100 Best European History Books of All Time (Updated for 2026)

1

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

5.0

In Everyman’s Library for the first time—one of the most moving and eloquent accounts of the Holocaust, read by tens of millions of people around the world since its publication in 1947.

The Diary of a Young Girl is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the face of unfathomable deprivation and fear has made the book one of the most enduring doc

Recommended by Alice Little, Catalina Penciu, and Tim Fargo.

Alice Little

I remember being a fourth grader and trying to check out this book and being told it was grossly inappropriate and going so far as to have my parents take it to the school board and petition for me to be allowed to read this book. [source]

Catalina Penciu

I'm a huge fan of personal stories and biographies like this one. [source]

Tim Fargo

@Quixoticnance Good point, Nancy. The museum is a powerful experience, esp. when you've read her book. [source]

2

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Tony Judt

5.0

Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in

Recommended by David Marquand and Keith Lowe.

David Marquand

This book is all about the way that Europe has managed – not always totally successfully, but managed nevertheless – to come to terms with its bloody and horrible past. [source]

Keith Lowe

What [source]

3

The Guns of August

Barbara Tuchman

4.9

"More dramatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking and sophisticated research."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and

Recommended by Jim Collins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Erik Martin, and 2 others.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

So beautifully written. But more importantly, for me, she was writing about battles and military stuff and things that you don’t imagine that sometimes a woman might be so adept at. [source]

Erik Martin

This book started my obsession with WWI, illustrating how drastically the world went from interrelated monarchies and cavalry charges to chemical warfare between modern nation states. If you want to see what disruption looks like, there's no greater period in human history. [source]

Matt Calkins

The best way to understand how the world resolves its conflicts and its tensions is by looking at how a conflict that has been studied thoroughly, like World War I, unfolded and resolved. Business is like this too. If anyone were to ever get to the heart of Coke vs. Pepsi, they would see a parade of mistakes in the same way World War I looks in retrospect—so many ways you could have done better. [source]

4

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder

4.9

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leav

Recommended by Eric Weinstein, Antony Beevor, Edward Lucas, and 1 others.

Eric Weinstein

Managing Director/Thiel Capital

Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter. [source]

Antony Beevor

This book is about…the Stalinist repression of the areas known as the borderlands, which Snyder has termed the bloodlands. Snyder is looking at the deliberate mass murder of civilians in a particular zone of Europe between about 1930, at the start of the second Ukraine famine, and 1945. [source]

Edward Lucas

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin offers the best account of the most important and terrible years of the last century, when Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler jointly consigned the territories and people between their two empires to the meat-grinder. [source]

5

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

William L. Shirer

4.8

Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.

No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied deman

Recommended by Gunhee Park.

Gunhee Park

A few months back, I read a book called A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II that led me to want to learn more about Nazi Germany and Hitler, so I then picked up The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which led me to wanting to learn more about Winston Churchill. [source]

6

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Barbara W. Tuchman

4.8

The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.

7

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Erik Larson

4.8

Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant d

Recommended by Daniel Hamermesh and Steve Schmidt.

Daniel Hamermesh

At a time of increased danger of totalitarianism in the U.S., reading a history of an insider’s view of its growth in Germany in the 1930s gives a good perspective on our contemporary problems, as well as being fascinating history and biography in its own right. [source]

Steve Schmidt

@egayle333 Ellyn, with respect Hitler was always clear about his intent. A great book to read from a US perspective is In the Garden of Beasts. Trump is much more analogous to Mussolini. [source]

8

Night

Elie Wiesel

4.8

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importan

Recommended by Johanna Reiss and Steven Katz.

Johanna Reiss

Elie Wiesel wrote..that he was considering running into the barbed wire once, but he didn’t because his father needed him. [source]

Steven Katz

Probably the best known memoir that has been written about the experience of the death camps. [source]

9

Europe: A History

Norman Davies

4.7

From the Ice Age to the Cold War, from Reykjavik to the Volga, from Minos to Margaret Thatcher, Norman Davies here tells the entire story of Europe in a single volume. It is the most ambitious history of the continent ever undertaken.

Recommended by Philippe Legrain.

Philippe Legrain

For me, this book was an eye-opener. We’re normally told the history of Europe from a nationalist perspective or from the perspective of the various kings or monarchs. It’s all an inevitable progression to the countries we have now. This tells a completely different history. It’s about a rich tapestry of peoples and regions and different forces which are much more messy and certainly don’t inevitably lead to where we are now. For example, it corrects the misperception that the Hundred Years’ War was a war between England and France because those nations didn’t exist at the time, and so on. So it’s a helpful corrective in terms of understanding our history and therefore understanding Europe today. [source]

10

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschil

4.6

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.

