Recommend some history books

[Tom Storer]

I'm finally finishing Proust, only 40 pages or so to go. I've been at it for a good long while and am looking forward to reading something entirely different. I'm thinking I need to bone up on my history, particularly English and American history.

Who can recommend me some good books on English and American history?

[Vince Kargatis]

Try Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game. Very engaging and readable account of the British-Russian "cold war" in central Asia in the 1800s.

[walto]

I very much enjoyed the three or four books I've read by Richard Hofstatder. Also, any bio of Tom Paine gives you important and interesting moments in U.S., English and French history. I read one by Foner. Gary Wills' books on Nixon and Washington are fun.

[Gary Sisco]

This one's excellent. I read it a short while back and have since lent it to Roots.

David Levering Lewis, *God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215*

Amazon has used copies starting at $12.50

[shrugs]

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
by James M. McPherson

Rise to Globalism
by Stephen Ambrose

[Pete C]

Eduardo Galeano: Memory of Fire - a great literary achievement as well as compelling history

http://wwnorton.com/catalog/spring98/galeano.htm

Originally Posted by The Atlantic

Galeano went on to stake out new literary territory in his Memory of Fire trilogy, published by Pantheon between 1985 and 1988 in a translation by Cedric Belfrage. Unquestionably Galeano's masterwork, Memory of Fire is a kind of secret history of the Americas, told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes that resurrected the lives of campesinos and slaves, dictators and scoundrels, poets and visionaries. Memoirs, novels, bits of poetry, folklore, forgotten travel books, ecclesiastical histories, revisionist monographs, Amnesty International reports -- all of these sources constituted the raw material of Galeano's sprawling mosaic. In each volume (titled Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind, respectively), the episodes are structured chronologically, but the geographical settings are constantly shifting. The effect is beguiling and instructive. In an entry captioned "Havana, Cuba, 1588," with the title "St. Martial versus the Ants," Galeano writes:
Rapacious ants continue to mortify people and undermine walls. They fell trees, devastate farmlands, and gobble fruit and corn and the flesh of the absentminded. In view of patron St. Simon's inefficacy, the town council unanimously elects another protector. The city promises to celebrate his day every year. St. Martial is the new shield of Havana against the assaults of bibijagua ants. St. Martial, who three centuries ago was bishop of Limoges, is known as a specialist and is said to have great influence with the Lord.
And here is an entry dated 1948, simply entitled "Neruda." The dateline is "somewhere in Chile."
The main headline in the daily El Imparcial reads: Neruda Sought Throughout the Country; and below: Investigators locating his whereabouts will be rewarded. The poet goes from hideout to hideout, traveling by night. Neruda is one of many suffering persecution for being red or for being decent or for just being, and he doesn't complain of this fate, which he has chosen. Nor does he regret the solitude: He enjoys and celebrates this fighting passion, whatever trouble it brings him, as he enjoys and celebrates church bells, wine, eel broth, and flying comets with wings spread wide.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/i...2000-11-30.htm

[Gentle Giant]

Lincoln/Civil War is my bailiwick and I would second Walter's recommendation of Hofstader while extending the Wills recommendation to include Lincoln At Gettysburg, the most thorough exploration of one of America's greatest speeches. I can also second shrugs' Battle Cry of Freedom, and add Doris KG's Team of Rivals and for something more recent, Stanley Karnow's Vietnam.

[Gary Sisco]

Stephen Ambrose, *Citizen Soldiers* is excellent.

[Gary Sisco]

Neil Sheehan, *A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,* also excellent.

Frances Fitzgerald's *Fire In The Lake* remains the best overall history of Vietnam.

[clinthopson]

For US history

Catherine Drinker Bowen's Miracle In Philadelphia
Samuel Elliot Morrison's Admiral of the Ocean Seas
J. Anthony Lewis' Big Trouble
Stephen Ambrose Undaunted Courage

For European history anything by Barbara Tuchman and I'm a big fan of the Durants.

[Tom Storer]

I'm making my list.

Once I read (most of) J.M. Roberts' "History of the World." Does anyone know a good history of Britain or the US with a sprawling, beginning-to-end approach?

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

I'm making my list.

Once I read (most of) J.M. Roberts' "History of the World." Does anyone know a good history of Britain or the US with a sprawling, beginning-to-end approach?

[walto]

Churchill has a multi-volume history of Britain.

[clinthopson]

I've never seen a one-volume history of the U.S. that wasn't pretty superficial.

I would highly recommend David McCullough's biographies and if you are really interested, Shelby Foote's monumental history of the Civil War.

