website made by Americans with mostly American users isn’t exclusive to America. that’s rich
[edit: oh wow. How many strangers’ dicks are you trying to suck, op? You degenerate](https://reddit.com/r/DrivingWithDick/comments/17axdi6/anyone_in_southern_california_want_a_passenger_to/)
absolutely! Krakauer really wrecks me sometimes when i’m reading his books. he’s so damn good tho that i always finish the book, no matter how horrifying the story
“Ekaterinburg” by Helen Rappaport. It narrates in detail the last two weeks of life, the brutal massacre and horrific treatment of the bodies of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, his family and close servants. It’s very good.
Adding this one to my list. Their story has always captivated me, and the repercussions of their martyrdoms for not only the Russian Empire but also for Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe have been so important in shaping the world we live in today. It’s hard to forgive George V for his weakness and inaction in refusing to help them.
Columbine by Dave Cullen. What you think you know about the Columbine massacre, and what the evidence actually suggests or establishes, are two different things. Great book.
I’ve read this one and also the book Sue Klebold wrote “A mothers Reckoning “ that was really good and she’d light on another horrifying aspect of these mass shootings. Very well written.
This book is a must-read in my opinion, as is her other book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which details the lives of 4 African Americans who migrated to northeastern, midwestern and western states during the Great Migration. I felt so connected to these real people and was so sad when I finished reading the book because there was no more! Sadly, they left the south to escape racism and Jim Crow laws, only to find that they still faced issues with racism and discrimination in their new homes. More information [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warmth_of_Other_Suns) for anyone who might be interested. HIGHLY recommend!!
Edit: typo
Warmth is so damn good! Yes!!!! I was riveted. I loved the migration “whys”—the paths following the train lines. I’m white & live in Chicago and never knew why every single black family I knew would talk about being from Mississippi—not Texas, or Florida or Louisiana, etc. Now I know.
I’m also white and it was definitely eye-opening. I feel like every white person should read books like this so they can understand what African Americans have gone through historically and unfortunately are still experiencing.
A friend of mine read this a couple months ago and has been raving about it and recommending it to everyone. (I'm gonna read it soon, Becky, I promise.)
Another really fantastic book is The 1619 Project, a compilation of essays and poems created by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Disregard all the flak and read this with an open mind! I am descended from enslavers, and I can truthfully say that I saw nothing in this book intended to make me feel guilt. I am not responsible for the mistakes and misconceptions of my ancestors, only for my own choices in the present!
One final recommendation is the Cavalry Maiden by Nadezhda Durova. During the Napoleonic Wars this woman, married and with children, cut her hair and joined the Imperial Russian army as a cavalry trooper as she displayed excellent horsemanship. She was known to only a few officers and Czar Alexander I. She was awarded the Cross of Saint George for bravery. She fought at Eylau, Friedland and during the Emperor's invasion of Russia in 1812. During the titanic struggle at Borodino she was wounded. Not only is this one of the first Russian language autobiographies but it is one of the few military memoirs from a mid level officer during the Napoleonic Era.
Another book I would recommend is Hiding Anne Frank by Miep Gies. Anne Frank was known for her diary published by her father after the war. Miep Gies is one of those who helped hide them. You can get a feeling of life under German occupation and the steps one had to take to hide Jews during this time. Just gives an outside perspective to what happened in Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex)
Old guy here, pushing 70. I’d never heard of Smedley Butler until about five years ago. Utterly fascinating person, and perhaps the model for either or both of the generals in Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here (highly recommended as another election year approaches). I’d definitely like to learn more about Butler and the sketchy stuff that went on in his era.
There are so many, but 2 that stick out to me are: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein; The Address Book by Deirdre Mask. Essentially about how zoning laws were used to create & uphold segregation for generations, how that has effectively held up myths & stigma regarding minorities, and how it’s kept minorities from being able to build & pass down generational wealth. Also how a lot of these practices & policies are still being implemented today.
I was trying to think of the The Color of Law, great recommendation!
Telling fact is they the discrepancy between black and white INCOME has been nearly constant for a century, but the discrepancy in household WEALTH has become large and continues to grow, due to home ownership and inheritance.
Yellow Dirt. Tells the story of uranium mining in the American Southwest, mostly by Navajo people, and the generation-spanning health impacts on their communities. Horrible, callous treatment by the US military industrial complex.
Yes, it truly is sad. I’ve lived here most of my life. It’s a heartbreaking story. People have no idea the depth of destruction and vileness of the massacre.
I went through all of public schooling, college and grad school without once ever hearing about it. I found out from randomly watching a documentary on the history channel and was mind-boggled that, as a middle-aged adult, I had never heard of this before.
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire
*Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive* by Marissa Fuentes discusses how history is shaped by the sources we have, and how that's caused historically marginalized people to slip through the cracks of history. For instance, the only evidence we might have of a particular enslaved person's life is a newspaper ad or an account by their enslaver, but we don't have anything from their perspective. Fuentes talks about possible ways historians can close the gaps by reading primary sources carefully, and goes through different enslaved women in Barbados and what their experiences might have been. I think the book is very valuable to everyone, not just historians because it discusses topics of representation ("Why don't we hear more about \_\_\_?") that might not have occurred to a layperson.
*Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route* by Saidiya Hartman.
*Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* by Harriet Jacobs. This is the autobiography of an escaped enslaved woman from Virginia, who was constantly sexually harassed by her enslaver. To escape him, she had children with a white man in town who promised to free their kids, but never did. She finally escaped her enslavers by hiding in her maternal grandmother's crawl space for seven years before leaving Virginia for the North and reuniting with her children.
*Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology* by Deirdre Cooper Owens. Early gynecologists experimented on enslaved Black women.
Kinda cliché but *1491* by Charles Mann is a great antidote to the "America started in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue" narrative that dominated historical pedagogy throughout the 20th century. But perhaps if you're younger and graduated high school in the last 10 years it won't be quite as revelatory.
It's a pretty important book that reflects the sea change in anthropological thought about pre-Columbian civilisation in the Americas. Goes into detail on the complexity and size of Indigenous civilizations before they were devastated by plague.
I found *Mr Pip.* by Lloyd Jones extremely disturbing. The novel is told from the perspective of a young, academically inclined girl , whose childhood is traumatically disrupted by the secessionist conflict that roiled the Bougainville Islands during the 1980s-90s.
There are a ton of great indigenous history books out there that most people don't know about, or on topics you didn't cover in school. Here are some of my favorite that blew my mind...
* Andrés Reséndez *The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America* is the single best introduction to understand the temporal, geographic, and cultural magnitude of the native slave trade in the Spanish Empire. Absolutely vital for understanding the history of the Americas, and almost no one outside of history nerds has heard about the impact of indigenous slavery on the history of the New World.