Recommended by Steve Crawshaw and Suzannah Lipscomb.

Steve Crawshaw

Large parts of the Belgian establishment loathe this book. It tells, as its sub-title says, ‘a story of greed, terror and heroism’. It lays bare the absolute fiction that King Leopold’s fief in the Congo was based on some philanthropic urge – a line that Leopold managed to peddle with extraordinary success at the time. I don’t know if what Leopold did would be called ‘genocide’ today or not. But millions died under his rule, often in horrific circumstances, invisible to the rest of the world. Modern communications didn’t exist. [source]

Suzannah Lipscomb

This is an incredibly powerful, horrifying, and utterly brilliant study of Belgian colonialism of the Congo and the brutality and genocide that followed in its wake. [source]

11

Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World

Margaret MacMillan, Richard Holbrooke, Casey Hampton

4.6

'Without question, Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919 is the most honest and engaging history ever written about those fateful months after World War I when the maps of Europe were redrawn. Brimming with lucid analysis, elegant character sketches, and geopolitical pathos, it is essential reading.'

Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world conve

Recommended by James Purnell and Mike Maclay.

James Purnell

She focuses on the meeting between Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson that decided what the new boundaries would be for the world at Versailles in 1919. [source]

Mike Maclay

The beautiful story she tells is how men of goodwill did try to make the Second World War impossible. [source]

12

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Robert K. Massie

4.5

Pulitzer Prize winner Massie offers the tale of a princess who went to Russia at 14 and became one of the most powerful women in history. Born into minor German nobility, she transformed herself into an empress by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant, curious mind, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers, and reaching the throne, tried using their principles to rule the vast, b

Recommended by Elon Musk and 1 others.

Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

I know what you're probably thinking ... did she really f* a horse? [source]

13

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Christopher Clark

4.5

The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and des

Cover unavailable

14

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

Christopher Clark

4.5

In the aftermath of World War II, Prussia--a centuries-old state pivotal to Europe's development--ceased to exist. In their eagerness to erase all traces of the Third Reich from the earth, the Allies believed that Prussia, the very embodiment of German militarism, had to be abolished.

But as Christopher Clark reveals in this pioneering history, Prussia's legacy is far more complex. Though now a fad

Recommended by Norman Davies.

Norman Davies

The next one is Prussia, which is another huge topic. Prussia is not one of the forgotten countries. It’s one of the kingdoms which was so powerful in its final phase, in the late 18th century to 1918, that memory of Hohenzollern Prussia, Bismarck and the creation of the German Empire is so recent and powerful that the memory of the earlier Prussia has all but been obliterated. [source]

15

Napoleon: A Life

Andrew Roberts

4.5

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washi

16

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

Thomas Cahill

4.5

From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne - the "dark ages" - learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization - from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works - would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland.

In this delightful and illuminating look into a cruc

17

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Mary Beard

4.5

In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that m

Recommended by Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey).

Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey)

I think SPQR is a wonderful book. Ancient Roman history is so very dense and intricate that it can be difficult to teach and learn about. Mary Beard makes it accessible—and she goes through it all, from the early days right up until the present day. [source]

18

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

4.5

Preview Summary

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ide

Recommended by Bill Gates, Charles T. Munger, Charlie Munger, and 12 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. [source]

Daniel Ek

A brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. [source]

Simon Sinek

Author

I’m a fan of books that challenge our assumptions, and Diamond offers us a new and remarkably simple way of looking at our world. Learning to challenge existing assumptions is core to effective leadership for it trains us to keep an open mind. [source]

19

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell

4.5

In 1936 George Orwell travelled to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

Recommended by Ben Shapiro, Guy Raz, Timothy Garton Ash, and 1 others.

Ben Shapiro

A lot of people have read Orwell's 1984, he actually wrote a book that's better. It's this book. [source]

Guy Raz

The other reason I picked this book is that Orwell, like Dan Schorr, was an outsider. When he went to Spain, he was an unknown. He wasn’t Hemingway. He wasn’t a well-connected intellectual. He just had this amazing eye for detail. He was an amazing observer, and he could write so powerfully. This book, to me, is just one of the classics of foreign reporting. [source]

Timothy Garton Ash

Anyone who wants to go off and write about Egypt, Tunisia or Libya today should pack a copy of Homage to Catalonia. It’s brilliant reportage. As you know, it opens with a vignette of an Italian militiaman in the barracks in Barcelona and he only saw this guy for a few moments but it captures the excitement. [source]

20

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956

Anne Applebaum

4.5

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway.