One of the great books is Bernal Diaz del Castillo's Discovery And Conquest of Mexico.

[Monte Smith]

Churchill's opus is a history of English speaking peoples, not just Britain.

I'm afraid I'm not much good in recommending a broad survey-type book. Anything I have read in the past fifteen years has been a history of some topic I am interested in (politics, the Colonies, pirate sodomy), or a classic of history (like Clarendon or Macaulay). Given, though, that you've been shown the leftist malcontent Zinn, you should also consider the righter writer Johnson:



Haven't read it myself (love Johnson's columns in the press), but it has that noble tang of history written by a victor. Huzzah!

[Jason Bivins]

Alan Brinkley's An Unfinished Nation is probably the most impressive single-volume history I've read. And of course his other book are mighty worthy as well. Other than synthetic stuff, James Morone's Hellfire Nation is one of the best of the last decade.

[Pedantic Wretch]

Eric Hobsbawm's Age of... series is a good panorama of 19th-20th century world history, although many would accuse him of being too Eurocentric.

If you are sociologically inclined, Charles Tilly's Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 is an ambitious and concise attempt to chart the development of the modern state.

[walto]

pirate sodomy

I remember reading a book (maybew 15-20 years ago) about cannibalism on the high seas and the common law. I can't think why though.

[Jesse]

I conducted an autodidactic survey of books on Vietnam several years ago, and these two were the best I read. Add, generally, Barbara Tuchman's work, specifically The March Of Folly, with a great section on our Vietnam folly.

[Gary Sisco]

Yes, Tuchman is very good.

Murray Bookchin, *The Third Revolution, Vol 1* is also excellent. If you read it, I guarantee you'll learn many things about both the English Revolution and the American Revolution and the people who made them you'd not otherwise know.

[Jesse]

Are Bookchin's books widely available, Gary?
I'll hang up & listen (and check my local library, which is rich in resources).

[larrycohen]

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer

America has been overthrowing governments or sponsoring their overthrow, for over 100 years. Some of them have been legitimate, democratically elected governments. This is a well written book about some events in America's history that maybe we shouldn't be so proud of.

[Gary Sisco]

Jesse -- Yes, most of them are easily available. If your library has interlibrary loan, you'd be set. They can be found online, too.

[Jesse]

I found a dozen titles in our city library system alone, Gary. I might pm you seeking recs, gotta winnow that down, as I have 5-7 books going at any given moment.

[Gary Sisco]

The best one-volume general history of euroamerican culture, in my view, is William McNeill, *The Rise Of The West,* and one of its many admirable traits is his non-eurocentric view of its historical ascendancy.

Other great books on American history:

Larry D. Kramer, *The People Themselves*

and the excellent in every way Pauline Maier, *From Resistance To Revolution,* which I also guarantee will teach you many things about the run-up to the American Revolution (it covers right up to the revolution itself) that you hadn't known before.

And one I've rec'd, usually in vain, since it was brand new: I.F. Stone's *The Trial of Socrates.*

[Jesse]

Btw, Fitzgerald, author of the masterful account of the French & American presence in Vietnam up to about '66, has a piece in this week's New Yorker on the religious right.

[Gary Sisco]

Jesse, I'd start with the above rec'd if possible from your library. Also an excellent Bookchin history is *The Spanish Anarchists,* a classic, and the only of its kind. It covers the movement up to but not including the Spanish Revolution in 1936 (which he covers in the final volume of *The Third Revolution.*)

[Uli]

excellent!

[rollhead]

[Gary Sisco]

Much more recent, an enlightening book about the invasion of Iraq:

Evan Wright, *Generation Kill*

Wright rode with the foremost Marines in the foremost point of the US invasion forces. Literally, with the tip of the spear. It's very interesting, not only for its account of the combat and how it was waged, but also for the way the grunts revealed themselves to him. He was in as much danger as they were, the while, and they were in much more danger than many who came behind them. For me, it was very interesting to see how those young men consciously viewed themselves as professional killers of an imperial force. Empire. They were very open and articulate about it. There wasn't any flagwaving bullshit about it. The empire pays them to kill so they kill. It's what they do for a living. Which is no surprise, really, but it's not altogether common for guys to talk that openly and casually about it.

I found it a fascinating read about a terrifying ride, not just for the Marines but for those unfortunate enough to have been in their way.

*Dispatches* I used to like, years ago. I tried to read it again last year or the year before and couldn't. It felt kind of pornographic. Many grunts felt that way about him at the time, actually. It's a very personalized book. One guy's view of his Vietnam.