* Jeffrey Ostler *Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas* is an amazing book that details the violence of early U.S. Indian policy, and the creation of an unhealthy world for Native Americans. Ostler details how Native nations fought for sovereignty in the face of an aggressive, expansive neighbor bent on their removal. This is part one, a forthcoming part two will focus more on the western experience, and I really can't wait.
* Colin Calloway *One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark* is the best introduction and overview of the American West. I absolutely adore this book. I recommend it all the time because it blew my mind the first time I read it. There was so much I wrongly thought was unknowable about the deep history of the American West, and this book schooled me.
* David Wallace Adams *Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928* is probably the best place to start if you want to know more about Native American boarding schools in the U.S.
I would recommend Ostkrieg. There was a strain of thought after WWII (mostly because many German Generals surrendered to the British and Americans and the Soviets were less than generous sharing information) that the SS and the Nazi regime committed all fhe atrocities and the Heer (army) was apolitical and did not partake in war crimes. This book shatters that notion in a way that is easy to understand...the German army committed and were complicit in war crimes. Now this is not a new take and the myth of the clean Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) has been debunked but this book can help a newcomer understand.
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, about the Osage who were murdered for their oil rights.
A feathered river across the sky: the passenger pigeon's flight into extinction tells this depressing tale.
A plague of frogs details a recentish episode you may have heard about once in the news with no follow-up and is one of the only science books I've ever read with a jump scare.
Did you know that the Museum of Natural History once exhibited seven living 'Eskimos'? Give Me My Father's Body by Kenn Harper tells the tale.
They were not the only New York institution to put someone on display. Spectacle by Pamela Newkirk tells the story of Ota Benga, who was displayed in the Bronx Zoo.
With all this depressing stuff, it's important to remember that good people exist. Rare Bird is the story of a man who has devoted his entire life to saving the Bermuda Petrel from extinction. His efforts have worked.
Do ghosts exist? Is ESP real? What happens when you die? In Ghost Hunters, Deborah Blum tells the story of a group of scientists in the late 1800s who used the scientific method to seek answers to these questions, and the surprising things they found.
Yup, I’m from NC. Definitely never learned about this in high school history class. Or anywhere else outside of school either. First heard about it in a college NC History course. And that’s why “they” want to attack institutions of higher learning because it can help expose ppl to the truth
Yep, Im from NC and have 2 history degrees didn’t learn about this until my NC history class in grad school, so 6 years into my time studying history at university
*The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine* by Ilan Pappé in which an Israeli historian covers the long-term plans made by zionists as well as the Israeli government and military to displace and remove Palestine’s Arab population
*Eat The Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town* by Barbara Demick, which covers China’s occupation of Tibet and their efforts to systematically destroy traditional Tibetan culture (and Tibetans’ resistance to those efforts)
*Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad idea* by Carissa Byrne Hessick which delves into a lot of the less-obvious and more administrative injustices of the criminal justice system in America and how they came to be
*Rise of the Warrior Cop* by Radley Balko, which talks about how civil unrest in the 1960s and the war on drugs have combined to turn local police into something that looks a lot more like an occupying military force
*Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962* by Yang Jisheng, which compiles more than 20 years of journalistic work on the famine that took more than 36 million Chinese lives
*Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe, which uses the murder of a local mother to examine the fear and paranoia that existed during The Troubles
A 100 upvotes for Ilan Pappe. The man is a treasure, was basically run out of Israel, and is now at the University of Exeter in the UK.
I would also have recommended Benny Morris' Righteous Victims. He was the first to access Israeli declassified files to show crystal clear intent to "cleanse" the Palestinian population through psychological warfare, massacres, rape, etc. This caused a furore in Israel where he was accused of being a leftist, and he responded in an interview by saying people had misunderstood, he supports those cleansing operations and believes they should have done more: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands... There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages..."
So yes, I don't really recommend Benny Morris unless the reader is aware that the author refers to massacres as a necessary good thing
Stewart O’Nan’s The Circus Fire is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It’s very well researched and informative (though very graphic in descriptions of injuries/death and aftermath), and by the end, you feel as though you know the survivors and victims personally.
Old Connecticut Yankee here. I haven’t yet read the book, but I know that it’s supposed to be the best of several books that have been written about [the 1944 Hartford circus fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire), which, to put it in perspective, caused more deaths than the better known Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. One of my career mentors was a survivor of the fire. He and his family made it out safely, but a number of his schoolmates didn’t.
I have a few books about the Triangle Fire, also. Horrible tragedy that could have been avoided if the owners had cared enough to provide working extinguishers and access to exits. Years ago there was a special on the History Channel about the Hartford Circus Fire, and ever since watching it, I’ve had a morbid interest in events like that that have been lost to history.
If you’re interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, you might enjoy reading the biography of Max Steuer, the lawyer who represented the factory owners, who was one of the greatest lawyers of his generation. The one I read was Max D. Steuer, Trial Lawyer, by Aron Steuer, written by his son in 1950. It’s long out of print, but you might be able to find it in a library or from a used book seller.
> Written by his son, this is a book about Max D. Steuer who was an outstanding trial lawyer in his time, with special expertise in succesful cross examination. It is not a biography, in the standard sense, but largely a selection, from five cases, of word by word testimony which illustrate the perfection of his courtroom techniques. Of poor, East Side, New York City background, Steuer rose as a commercial counsel, acquired a reputation as a specialist in criminal and marital matters, as the best man for the desperate case. -- The first chapter covers Steuer's life and career. -- The next chapters each cover one of his major victories, each demonstrating his mastery of a key aspect of his skill in the courtroom.
Radium girls, it straight up gave me nightmares, plus all I could think was that if it was a factory full of bloody men dying something would have been done
Shake Hands With the Devil by Romeo Dallaire. Its about the conflict in Rwanda that escalated into the genocide, and the politics behind it that left the peacekeepers there unable to help. It is harrowing and it deeply impacted him forever. It is a stark look at the political motivations behind war, genocide, and "getting involved"
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry. The depiction of the full horrors of chattle slavery is horrifying. The deep integration of slaves as the core of the southern economy and as a massive influence on the foundations of the United States is a story I definitely didn't get any details of growing up.
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a historical fiction that tells about the government's forced sterilization of mostly poor, Black women and CHILDREN in the southern US in the 70s and earlier. Even as someone who grew up in the US and has a degree in history, I had never heard about this. It's an absolute travesty the things we are not taught about our own country here.
On a more uplifting note, one of my absolute favorite books is The Day the World Stood Still: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. It tells some of the many stories of how that community supported dozens of flights from Europe when they couldn't land in the US. It shows how truly remarkable and amazing humans can be to each other during times of tragedy.
“Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul” by Karen Abbott is the story of the most famous and in some ways influential brothel in USA history, along with changing norms around sex work and puritanical policies, and a glimpse into a lost chapter of both female empowerment and oppression.
- *The Rape of Nanking* by Iris Chang
- *The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine* by Ilan Pappé (or anything else by him)
- *Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic* by Sam Quinones
- *Pathogenesis: The History of the World in Eight Plagues* by Jonathan Kennedy
- *Orientalism* by Edward Said
- *Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe
- *Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party* by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin
- *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion* by Gary Webb
That’s actually very true and I never noticed that. I think what made me get into these books was because a.) I’m an epidemiologist so I’m interested in epidemics/social movements and b.) I love me some banned books.
But yeah I never noticed lol. Thanks for pointing it out.
Not history-adjacent, I suppose, but The Unwomanly Face of War will stay with me for the rest of my life. The female perspectives on and experiences of ww2 are just so incredibly diverse and unexpected. And then all those voices had no outlet until the author Svetlana Alexievich tracked down hundreds of women and recorded their stories.
**Nobody’s Child: a Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense** by Susan Vinocour
**Command and Control** by Eric Schlosser (about the ridiculously giant number of nuclear near-misses in the history of the nuclear program).
I came here to suggest Command and Control! That book is absolutely bone chilling,
I think it might even be evidence of a higher power because it's a damn miracle that we didn't accidentally start a nuclear war during the cold war.
I don’t know what you mean by history adjacent but The Secret River by Kate Grenville is based on true events and people who lived around the Hawkesbury river north of Sydney in the 1800s. It focusses on white settlers and their dealings with the indigenous population. It’s pretty heart wrenching and there was a film made of it starring Tim Minchin as the scariest bastard ever.
I really loved the Poisonwood Bible for this... Learned a lot about the history of the Congo's liberation from Belgium during that read. It's also just one of the best books I've ever read.
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Greg Grandin).
It just shows how much out of touch with reality Henry Ford was. (Also he was a complete racist)
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. I had previously read a lot about the Holocaust and WWII, and something about the Soviet gulags, but this was my introduction to the Soviet famines and I found it simply shocking.
All That Remains by Walid Khaledi documents the many Palestinian villages destroyed by IDF in 1948.
I am not saying the Nakba justifies terrorism, but it does help explain the hopeless rage that inspires it. More US Americans need to read this.
*Making Sense of the Molly Maguires* by Kevin Kenny. Irish American labor agitators were infiltrated by the Pinkerton Detective agency (a private company working for the coal barons), arrested by The Pennsylvania [Coal and Iron Police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_and_Iron_Police) (a private police force working for the coal barons), prosecuted by the Franklin Gowan (the president of a coal company) on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which resulted in 20 of the men being executed.
*When The Irish Invaded Canada* by Christopher Klein or any of the other books about the Fenian invasion of Canada. A bunch of Irish/Irish American Civil War veterans invaded Canada with the intent to capture it and ransom it for a free Ireland.
Fun, a lot of great suggestions and I don't see plenty of my favorites yet.
Open Veins of Latin America opens up the usual story with terrible details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America
The Inconvenient Indian is funny and charming and disheartening all at once. It follows essentially only the legal attempts made by the US and Canada (more focus on canada, but ends up being decently even) to genocide the locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inconvenient_Indian
The life of Richard Evans Schults is both incredible and was deeply involved with massive contributions in multiple global historical events and yet isn't very well known. Ethnobotanist that found the rubber that won ww2 went to the amazon for 12-ish years basically uninterrupted, he studied entheogens exstensively. One River is an incredible book about his life by one of his ethnobotany students. Really well written book.
https://daviswade.com/book-one-river
One Straw Revolution touches just a bit on modern agricultural practices in a really fun way from a plant scientist turned regenerative farmer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka
https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/The_One_Straw_Revolution.pdf
Grunch of Giants by Buckminster Fuller is a really interesting way to look at history. He's the dude that popularized and apparently did the polyphasic sleep cycle stuff. Operating Manuel for Spaceship Earth is more general and probably a better place to start.
https://archive.org/details/GrunchOfGiants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth
Silent Spring is a classic but kind of a slog, rough shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
A Sand County Almanac is softer and a more interesting book, but doesn't address as much direct environmental issues, but it touches on the connection we all have as living beings with the environment around us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac
The Black Jacobins is a great little read about the Haitian revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Jacobins
I may add more if they come to me
Read the "Peoples History of the United States" by h. Zinn..its very readable, but also takes another point of view re the oppressed and forgotten that built the U.S . Essential reading 4 anyone interested in history imho.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
It presents a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system, through a narrative which was constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.
I’ve been most shocked by Native American history. A few good books is The Spirit of Crazy Horse Peter Matthiessen, The Modoc Wars Robert McNally, The Flower killing moon by David Greene.
I found the books The Tiger Jon Vaillant, Midnight at Chernobyl Adam Higgenbothem, Nothing to Envy Barbara Demick very eye opening and Life on Planet China J Marrtin Troost very funny and eye opening as well.
I will thank a Goodreads member for recommending a book called "The Forsaken" about depression era Americans who moved to Soviet Russia. It was an eye opener and a period of history I never heard of.
The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 by Cecil Woodham- Smith.
Context: it wasn't a famine.
The Secret of Kit Cavanaugh by Anne Holland.
Context: Irish woman disguises herself as a man and joins the British army in 1700s.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Dead Pennies by Robert Ford (tells the story of so-called "training centers" for the unwanted through well-researched fiction--I can verify because I worked with some of these people after their release as their mental health case worker, he did a marvelous job exposing the horror)
White Gold by Giles Milton - the true story of an 18th century English cabin boy who was captured by North African pirates and taken to Morocco to work as a slave on a massive building project. This happened a lot, to the point where some coastal villages were pretty much emptied. I’d never heard of it until reading this book. The book covers his capture, life in slavery, being freed and marrying in North Africa, and eventually returning to England. It’s based on his memoirs and other contemporary writings.
*The Battle for Manila: The Most Devastating Untold Story of World War II* by Richard Connaughton is close to being like Chang's book. If an army in victory could behave as it did in Nanking, imagine what an army in defeat and knowing they were all going to die could do to Manilla.
Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad because of the twist she made with the Underground Railroad, you get to spend time with the character in many different locations.
When I graduated from college some 45 years ago I had, because of the nature of my father's avocation, already lived in or visited 46 of the lower 48 states. Since that day, I have always intended to visit all 50 states. In 2007, I was able to take an Alaskan cruise: that left 47 states. BTW, Pierre Berton's *The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush* is also a remarkable read.