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territo

21

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Dan Jones

4.4

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world.

We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionh

22

The Prince

Nicollo Machiavelli, Tim Parks

4.4

Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" is intended to be a treatise on ruling and is considered by many to be a classic of political science. In the book Machiavelli offers many bits of practical advice on how to rule and even though the book was written in the early 16th century its ideas are still very relevant today. Where "The Prince" differs from other political literature before it is in its sep

Recommended by Eric Ripert, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ryan Holiday, and 9 others.

Eric Ripert

A fascinating study and still wholly relevant. [source]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Prince (Machiavelli) to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

Of course, this is a must read. Machiavelli is one of those figures and writers who is tragically overrated and underrated at the same time. Unfortunately that means that many people who read him miss the point and other people avoid him and miss out altogether. Take Machiavelli slow, and really read him. Also understand the man behind the book–not just as a masterful writer but a man who withstood heinous torture and exile with barely a whimper. Machiavelli is a glimpse into a time when power was literal and out for public viewing–when he talks about making an example of someone, he doesn’t mean calling them out, he means putting their head on a pike. Don’t let that scare you because we’re not as far from that world as we’d like to think. Deny that at your own peril. [source]

Cover unavailable

23

The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914

Richard J. Evans

4.4

From the bestselling author of The Third Reich at War, a masterly account of Europe in the age of its global hegemony; the latest volume in the Penguin History of Europe series

Richard J. Evans, bestselling historian of Nazi Germany, returns with a monumental new addition to the acclaimed Penguin History of Europe series, covering the period from the fall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I

24

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

4.4

Preview Summary

One measure, perhaps, of a book's worth, is its intergenerational pliancy: do new readers acquire it and interpret it afresh down through the ages? The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated and introduced by Gregory Hays, by that standard, is very worthwhile, indeed. Hays suggests that its most recent incarnation--as a self-help book--is not only valid, but may be close to the author's intent

Recommended by Arianna Huffington, Naval Ravikant, Chip Conley, and 12 others.

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

I find this book so inspirational and instructive, it lives on my nightstand. [source]

Chip Conley

I have given this book away to a number of people. [source]

Marvin Liao

Partner/500 Startups

My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]

Cover unavailable

25

A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age

William Manchester

4.4

From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth - the dense explosion o

Recommended by Dave Elitch and Robert Stephens.

Dave Elitch

Dave Elitch recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

Robert Stephens

@benedictevans Book looks fascinating. Check out “A World Lit Only By Fire” https://t.co/cWuTsCAHaT [source]

26

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

4.3

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi dea

Recommended by Hester Vaizey, Lawrence Kaplan, Norman Naimark, and 1 others.

Hester Vaizey

One of my students cited this book as the reason that he carried on doing history. [source]

Lawrence Kaplan

The takeaway from reading this horror-filled book is that depredations on the scale of those that Browning describes can be perpetrated anywhere and by anyone. [source]

Norman Naimark

The essential lesson of Ordinary Men is that genocide is not the exclusive preserve of fanatics, racist thugs and homicidal maniacs. It is part of the human condition, especially of humans living in society. [source]

27

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Alison Weir

4.3

Weir has tirelessly made her way through the entire labyrinth of Tudor history to tell the collective story of the six wives of Henry VIII--a vivid, full-blooded portrait of six very different women--in a work of sound and brilliant scholarship. Illustrations.

28

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

Barbara W. Tuchman

4.3

During the fateful quarter century leading up to World War I, the climax of a century of rapid, unprecedented change, a privileged few enjoyed Olympian luxury as the underclass was “heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate.” In The Proud Tower, Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-d

29

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson

4.3

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be

Recommended by Bethanye McKinney Blount.

Bethanye McKinney Blount

There's so much in this one about leadership, failures and how winners write history. [source]

30

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

4.3

Preview Summary

The sun is setting on the Western world. Slowly but surely, the direction in which the world spins has reversed: where for the last five centuries the globe turned westwards on its axis, it now turns to the east...For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The regi

Recommended by Professor Frank Mcdonough and Raoul Pal.

