Any recommendations ? Not ancient history and nothing too dry or deep. Something like Erik Larson (I have read all of his)
Thanks!!
There was a recent thread asking for non fiction recommendations:
I recently read one mentioned, A Spy Among Friends - maybe more biography than history, but to be honest I didn’t care for the book.
My Bookclub read The Other Boleyn sister and The White Queen. Both enjoyable and learned a lot of history about English court.
April 1865 by Jay Winik was very good.
He has a new book out also
Thanks all
I enjoy Bill Bryson’s books on the English language. Oops- not true historical non fiction but very good and entertaining.
Rebecca Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Harvard University Press, 2012). Reads like a detective story set in the era of African slavery.
Just want to point out the The Other Bolyen Sister and The White Queen are fiction books, not non fiction and should not be regarded as true.
I love Erik Larsen also, I’ll have to think. Right now I’m reading about Winston Churchill, not something everyone would like lol
Will check these out -Thanks
Big fan of David McCollough (get the added benefit of hearing his voice as I read, think the narration in “The Civil War”
John Adams
1776
Mornings on Horseback (teddy Roosevelt)
The Path Between the Seas (Panama Canal)
My favorite, The Great Bridge (about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge)
Truman
Barbara Tuchman
The Guns of August (World War I)
The Proud Tower (the 1890-1914 period of western history)
A Distant Mirror (14th century)
Unbroken
The Boys in the Boat
Endurance by Lansing is a great book about the Shackelton expedition. It is fiction, but have you read Wolf Hall by Mantel? Fu Go by Coen is interesting, about Japanese attempts to bomb & start fires in the western U.S. using unmanned balloons launched from Japan. George Washington Secret Six by Kilmeade is about spies during the American Revolution. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson about a cholera outbreak is great.
Terrific read is Norman MacLean’s Young Men and Fire about smoke jumpers in 1949. He also wrote A River Runs Through It. Given the fires going on now, the book resonates.
Have to say that anything about Shackleton reads like fiction because the story is at the edge of belief.
Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand is also a great read if you haven’t read it yet.
Highly recommend The Boys in the Boat.
Just read this and workshopped with Rebecca J Scott on her upcoming book- absolutely recommend!
Anything by Eric Foner is going to fall into a similar category as Erik Larson. I just read Gateway to Freedom and it was wonderful but it’s the only book I’ve read by him.
Also: (I’m a public health/medical historian so my suggestions are biased towards that lol).
Ties that Bind- Tiya Miles (or any of her other books). She writes about Black and Cherokee families in the South during and post-Slavery.
Annie’s Ghost- Steve Luxenberg. A story about a man’s look into his own family’s history where he uncovers the history of mental asylums.
The Ghost Map- Steven Johnson. Cholera epidemic in London and its aftermath.
Sick Building Syndrome- Michelle Murphy. About the politics of environmental health debates (honestly, much better than it sounds!)
Heavier, but one that I think anyone interested in American history should read: The Black Stork- Martin Pernick. One of the cornerstone books that exposed the history of Eugenics in the US. He pulls on unconventional sources like film and traces eugenics all the way to the present day (at least, present to the book which was the late 90s).
Krakatoa - the day the world exploded (or something like that) by Simon Winchester. He is very thorough and the book is fascinating.
The Ghost Army of WWII by Rick Beyer, about the unit filled with artists and designers (Bill Blass was in it), that pulled off all kinds of deceptions, sonic and otherwise, to fool the German Army after the invasion of France. They did things like set up inflatable tanks and artillery to fool the Germans into a thinking a major offensive was coming, or trucks with recordings of tanks and the sound of tramping feet to make it seem like a major troop movement was happening (far away from the real area of operations), drawing the German army off to follow the red herring.
I remember reading about that in an obituary in the Washington Post of a man who was a sign painter who was in that unit. Their activities weren’t declassified until sometime in the 1980’s! Some activities are still not declassified since they are still being used.
There is an exhibit at the WWII museum that briefly recounts the inflatable faux tanks that were placed here and there in British ports to throw the Germans off the scent of the upcoming DDay landing.
Thanks I am making a list
If there are any that you particularly liked in audio form let me know. I am trying to use up some audible credits