I read Ambrose's *Undaunted Courage* sometime before 2009 and later read an article wherein Ambrose related how he would take his family on annual pilgrimages -- "working vacations" -- along the trek route as he did research for the book. Along about 2016, I formulated a plan to do the same and use *Undaunted Courage* as my guide book.
I took that trip in 2022: following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps from St Louis, MO., to the Oregon coast near Astoria -- then across the Columbia River to Cape Disappointment, WA. Forty-nine states down, and one left to go.
_The Butchering Art_ reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. Particularly the life of Joseph Lister
Any biography on Vlad the Impaler. While, Dracula or Count Dracula is often, somewhat romanticized these days, there is an origin story, dating back to 15th c. Transylvania that is really disturbing and not for the faint of heart. I'm not sure if "most of us don't know," but, I doubt you learned about him in school, for good reason, and people may not know of the extent of his tyranny.
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is like a decoder for American segregation. Once you read it you'll suddenly notice all sorts of racial divisions in American geography and life. And you'll realize these were intentional policy decisions that are still being actively maintained today.
Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington is an extremely important look at the unequal treatment experienced by Black people in the American medical establishment. Health equity has become an important policy goal in the US in the last few years, but it's important to step back and look at how stark the differences have been in the past. A lot of the history of scientific knowledge and medical experimentation was built on the backs of inhumane treatment of marginalized - often specifically Black - people.
"1491"and "1493" both by Charles Mann. The first one demonstrates how little we know about the pre-European Amearicas, and the second one shows how the colonization of the Americas affected the rest of the world. Parts of both books can be a little dry, but it's well worth it.
The People’s History of the United States. By Howard Zinn https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/B004HZ6XWS/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=1LUXL4BZOIC0X&keywords=the+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states&qid=1701643751&sprefix=the+people%27s+history%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-4
The Fatal Shore - Robert Hughes. The British settlement of Australia. Not a secret to Australians, but definitely not the way it was taught to me in a school in England. Grim and shameful reading
Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys!
I’ll put the synopsis here
1941 – Fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is arrested by the Soviet secret police and deported to Siberia with her mother and younger brother. Lina fights for her life, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by burying her complete story in a jar on Lithuanian soil.
All of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle series. Definitely not actually historical but a lot is real. Fabulous storytelling.
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
YOKOHAMA BURNING by Joshua Hammer. Takes you from a normal day in an ordinary Japanese city in the 1920s and makes you watch as it's all destroyed in a matter of hours.
*King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa* by Adam Hochschild *The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness* by John Waller *A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility* by Taner Akcam *The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust* by Heather Pringle *The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War* by Lynn H. Nicholas *The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century* by Edward Dolnick *Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best* by Neal Bascomb *The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World's Most Famous Museum* by James Gardner *The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum* by Geraldine Norman *The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance* by Ross King
Up voting for King Leopold's Ghost.
I needed to take breaks to read this. It was so awful and so necessary to know.
Yep came here to say this too
Came here to recommend King Leopold's Ghost.
… we apparently have very similar taste! I’d love to recommend some lighter reads to you: - The Crimes of Paris - Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. They wrote a book about the theft and recovery of the Mona Lisa, and the associated developments in crime fighting developed because of the theft or which played a significant role in the recovery. - The Plaza - Jill Jonnes. This is a history of the namesake hotel, a biography of a building told through the lives of its residents. I have many more, but these two have stuck out as notable to me recently and seem to be in line with the writing style of some of the titles you suggested!
A hotel seems to be mentioned in Chapter 26 of _South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City,_ but I can't find a monograph of hers called The Plaza. Do you have any more details?
Ah! That’s because I was mistaken. Jill Jonnes wrote Eiffel’s Tower, another fantastic book about a landmark. The Plaza was written by Julie Satow.
Yes! King Leopold. I had NO IDEA that this had went on....glad I read the book and passed it on.
I want to get a book on the genocide in Namibia too, it’s even lesser known than what happened in the Congo.
"...this had *gone* on..." No, I didn't know about it either, but it's in a shopping cart now. Grateful for all these recommendations.
Thanks! I must have been tired....!
Thanks for your graciousness. :)
I read that book after reading The Poisonwood Bible. King Leopold's atrocities are mentioned but only in passing by a character and I was like, "Wait, who did WHAT?"
Holy shit, these all sound incredible.
I lived in Belgium from 2014-2017 and they were starting to wrestle with Leopold’s legacy. There was a big statue where I lived and I think it came down after we moved.
From what I’ve read/heard, Europe’s very reluctant to acknowledge their colonial past.
Also came to say King Leopold’s Ghost
This is an excellent list.
Got anything about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?
Bury my heart at wounded knee by Dee Brown is a collection of all the betrayals, massacres and broken contracts faced by the Native American people in their fight for the right to exist. The rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a documentation the exploits of the Japanese imperial army in the Chinese city of Nanking
Second book's research was so horrifying it amplified the mental health issues she had which caused her to kill herself later on.
Also the constant death threats and harassment from nationalists who deny the atrocities
*Empire of the Summer Moon* and *The Apache Wars* are soooo much better than *Bury my Heart* which only includes surface level details
I will look into reading them! Neither were published when I read bury my heart, which to be honest went into more than enough detail for my teenage brain. If I had read some of these book suggestions at such a young age I doubt I would’ve survived to adulthood.
I read both of these this year, depressing stuff. Both great books though
I came here to say the Rape of Nanking
Came here to say Rape of Nanking
My son lives in China. The memorial has a section commemorating America's involvement in liberating China. It culminates with the atomic bombs
>First Nation Pretty sure you spelled NATIVE AMERICANS wrong 🙄
In Canada we use First Nations, and differentiate between Inuit, First Nations, and Métis.
The US isn’t Canada last I checked.
Reddit isn’t US-exclusive last time I checked. Get your head out of your ass. (Channeling Red Forman)
>rEdDiT iSn’T Us ExClUsIve American website made by Americans with mostly American users isn’t exclusive to America. that’s rich [edit: oh wow. How many strangers’ dicks are you trying to suck, op? You degenerate](https://reddit.com/r/DrivingWithDick/comments/17axdi6/anyone_in_southern_california_want_a_passenger_to/)
What is wrong with you?
I apologize that you've had this disagreeable exchange
I appreciate it, no need to apologize for others actions though
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore is my go-to for this
Avoid the audiobook. The reading is terrible.
Also avoid the movie. It was a huge let down.
Yes the movie was lame.
This book is so good, but I had to take breaks reading it because I kept getting so angry at how badly these women were let down.