Professor Frank Mcdonough

Christmas is coming and if you want to give a thought-provoking book to that history fan in your life then the recent books by the brilliant @peterfrankopan will satisfy. Some write books, this guy changes perceptions. https://t.co/gWZWZnv5TN [source]

Raoul Pal

@The92ers @zerohedge It’s fascinating. The Peter Frankopan book on the Silk Roads told history well from the perspective of Iran in particular [source]

31

The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich, #1)

Richard J. Evans

4.3

From one of the world's most distinguished historians, a magisterial new reckoning with Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany.

In 1900 Germany was the most progressive and dynamic nation in Europe, the only country whose rapid technological and social growth and change challenged that of the United States. Its political culture was less authoritarian than Russia's

Cover unavailable

32

The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815

Tim Blanning, David Cannadine

4.3

The Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon), and explores an era

33

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Simon Schama

4.3

Instead of a dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital & inventive, infatuated with novelty & technology. A fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A NY Times cloth bestseller. 200 illustrations.

Recommended by Lynn Hunt.

Lynn Hunt

It’s filled with incredibly interesting titbits and anecdotes and characterisations of people. It’s generally negative about the revolution, because it’s basically about how the revolution is really, really violent. [source]

Cover unavailable

34

The Reformation: A History

Diarmaid MacCulloch

4.3

At a time when men and women were prepared to kill—and be killed—for their faith, the Protestant Reformation tore the Western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's award-winning history brilliantly re-creates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars, and politicians—from the zealous Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses to th

Recommended by Jerry Brotton.

Jerry Brotton

MacCulloch is fascinated by the key moment where many scholars would say that the Renaissance ends. [source]

35

Leonardo da Vinci

Walter Isaacson

4.3

Preview Summary

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most

Recommended by Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Ryan Holiday, and 6 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

I think Leonardo was one of the most fascinating people ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonardo had an absurdly wide range of interests, from human anatomy to the theater. Isaacson does the best job I’ve seen of pulling together the different strands of Leonardo’s life and explaining what made him so exceptional. A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. [source]

Satya Nadella

CEO/Microsoft

Microsoft CEO has plunged into what must be an advance copy of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is based on the Renaissance master’s personal notebooks, so you know we’re going to be taken into the creative mind of the genius. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

Truly excellent book about one of history’s all time greats. [source]

Cover unavailable

36

The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy

Peter H. Wilson

4.3

A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.

When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Pr

37

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution

Orlando Figes

4.3

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People’s Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today.

‘A modern masterpiece’ Andrew Marr

‘The most moving account of the Russian Revolution since Doctor Zhivago’ Independent

Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants,

Recommended by Roland Chambers and Thomas Keneally.

Roland Chambers

A People’s Tragedy is the most readable and illuminating history of the Russian revolution to be written, using material that only became available to historians following the Soviet Union’s collapse. [source]

Thomas Keneally

Well, I’ve chosen this because, from what I remember, it’s the book I most admired while I was writing about Russia because it gives the tremendous overall sweep of the entire catastrophe up to the end of the civil war in 1922 and the famine. Figes has the capacity to focus on people you’ve never heard of and show them as representatives of ideologies competing for control of the Russian state, and he looks at it on an individual basis. [source]

Cover unavailable

38

The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848

Eric Hobsbawm

4.3

This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance. Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.

39

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt

4.3

Preview Summary

Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic tr

Recommended by Dr. Phil Zimbardo, Daniel Pick, David Bell, and 1 others.

Dr. Phil Zimbardo

Talks about Eichmann as illustrating the banality of evil. [source]

Daniel Pick

The trial focused public attention on the individual high bureaucrat who had such personal responsibility in the Final Solution. There was, in a way, this enigma of what went on in Eichmann’s mind. [source]

David Bell

Political philosopher Arendt sees the work of the Nazis as the inevitable result of colonialism and industrialisation. [source]

Cover unavailable

40

The Crimean War: A History

Orlando Figes

4.3

From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians," (Financial Times) the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age

The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the

Recommended by Matthew Yglesias.