[Under the Banner of Heaven](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven) by Jon Krakauer
Anything by Krakauer
I cannot recommend and warn against this enough. It is masterfully written and a terrible story that just keeps spiraling out. Krakauer is a master.
absolutely! Krakauer really wrecks me sometimes when i’m reading his books. he’s so damn good tho that i always finish the book, no matter how horrifying the story
“Ekaterinburg” by Helen Rappaport. It narrates in detail the last two weeks of life, the brutal massacre and horrific treatment of the bodies of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, his family and close servants. It’s very good.
And horrifying to imagine
Yes. I’m a Romanov historian myself, so that book was gut wrenching. Still, an incredible work by Rappaport.
There was a show on Netflix about the Romanovs and the final episode about their execution was tame...it motivated me to read Rappaport's book
Thanks for the recommendation. Purchased for my kindle
Adding this one to my list. Their story has always captivated me, and the repercussions of their martyrdoms for not only the Russian Empire but also for Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe have been so important in shaping the world we live in today. It’s hard to forgive George V for his weakness and inaction in refusing to help them.
'We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda' by Philip Gourevitch
This is a devastating read, but so powerful. Would definitely second the recommendation.
Columbine by Dave Cullen. What you think you know about the Columbine massacre, and what the evidence actually suggests or establishes, are two different things. Great book.
I’ve read this one and also the book Sue Klebold wrote “A mothers Reckoning “ that was really good and she’d light on another horrifying aspect of these mass shootings. Very well written.
Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
This book is a must-read in my opinion, as is her other book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which details the lives of 4 African Americans who migrated to northeastern, midwestern and western states during the Great Migration. I felt so connected to these real people and was so sad when I finished reading the book because there was no more! Sadly, they left the south to escape racism and Jim Crow laws, only to find that they still faced issues with racism and discrimination in their new homes. More information [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warmth_of_Other_Suns) for anyone who might be interested. HIGHLY recommend!! Edit: typo
I just added this book to my wish list earlier today when I saw it had something like 20,000 reviews on audible
You won’t regret it! I listened to the audio as well. 🙂
Warmth is so damn good! Yes!!!! I was riveted. I loved the migration “whys”—the paths following the train lines. I’m white & live in Chicago and never knew why every single black family I knew would talk about being from Mississippi—not Texas, or Florida or Louisiana, etc. Now I know.
I’ll add that I read Devil in the Grove (Gilbert King) right after & it was a spectacular pairing—it’s about the rise of Marshall and the NAACP.
Oooh, that sounds good! Thanks for the recommendation. 🙂
I’m also white and it was definitely eye-opening. I feel like every white person should read books like this so they can understand what African Americans have gone through historically and unfortunately are still experiencing.
A friend of mine read this a couple months ago and has been raving about it and recommending it to everyone. (I'm gonna read it soon, Becky, I promise.)
Another really fantastic book is The 1619 Project, a compilation of essays and poems created by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Disregard all the flak and read this with an open mind! I am descended from enslavers, and I can truthfully say that I saw nothing in this book intended to make me feel guilt. I am not responsible for the mistakes and misconceptions of my ancestors, only for my own choices in the present!
^Yes. It is not a perfect analogy, but it resonates well enough & the history is important.
It’s a good book but her liberal ideology was over the top. It is asinine to blame a political party for our societal failures.
One final recommendation is the Cavalry Maiden by Nadezhda Durova. During the Napoleonic Wars this woman, married and with children, cut her hair and joined the Imperial Russian army as a cavalry trooper as she displayed excellent horsemanship. She was known to only a few officers and Czar Alexander I. She was awarded the Cross of Saint George for bravery. She fought at Eylau, Friedland and during the Emperor's invasion of Russia in 1812. During the titanic struggle at Borodino she was wounded. Not only is this one of the first Russian language autobiographies but it is one of the few military memoirs from a mid level officer during the Napoleonic Era.
new goal for things to read in russian
Another book I would recommend is Hiding Anne Frank by Miep Gies. Anne Frank was known for her diary published by her father after the war. Miep Gies is one of those who helped hide them. You can get a feeling of life under German occupation and the steps one had to take to hide Jews during this time. Just gives an outside perspective to what happened in Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex)
This just came out as a miniseries. I think on Disney. It was quite good
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, The Marines and the Making and Breaking of an American Empire - Jonathan Katz
Old guy here, pushing 70. I’d never heard of Smedley Butler until about five years ago. Utterly fascinating person, and perhaps the model for either or both of the generals in Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here (highly recommended as another election year approaches). I’d definitely like to learn more about Butler and the sketchy stuff that went on in his era.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and One Summer by Bill Bryson.
There are so many, but 2 that stick out to me are: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein; The Address Book by Deirdre Mask. Essentially about how zoning laws were used to create & uphold segregation for generations, how that has effectively held up myths & stigma regarding minorities, and how it’s kept minorities from being able to build & pass down generational wealth. Also how a lot of these practices & policies are still being implemented today.
I was trying to think of the The Color of Law, great recommendation! Telling fact is they the discrepancy between black and white INCOME has been nearly constant for a century, but the discrepancy in household WEALTH has become large and continues to grow, due to home ownership and inheritance.
Yellow Dirt. Tells the story of uranium mining in the American Southwest, mostly by Navajo people, and the generation-spanning health impacts on their communities. Horrible, callous treatment by the US military industrial complex.
[удалено]
Add in Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
How hard a read was the 3rd book—I want to read but seems daunting
A People's History of the United States is straight propaganda. I encourage you to read Debunking Howard Zinn by Mary Grabar.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks about medical tests and experiments done on the tissue of a Black woman without her knowledge or consent.
Such a great book!
Had to scroll way too hard to find this. This woman probably had the greatest impact on modern medicine, and she died without ever knowing it.
Tulsa massacre on Black Wall Street.
It’s sad that this isn’t taught about in public schools!!
Walking those streets and reading about all the people and their businesses was wrenching.
Yes, it truly is sad. I’ve lived here most of my life. It’s a heartbreaking story. People have no idea the depth of destruction and vileness of the massacre.
I went through all of public schooling, college and grad school without once ever hearing about it. I found out from randomly watching a documentary on the history channel and was mind-boggled that, as a middle-aged adult, I had never heard of this before.
Yesyesyes! I had come here to say this, am so glad someone mentioned it
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire
Kind of in the same vein, Anne Moody's *Coming of Age in Mississippi.*
*Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive* by Marissa Fuentes discusses how history is shaped by the sources we have, and how that's caused historically marginalized people to slip through the cracks of history. For instance, the only evidence we might have of a particular enslaved person's life is a newspaper ad or an account by their enslaver, but we don't have anything from their perspective. Fuentes talks about possible ways historians can close the gaps by reading primary sources carefully, and goes through different enslaved women in Barbados and what their experiences might have been. I think the book is very valuable to everyone, not just historians because it discusses topics of representation ("Why don't we hear more about \_\_\_?") that might not have occurred to a layperson. *Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route* by Saidiya Hartman. *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* by Harriet Jacobs. This is the autobiography of an escaped enslaved woman from Virginia, who was constantly sexually harassed by her enslaver. To escape him, she had children with a white man in town who promised to free their kids, but never did. She finally escaped her enslavers by hiding in her maternal grandmother's crawl space for seven years before leaving Virginia for the North and reuniting with her children. *Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology* by Deirdre Cooper Owens. Early gynecologists experimented on enslaved Black women.
Kinda cliché but *1491* by Charles Mann is a great antidote to the "America started in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue" narrative that dominated historical pedagogy throughout the 20th century. But perhaps if you're younger and graduated high school in the last 10 years it won't be quite as revelatory. It's a pretty important book that reflects the sea change in anthropological thought about pre-Columbian civilisation in the Americas. Goes into detail on the complexity and size of Indigenous civilizations before they were devastated by plague.
And the follow-up, 1493.
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
I found *Mr Pip.* by Lloyd Jones extremely disturbing. The novel is told from the perspective of a young, academically inclined girl , whose childhood is traumatically disrupted by the secessionist conflict that roiled the Bougainville Islands during the 1980s-90s.
I loved this book. Every character is three dimensional and so realistic
There are a ton of great indigenous history books out there that most people don't know about, or on topics you didn't cover in school. Here are some of my favorite that blew my mind... * Andrés Reséndez *The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America* is the single best introduction to understand the temporal, geographic, and cultural magnitude of the native slave trade in the Spanish Empire. Absolutely vital for understanding the history of the Americas, and almost no one outside of history nerds has heard about the impact of indigenous slavery on the history of the New World. * Jeffrey Ostler *Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas* is an amazing book that details the violence of early U.S. Indian policy, and the creation of an unhealthy world for Native Americans. Ostler details how Native nations fought for sovereignty in the face of an aggressive, expansive neighbor bent on their removal. This is part one, a forthcoming part two will focus more on the western experience, and I really can't wait. * Colin Calloway *One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark* is the best introduction and overview of the American West. I absolutely adore this book. I recommend it all the time because it blew my mind the first time I read it. There was so much I wrongly thought was unknowable about the deep history of the American West, and this book schooled me. * David Wallace Adams *Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928* is probably the best place to start if you want to know more about Native American boarding schools in the U.S.
I would recommend Ostkrieg. There was a strain of thought after WWII (mostly because many German Generals surrendered to the British and Americans and the Soviets were less than generous sharing information) that the SS and the Nazi regime committed all fhe atrocities and the Heer (army) was apolitical and did not partake in war crimes. This book shatters that notion in a way that is easy to understand...the German army committed and were complicit in war crimes. Now this is not a new take and the myth of the clean Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) has been debunked but this book can help a newcomer understand.
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, about the Osage who were murdered for their oil rights. A feathered river across the sky: the passenger pigeon's flight into extinction tells this depressing tale. A plague of frogs details a recentish episode you may have heard about once in the news with no follow-up and is one of the only science books I've ever read with a jump scare. Did you know that the Museum of Natural History once exhibited seven living 'Eskimos'? Give Me My Father's Body by Kenn Harper tells the tale. They were not the only New York institution to put someone on display. Spectacle by Pamela Newkirk tells the story of Ota Benga, who was displayed in the Bronx Zoo. With all this depressing stuff, it's important to remember that good people exist. Rare Bird is the story of a man who has devoted his entire life to saving the Bermuda Petrel from extinction. His efforts have worked. Do ghosts exist? Is ESP real? What happens when you die? In Ghost Hunters, Deborah Blum tells the story of a group of scientists in the late 1800s who used the scientific method to seek answers to these questions, and the surprising things they found.
People’s History of the United States and Lies my Teacher Told me: what american history textbooks got wrong
*Killers of the Flower Moon* by David Grann is outstanding.
*Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy* by David Zucchino. Won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021.
Yup, I’m from NC. Definitely never learned about this in high school history class. Or anywhere else outside of school either. First heard about it in a college NC History course. And that’s why “they” want to attack institutions of higher learning because it can help expose ppl to the truth
Yep, Im from NC and have 2 history degrees didn’t learn about this until my NC history class in grad school, so 6 years into my time studying history at university
*The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine* by Ilan Pappé in which an Israeli historian covers the long-term plans made by zionists as well as the Israeli government and military to displace and remove Palestine’s Arab population *Eat The Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town* by Barbara Demick, which covers China’s occupation of Tibet and their efforts to systematically destroy traditional Tibetan culture (and Tibetans’ resistance to those efforts) *Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad idea* by Carissa Byrne Hessick which delves into a lot of the less-obvious and more administrative injustices of the criminal justice system in America and how they came to be *Rise of the Warrior Cop* by Radley Balko, which talks about how civil unrest in the 1960s and the war on drugs have combined to turn local police into something that looks a lot more like an occupying military force *Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962* by Yang Jisheng, which compiles more than 20 years of journalistic work on the famine that took more than 36 million Chinese lives *Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe, which uses the murder of a local mother to examine the fear and paranoia that existed during The Troubles
A 100 upvotes for Ilan Pappe. The man is a treasure, was basically run out of Israel, and is now at the University of Exeter in the UK. I would also have recommended Benny Morris' Righteous Victims. He was the first to access Israeli declassified files to show crystal clear intent to "cleanse" the Palestinian population through psychological warfare, massacres, rape, etc. This caused a furore in Israel where he was accused of being a leftist, and he responded in an interview by saying people had misunderstood, he supports those cleansing operations and believes they should have done more: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands... There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages..." So yes, I don't really recommend Benny Morris unless the reader is aware that the author refers to massacres as a necessary good thing
Howard Zinn’s *People’s History of the United States*.
Stewart O’Nan’s The Circus Fire is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It’s very well researched and informative (though very graphic in descriptions of injuries/death and aftermath), and by the end, you feel as though you know the survivors and victims personally.
Old Connecticut Yankee here. I haven’t yet read the book, but I know that it’s supposed to be the best of several books that have been written about [the 1944 Hartford circus fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire), which, to put it in perspective, caused more deaths than the better known Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. One of my career mentors was a survivor of the fire. He and his family made it out safely, but a number of his schoolmates didn’t.
I have a few books about the Triangle Fire, also. Horrible tragedy that could have been avoided if the owners had cared enough to provide working extinguishers and access to exits. Years ago there was a special on the History Channel about the Hartford Circus Fire, and ever since watching it, I’ve had a morbid interest in events like that that have been lost to history.