Matthew Yglesias

@cjane87 I liked Orlando Figes’ book in Crimea but it’s the only one I’ve read so I can’t say if it’s best [source]

41

The Thirty Years War

C. V. Wedgwood and Anthony Grafton

4.3

Europe in 1618 was divided between Protestants and Catholics, and Bourbon and Hapsburg, as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless independent states. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with similar abandon and relentless persistence, destroying European powers from Spain to Swed

42

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

Dan Jones

4.3

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Plantagenets chronicles the next chapter in British history—the historical backdrop for Game of Thrones

From the author of Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty

The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth century, as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. In this riveting foll

43

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

Margaret MacMillan

4.3

The First World War followed a period of sustained peace in Europe during which people talked with confidence of prosperity, progress, and hope. But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict that killed millions, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. It was a war that could have been avoided up to the last m

44

Peter the Great: His Life and World

Robert K. Massie

4.3

Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, crowned at the age of 10. A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision and colossal significance: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesse

45

The First World War

John Keegan

4.2

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about ec

46

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

Ian Mortimer

4.2

Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

47

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

Roger Crowley

4.2

Now in trade paperback, a gripping exploration of the fall of Constantinople and its connection to the world we live in today The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history, and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illumina

Cover unavailable

48

Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (World Leaders Past & Present)

Alison Weir

4.2

In this beautifully written biography, Alison Weir paints a vibrant portrait of a truly exceptional woman and provides new insights into her intimate world.

Renowned in her time for being the most beautiful woman in Europe, the wife of two kings and mother of three, Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the great heroines of the Middle Ages. At a time when women were regarded as little more than chattel

Recommended by Nancy Goldstone.

Nancy Goldstone

This is one of Alison Weir’s best books. I think she has managed to teach history to more people than Oxford University, because her books are so well written and easy to follow. She is especially good at taking time to explain the world that she writes about, so the reader gets a real feel for what it was like to live in the middle ages. Her books emphasise the colour and pageantry of that era – what everyone wore, what their jewels were like. I love that kind of book. [source]

49

Nicholas and Alexandra

Robert K. Massie

4.2

The story of the love that ended an empire.

In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and

50

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Steven Johnson

4.2

From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapid

Recommended by Alison Alvarez, Seth Mnookin, and Stephen Evans.

Alison Alvarez

I read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. [source]

Seth Mnookin

The Ghost Map is a book that I oftentimes give to people to show them how cool and exciting and accessible and gripping stories about scientific discoveries can be. [source]

Stephen Evans

Johnson looks at London during a specific moment in time, August 1854, and focuses on a particular incident, an outbreak of cholera in Soho, in Central London. [source]

51

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949

Ian Kershaw

4.2

The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with acclaimed scholar Ian Kershaw’s long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II

The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history—an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation.

52

The Third Reich in Power (The History of the Third Reich, #2)

Richard J. Evans

4.2

The definitive account of Germany's malign transformation under Hitler's total rule and the implacable march to war.

By the middle of 1933, the democracy of the Weimar Republic had been transformed into the police state of the Third Reich, mobilized around the cult of the leader, Adolf Hitler. If this could happen in less than a year, what would the future hold? Only the most fervent Nazi party l

53

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

William Dalrymple

4.2

Preview Summary

The story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country.

In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army.

The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Co

Recommended by Andrew Adonis, Carl Malamud, Ken Juster, and 3 others.

Andrew Adonis

Anyone who thinks there’s much good to say about the British Empire should read @DalrympleWill’s brilliant book on the East India Company. A long tale of plunder, extortion, war & murder Maybe the ‘dominions’ are different, but not for indigenous peoples of Australia & N Zealand [source]

Carl Malamud

@jamie_love I have. Wonderful book. [source]

Ken Juster

Great to welcome renowned author @DalrympleWill to #RooseveltHouse. Excellent discussion with this warm and thoughtful writer about his new book “The Anarchy,” which broadens our understanding of India’s complex history. #CulturalDiplomacy https://t.co/va2FL5Uefy [source]

54

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Patrick Radden Keefe

4.2

14 hours, 40 minutes

From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abducti

Recommended by Carrie Johnson, Margot Wallström, Mikko Takkunen, and 3 others.

Carrie Johnson

The best book I read last year. 📚 https://t.co/CULq9zZHEU [source]

Margot Wallström

I recommend the book ”Say nothing” about Northern Ireland and IRA. It makes fascinating reading about memories, murder, mourning and making peace. [source]

Mikko Takkunen

Just finished reading this remarkable book by @praddenkeefe. I was baffled getting this from @VeronicaSanchis as I don’t remember ever showing particular interest in the Troubles, but she obviously knows me better than I do. https://t.co/KlBCF41y47 https://t.co/PnJlLCZyQD [source]

55

The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000

Chris Wickham

4.2

An ambitious and enlightening look at why the so-called Dark Ages were anything but that.