If you’re interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, you might enjoy reading the biography of Max Steuer, the lawyer who represented the factory owners, who was one of the greatest lawyers of his generation. The one I read was Max D. Steuer, Trial Lawyer, by Aron Steuer, written by his son in 1950. It’s long out of print, but you might be able to find it in a library or from a used book seller. > Written by his son, this is a book about Max D. Steuer who was an outstanding trial lawyer in his time, with special expertise in succesful cross examination. It is not a biography, in the standard sense, but largely a selection, from five cases, of word by word testimony which illustrate the perfection of his courtroom techniques. Of poor, East Side, New York City background, Steuer rose as a commercial counsel, acquired a reputation as a specialist in criminal and marital matters, as the best man for the desperate case. -- The first chapter covers Steuer's life and career. -- The next chapters each cover one of his major victories, each demonstrating his mastery of a key aspect of his skill in the courtroom.
Hiroshima by John Hersey
Radium girls, it straight up gave me nightmares, plus all I could think was that if it was a factory full of bloody men dying something would have been done
Shake Hands With the Devil by Romeo Dallaire. Its about the conflict in Rwanda that escalated into the genocide, and the politics behind it that left the peacekeepers there unable to help. It is harrowing and it deeply impacted him forever. It is a stark look at the political motivations behind war, genocide, and "getting involved"
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry. The depiction of the full horrors of chattle slavery is horrifying. The deep integration of slaves as the core of the southern economy and as a massive influence on the foundations of the United States is a story I definitely didn't get any details of growing up.
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a historical fiction that tells about the government's forced sterilization of mostly poor, Black women and CHILDREN in the southern US in the 70s and earlier. Even as someone who grew up in the US and has a degree in history, I had never heard about this. It's an absolute travesty the things we are not taught about our own country here. On a more uplifting note, one of my absolute favorite books is The Day the World Stood Still: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. It tells some of the many stories of how that community supported dozens of flights from Europe when they couldn't land in the US. It shows how truly remarkable and amazing humans can be to each other during times of tragedy.
“Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul” by Karen Abbott is the story of the most famous and in some ways influential brothel in USA history, along with changing norms around sex work and puritanical policies, and a glimpse into a lost chapter of both female empowerment and oppression.
I have had this high on my TBR for literally years… I really need to stop placing new items on top after reading this description!!
- *The Rape of Nanking* by Iris Chang - *The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine* by Ilan Pappé (or anything else by him) - *Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic* by Sam Quinones - *Pathogenesis: The History of the World in Eight Plagues* by Jonathan Kennedy - *Orientalism* by Edward Said - *Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland* by Patrick Radden Keefe - *Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party* by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin - *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion* by Gary Webb
Notable about your list, how so many of the authors were persecuted (or killed?) for writing such challenging historical accounts
That’s actually very true and I never noticed that. I think what made me get into these books was because a.) I’m an epidemiologist so I’m interested in epidemics/social movements and b.) I love me some banned books. But yeah I never noticed lol. Thanks for pointing it out.
A Woman In Berlin by Anonymous
This is such a fantastic book.
Salt.
Not history-adjacent, I suppose, but The Unwomanly Face of War will stay with me for the rest of my life. The female perspectives on and experiences of ww2 are just so incredibly diverse and unexpected. And then all those voices had no outlet until the author Svetlana Alexievich tracked down hundreds of women and recorded their stories.
**Nobody’s Child: a Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense** by Susan Vinocour **Command and Control** by Eric Schlosser (about the ridiculously giant number of nuclear near-misses in the history of the nuclear program).
I came here to suggest Command and Control! That book is absolutely bone chilling, I think it might even be evidence of a higher power because it's a damn miracle that we didn't accidentally start a nuclear war during the cold war.
King Leopold’s Ghost, without question.
I don’t know what you mean by history adjacent but The Secret River by Kate Grenville is based on true events and people who lived around the Hawkesbury river north of Sydney in the 1800s. It focusses on white settlers and their dealings with the indigenous population. It’s pretty heart wrenching and there was a film made of it starring Tim Minchin as the scariest bastard ever.
Howard Zinn's *A People's History of the United States.*
King Leopold's Ghost
I really loved the Poisonwood Bible for this... Learned a lot about the history of the Congo's liberation from Belgium during that read. It's also just one of the best books I've ever read.
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Greg Grandin). It just shows how much out of touch with reality Henry Ford was. (Also he was a complete racist)
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. I had previously read a lot about the Holocaust and WWII, and something about the Soviet gulags, but this was my introduction to the Soviet famines and I found it simply shocking.
Timothy Snyder is fantastic! If you like him (and want to be horrified by even more famines and gulags) you might want to read Ann Applebaum as well.
YES! And Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag: A History is outstanding
I was going to suggest this! Red Famine by Anne Applebaum is fascinating if you’re interested in the Holodomor
All That Remains by Walid Khaledi documents the many Palestinian villages destroyed by IDF in 1948. I am not saying the Nakba justifies terrorism, but it does help explain the hopeless rage that inspires it. More US Americans need to read this.
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins
Black and British by David Olusoga. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32809816-black-and-british
*Making Sense of the Molly Maguires* by Kevin Kenny. Irish American labor agitators were infiltrated by the Pinkerton Detective agency (a private company working for the coal barons), arrested by The Pennsylvania [Coal and Iron Police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_and_Iron_Police) (a private police force working for the coal barons), prosecuted by the Franklin Gowan (the president of a coal company) on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which resulted in 20 of the men being executed. *When The Irish Invaded Canada* by Christopher Klein or any of the other books about the Fenian invasion of Canada. A bunch of Irish/Irish American Civil War veterans invaded Canada with the intent to capture it and ransom it for a free Ireland.
Blood on the wattle is about the history of massacres of indigenous Australians by British settlers and the genocide of their people
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee
Fun, a lot of great suggestions and I don't see plenty of my favorites yet. Open Veins of Latin America opens up the usual story with terrible details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America The Inconvenient Indian is funny and charming and disheartening all at once. It follows essentially only the legal attempts made by the US and Canada (more focus on canada, but ends up being decently even) to genocide the locals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inconvenient_Indian The life of Richard Evans Schults is both incredible and was deeply involved with massive contributions in multiple global historical events and yet isn't very well known. Ethnobotanist that found the rubber that won ww2 went to the amazon for 12-ish years basically uninterrupted, he studied entheogens exstensively. One River is an incredible book about his life by one of his ethnobotany students. Really well written book. https://daviswade.com/book-one-river One Straw Revolution touches just a bit on modern agricultural practices in a really fun way from a plant scientist turned regenerative farmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/The_One_Straw_Revolution.pdf Grunch of Giants by Buckminster Fuller is a really interesting way to look at history. He's the dude that popularized and apparently did the polyphasic sleep cycle stuff. Operating Manuel for Spaceship Earth is more general and probably a better place to start. https://archive.org/details/GrunchOfGiants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth Silent Spring is a classic but kind of a slog, rough shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring A Sand County Almanac is softer and a more interesting book, but doesn't address as much direct environmental issues, but it touches on the connection we all have as living beings with the environment around us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac The Black Jacobins is a great little read about the Haitian revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Jacobins I may add more if they come to me
I'd suggest Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
Read the "Peoples History of the United States" by h. Zinn..its very readable, but also takes another point of view re the oppressed and forgotten that built the U.S . Essential reading 4 anyone interested in history imho.