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues th

56

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

Antony Beevor

4.2

The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that follo

Recommended by Richard Branson and Peter Snow.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

Peter Snow

Yes, it certainly was the turning point of the war. Whatever we British may claim for the titanic fight on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the Battle of Stalingrad was the real decider and Beevor’s account of it is simply brilliant. He combines a sense of strategic grasp with the incredibly detailed story of ordinary men’s experiences based on their own accounts. He did a huge amount of research into both the Russian side and the German side and he has come out with a masterly book. [source]

57

The Life of Elizabeth I

Alison Weir

4.2

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Perhaps the most influential sovereign England has ever known, Queen Elizabeth I remained an extremely private person throughout her reign, keeping her own counsel and sharing secrets with no one--not even her closest, most trusted advisers. Now, in this brilliantly researched, fascinating new book, acclaimed biographer Alison Weir shares provocative new interpretations an

58

The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom

4.2

Preview Summary

At one time Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a story to tell. For the first fifty years of her life nothing at all out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her spinster sister and their elderly father in the tiny Dutch house over their shop. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, r

Recommended by Alison Alvarez.

Alison Alvarez

What I really took with me from the book were the descriptions of how she dealt with the stress of solitary confinement and eventually the Ravensbruck concentration camp. I adapted some of her techniques for keeping her mind occupied to deal with my own problems with anxiety and worry. Also, it’s a book with a surprising amount of joy in it for subject matter that is so dark. [source]

59

Gulag: A History

Anne Applebaum

4.2

The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, t

Recommended by Edward Lucas and 1 others.

60

Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Antonia Fraser

4.2

Brilliantly written, a work of impeccable scholarship. An utterly riveting and intensely moving book by one of our finest biographers.

Never before has the life of Marie Antoinette been told so intimately and with such authority as in Antonia Fraser's newest work, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Famously known as the eighteenth-century French queen whose excesses have become legend, Marie Antoinette

61

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Tom Reiss

4.2

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the noveli

Recommended by Ryan Holiday.

Ryan Holiday

Author

Tom Reiss’s book The Black Count was impressive and a side of French history I never knew and never would have otherwise. [source]

62

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)

Art Spiegelman

4.2

A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

Recommended by James Altucher.

63

Spare

Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex

4.1

Preview Summary

Cover unavailable

64

Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe

Norman Jordan Davies

4.1

'The past is a foreign country' has become a truism, yet we often forget that the past is different from the present in many unfamiliar ways, and historical memory is extraordinarily imperfect. We habitually think of the European past as the history of countries which exist today - France, Germany, Britain, Russia and so on - but often this actually obstructs our view of the past, and blunts our s

65

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

4.1

Preview Summary

Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society

Cover unavailable

66

Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century

Mark Mazower

4.1

"A useful, important book that reminds us, at the right time, how hard [European unity] has been, and how much care must be taken to avoid the terrible old temptations." --Los Angeles Times

Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentieth century, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but a forgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rival political solutions t

67

The Third Reich at War (The History of the Third Reich, #3)

Richard J. Evans

4.1

The final volume in Richard J. Evans's masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the mobilization of a "people's community" to serve a war of conquest, and Hitler's campaign of racial subjugation and genocide.
Already hailed as "a masterpiece" (William Grimes in The New York Times) and "the most comprehensive history… of the Third Reich" (I

68

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Adam Higginbotham

4.1

The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abando

Recommended by Maggie Koerthbaker.

Maggie Koerthbaker

So I'm reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" because obviously TV viewing needs to come with a syllabus afterwards. https://t.co/bWCLHTy7fq It is very interesting contrasting the fictionalized show, the history book, and the essays meant to debunk aspects of the show. [source]

69

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque, A W. Wheen

4.1

One by one the boys begin to fall…

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

Recommended by Cécile Fabre.

Cécile Fabre

He knows that his pleasure at a beautiful landscape, at the smell of good food, will forever be coloured by what the landscape looked like in the trenches, by the food that was cooked in the trenches. [source]

70

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Ross King

4.1

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance man bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder. Not a master mason or carpenter, Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and clock maker. Over twenty-eight years, he would dedicate himself to solving puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architect

Cover unavailable

71

1066: The Year of the Conquest

David Howarth

4.1

Alternate cover for ISBN 10: 0140058508 / ISBN 13: 9780140058505

Everyone knows 1066 as the date of the Norman invasion and conquest of England. But how many of us can place that event in the context of the entire dramatic year in which it took place? From the death of Edward the Confessor in early January to the Christmas coronation of Duke William of Normandy, there is an almost uncanny symmetry,

72

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

Thomas Asbridge

4.1

The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge—a renowned historian who writes with “maximum vividness” (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker)—covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, readable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history. From Richard the Lionheart to the mighty Sala

73

Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

Bernard Cornwell

4.1

‘Some battles change nothing. Waterloo changed almost everything.’

Bestselling author Bernard Cornwell is celebrated for his ability to bring history to life. Here, in his first work of non-fiction, he has written the true story of the epic battle of Waterloo – a momentous turning point in European history – a tale of one campaign, four days and three armies.

He focuses on what it was like to be fig

Cover unavailable

74

The Age of Capital, 1848-1875

Eric Hobsbawm

4.1

In the wake of the French Revolution & the Industrial Revolution, Europe underwent another revolution--this time a revolution of values. The author examines the rise of industrial capitalism and the consolidation of bourgeois culture, exploring the effects of mounting concentration of wealth, population migrations, and the domination of European culture. Integrating economics with political and in

Cover unavailable

75

The Age of Empire, 1875-1914

Eric Hobsbawm

4.1

Discusses the evolution of European economics, politics, arts, sciences & cultural life from the height of the industrial revolution to the First World War.
Illustrations
Preface
Overture
The centenarian revolution
An economy changes gear
The age of empire
The politics of democracy
Workers of the world
Waving flags: nations & nationalism
Who's who or the uncertainties of the Bourgeoisie
The new woman
The

76

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It

Arthur Herman

4.1

Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. T

Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Raluca Radu, and 1 others.

Charles T. Munger

Vice Chairman/Berkshire Hathaway

A lot of really important stuff like: the first modern nation, the first literate society, the ideas for (modern) democracy and free markets, all originated with the Scots. [source]

Raluca Radu

In terms of business, some of the must-read books I would mention are Hooked by Nir Eyal, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik, Call To Action and Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg, Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi, How To Build Websites That Sell by Peep Laja, Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina. [source]

Cover unavailable

77

Cracking the AP European History Exam 2020, Premium Edition: 5 Practice Tests + Complete Content Review

The Princeton Review

4.1

THIS JUST IN! As of 3/20/20, in response to the novel coronavirus (covid-19), the College Board has decided to administer all 2020 exams online. You'll still be able to prep with this book! But for your best results, you'll want to modify what you're focusing on (both question types and content). Remember, everyone's in the same boat, so just do your best and keep practicing. You've got

Cover unavailable

78

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

Tom Holland

4.1

In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire. From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Au

79

The Complete Maus

Art SPIEGELMAN

4.1

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors ar

Recommended by Susan Bordo.

Susan Bordo

It’s about the Holocaust. It’s also a comic book, in which the various characters are depicted as animals – the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats. [source]

Cover unavailable

80

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Keith Lowe

4.1

The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years...

The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century’s most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our m

81

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

4.1

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them

Recommended by Adam Conover, Colin Calloway, and Scott Keyes.

Adam Conover

@TheBaltimoreSon @CharlesCMann Sure it! A total revolution in my understanding of history, all in one book. Amazing stuff. [source]

Colin Calloway

The book provides a huge hemispheric overview. [source]

Scott Keyes

It’s one of those books that takes everything you thought you knew about the history of European colonialists and indigenous groups in the Americas and turns it on its head. Just a fascinating deep-dive into early American history that questions a lot of dogma we were taught in school. [source]

82

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

Modris Eksteins

4.0

A rare and remarkable cultural history of World War I that unearths the roots of modernism

Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I, from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, to the death of Hitler in 1945. Recognizing that The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole, autho

Recommended by Brent Glass, John Cusack, and Jonathan Boff.

Brent Glass

What the Civil War was about was mass killing on a scale that we had never ever dreamed of. [source]

John Cusack

Great book ⬇️ RT @PuddockII: Wow. https://t.co/EF6Iyc0Kmc [source]

Jonathan Boff

What this book does is it views the war as a cultural phenomenon, rather than a military phenomenon. Eksteins is a cultural historian who thinks in terms of literature, music, plastic arts, and so on. [source]

83

Churchill: Walking with Destiny

Andrew Roberts

4.0

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill . . . A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain’s savior.” —Wall Street Journal

In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman and leader

Recommended by Robert Benzie.

Robert Benzie

Best book I have read this year. https://t.co/Vv3GlB426d [source]

Cover unavailable

84

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

Helen Castor

4.0

When Edward VI - Henry VIII’s longed-for son - died in 1553, extraordinarily, there was no one left to claim the title King of England. For the first time, all the contenders for the crown were female.