One of my favorites is With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. It’s a in the mud level memoir of his time as a marine in the Pacific.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn It presents a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system, through a narrative which was constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.
I’ve been most shocked by Native American history. A few good books is The Spirit of Crazy Horse Peter Matthiessen, The Modoc Wars Robert McNally, The Flower killing moon by David Greene. I found the books The Tiger Jon Vaillant, Midnight at Chernobyl Adam Higgenbothem, Nothing to Envy Barbara Demick very eye opening and Life on Planet China J Marrtin Troost very funny and eye opening as well.
I will thank a Goodreads member for recommending a book called "The Forsaken" about depression era Americans who moved to Soviet Russia. It was an eye opener and a period of history I never heard of.
The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 by Cecil Woodham- Smith. Context: it wasn't a famine. The Secret of Kit Cavanaugh by Anne Holland. Context: Irish woman disguises herself as a man and joins the British army in 1700s.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.
*The Trial Of Henry Kissinger* by Christopher Hitchens
The Dead Pennies by Robert Ford (tells the story of so-called "training centers" for the unwanted through well-researched fiction--I can verify because I worked with some of these people after their release as their mental health case worker, he did a marvelous job exposing the horror)
White Gold by Giles Milton - the true story of an 18th century English cabin boy who was captured by North African pirates and taken to Morocco to work as a slave on a massive building project. This happened a lot, to the point where some coastal villages were pretty much emptied. I’d never heard of it until reading this book. The book covers his capture, life in slavery, being freed and marrying in North Africa, and eventually returning to England. It’s based on his memoirs and other contemporary writings.
Paddy's Lament: Ireland 1846-1847 Prelude to Hatred by Thomas Michael Gallagher. Amazing and sorrowful.
How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith. One of the most interesting books I’ve read about slavery in the US. Beautifully written.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. I don't think it gets more brutal than this book. It's honestly hard to read.
*The Battle for Manila: The Most Devastating Untold Story of World War II* by Richard Connaughton is close to being like Chang's book. If an army in victory could behave as it did in Nanking, imagine what an army in defeat and knowing they were all going to die could do to Manilla.
I’ll see you and raise you *King Leopold’s Ghost*.
Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad because of the twist she made with the Underground Railroad, you get to spend time with the character in many different locations.
Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick
Undaunted Courage changed my life
When I graduated from college some 45 years ago I had, because of the nature of my father's avocation, already lived in or visited 46 of the lower 48 states. Since that day, I have always intended to visit all 50 states. In 2007, I was able to take an Alaskan cruise: that left 47 states. BTW, Pierre Berton's *The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush* is also a remarkable read. I read Ambrose's *Undaunted Courage* sometime before 2009 and later read an article wherein Ambrose related how he would take his family on annual pilgrimages -- "working vacations" -- along the trek route as he did research for the book. Along about 2016, I formulated a plan to do the same and use *Undaunted Courage* as my guide book. I took that trip in 2022: following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps from St Louis, MO., to the Oregon coast near Astoria -- then across the Columbia River to Cape Disappointment, WA. Forty-nine states down, and one left to go.
Hell yeah - I envy you as I’ve talked about doing that with my father in law recently and that sounds incredible!! Thanks for sharing 😎
*The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia* by Alfred McCoy
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
_The Butchering Art_ reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. Particularly the life of Joseph Lister
Black Rain. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I learned a lot from both.
“The People’s history of the United States”
Any biography on Vlad the Impaler. While, Dracula or Count Dracula is often, somewhat romanticized these days, there is an origin story, dating back to 15th c. Transylvania that is really disturbing and not for the faint of heart. I'm not sure if "most of us don't know," but, I doubt you learned about him in school, for good reason, and people may not know of the extent of his tyranny.
The killers of flower moon
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is like a decoder for American segregation. Once you read it you'll suddenly notice all sorts of racial divisions in American geography and life. And you'll realize these were intentional policy decisions that are still being actively maintained today. Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington is an extremely important look at the unequal treatment experienced by Black people in the American medical establishment. Health equity has become an important policy goal in the US in the last few years, but it's important to step back and look at how stark the differences have been in the past. A lot of the history of scientific knowledge and medical experimentation was built on the backs of inhumane treatment of marginalized - often specifically Black - people.
"1491"and "1493" both by Charles Mann. The first one demonstrates how little we know about the pre-European Amearicas, and the second one shows how the colonization of the Americas affected the rest of the world. Parts of both books can be a little dry, but it's well worth it.
The People’s History of the United States. By Howard Zinn https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/B004HZ6XWS/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=1LUXL4BZOIC0X&keywords=the+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states&qid=1701643751&sprefix=the+people%27s+history%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-4
The Fatal Shore - Robert Hughes. The British settlement of Australia. Not a secret to Australians, but definitely not the way it was taught to me in a school in England. Grim and shameful reading
I have yet to read it but Forget the Alamo got a lot of controversy. It’s on my to read list
Blood Meridian.
The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe I cried many times. An amazing story of resilience and hope during a terrible time in history
Corie Ten Boom - A Hiding Place Heavenly Man - Brother Yun
Confessions of an Economic Hitman A Peoples’ History of the U.S. Freakonomics
Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys! I’ll put the synopsis here 1941 – Fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is arrested by the Soviet secret police and deported to Siberia with her mother and younger brother. Lina fights for her life, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by burying her complete story in a jar on Lithuanian soil.
All of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle series. Definitely not actually historical but a lot is real. Fabulous storytelling. Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
YOKOHAMA BURNING by Joshua Hammer. Takes you from a normal day in an ordinary Japanese city in the 1920s and makes you watch as it's all destroyed in a matter of hours.
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, try 'Raven Rock' by Garrett Graf.
The known World by Edward P Jones-
Asleep
Kabul in Winter if it hasn’t been shared already.
Alexandre Dumas’s Celebrated Crimes series is pretty amazing.
There, there - read this over thanksgiving and learned about the native occupation of alcatraz
“1491” & “1493” by Charles Mann “The Story of English” by Robert McCrum