In 1553, England was about to experience the ‘monstrous regiment’ - the unnatural rule - of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward’s death, Matilda, dau

85

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

John Kelly

4.0

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history, even more so now, when the notion of plague—be it animal or human—has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story: how man

86

The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall

Christopher Hibbert

4.0

At its height, Renaissance Florence was a center of enormous wealth, power, and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were the Medici. This enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the ear

87

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

4.0

The name Genghis Khan often conjures the image of a relentless, bloodthirsty barbarian on horseback leading a ruthless band of nomadic warriors in the looting of the civilized world. But the surprising truth is that Genghis Khan was a visionary leader whose conquests joined backward Europe with the flourishing cultures of Asia to trigger a global awakening, an unprecedented explosion of technologi

Recommended by Ben Horowitz, Daymond John, Lisa Ling, and 2 others.

Ben Horowitz

Co-founder/Andreessen Horowitz

Unexpectedly the most interesting book on the topic of how you think about inclusion. [source]

Daymond John

Founder/FUBU

Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]

Lisa Ling

Genghis Khan was a great democratizer. His Mongol Empire conquered more territory in 25 years than the Romans did in 200. [source]

Cover unavailable

88

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

Antony Beevor

4.0

A fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Fall Of Berlin 1945

Beevor's Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge is now available from Viking Books

To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War's outbreak, Antony Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentie

89

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors

Dan Jones

4.0

Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights of Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their

Recommended by Marina Amaral.

Marina Amaral

Don't know who @dgjones is (Get The Templars because it's a fantastic book. And get a copy of Crusaders too. It will be out next month: https://t.co/t86sicCNPn) https://t.co/GvrfIsiOWV [source]

Cover unavailable

90

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age

Simon Schama

4.0

At the apogee of its powers in the seventeenth century, Holland was a tiny island of prosperity in a sea of want. Its homes were well-furnished and fanatically clean; its citizens feasted on 100-course banquets and speculated fortunes on new varieties of tulip. Yet, in the midst of plenty, the Dutch were ill at ease. In this brilliantly innovative book--which launched his reputation as one of our

91

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Stephen E. Ambrose

4.0

As good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US Army, kept getting tough assignments--responsible for everything from parachuting into France early DDay morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In "Band of Brothers," Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze & died, a company that took 150% casualties & considered

92

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Stephen Greenblatt

4.0

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manusc

Cover unavailable

93

The Children of Henry VIII

Alison Weir

4.0

At his death in 1547, King Henry VIII left four heirs to the English throne: his only son, the nine-year-old Prince Edward; the Lady Mary, the adult daughter of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; the Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and his young great-niece, the Lady Jane Grey. These are the players in a royal drama that ultimate led to Elizabeth's ascension to the

94

Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi

4.0

The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth.

In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascis

95

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Anna Funder

4.0

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of th

Recommended by Hester Vaizey and Will Storr.

Hester Vaizey

A collection of stories about people whose lives have been affected by the Stasi. [source]

Will Storr

What Stasiland does really well, is it shows that these aren’t just arguments. That these people believed these views to the roots of their souls. [source]

96

The Wars of the Roses

Alison Weir

4.0

Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the English throne. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal houses of Lancaster and York, the most complex in English history, profoundly altered the course of the monar

Cover unavailable

97

The Making of the English Working Class

E. P. Thompson

4.0

This account of artisan & working-class society in its formative years, 1780-1832, adds an important dimension to our understanding of the 19th century. E.P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making & recreates the whole life experience of people who suffered loss of status & freedom, who underwent degradation & who yet created a culture & political consciousness of great v

Cover unavailable

98

A History of Venice

John Julius Norwich

4.0

Traces the rise ot empire of this city from its 5th century beginnings all the way through until 1797 when Napolean put an end to the thousand year-old Republic. 32 pages of black and white photos, 4 maps and charts.

99

Dreadnought

Robert K. Massie

4.0

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert K. Massie has written a richly textured and gripping chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century's first great arms race. Massie brings to vivid life, such historical figures as the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz, the young, ambitious, Winston Churchill, the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow, and many

100

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt, Nadia May, et al

4.0

Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of

Recommended by Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Her most useful (and her most chilling) conclusion for today is that totalitarian tools were not specific to Nazism or Stalinism or any ideology. Arendt’s words should be studied today by those who want to prevent the further spread of authoritarian regimes and the ideologies they are propagating. [source]