Mary Beard's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Mary Beard recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Mary Beard's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

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Yassmin's Story

Yassmin Abdel-Magied

3.7

Including new chapters.

Frank, fearless, funny, articulate, and inspiring, Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air—and hope. At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she was the only woman and certainly the only Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian background Muslim woman. With her hijab quickly christened a "tea cosy," there

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

@yassmin_a hope to see you soon! BOOK LOOKS GREAT [source]

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Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars

Francesca Wade

4.3

'I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting.' Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925

In London during the interwar years, five women's lives intertwined around one address. Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Ja

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

this is a great book! https://t.co/ZarOoEyU6l [source]

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The Last Days of Pompeii

Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

3.8

The decadence of Roman society and the dramatic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Recommended by Mary Beard and Simon Winchester.

Mary Beard

This book was phenomenally successful in the 19th century. When these books touch a generation there’s a reason for it. [source]

Simon Winchester

It didn’t teach us much about the science of volcanoes but it taught us the aphorism that man lives on this planet subject to geological consent which can be withdrawn at any time. [source]

The Greeks and the Irrational

E. R. Dodds

4.3

In this philosophy classic, first published in 1951, E.R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology & psychology, he asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?" Praised by reviewers as "

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

This is one of the books that made me decide that classics was worth spending a lifetime on. [source]

The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero

P. Cornelius Tacitus

4.2

Here is a lively new translation of Cornelius Tacitus' timeless history of three of Rome's most memorable emperors. Tacitus, who condemns the depravity of these rulers, which he saw as proof of the corrupting force of absolute power, writes caustically of the brutal and lecherous Tiberius, the weak and cuckolded Claudius, and "the artist" Nero. In particular, his gripping account of the bloody rei

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

This is the best work of history ever written. [source]

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Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology

Moses I. Finley, Brent D. Shaw

4.4

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

Oh very sober, very sober! I think I’ve chosen these books because all of them made a big difference to me. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. With Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology by Moses Finley it’s all about politics. [source]

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

Mary Douglas

4.3

Professor Douglas makes points which illuminate matters in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science and help to show the rest of us just why and how anthropology has become a fundamentally intellectual discipline.

Recommended by Mary Beard.

Mary Beard

It’s regarded as quite old-fashioned now and the author Mary Douglas, who died recently, somewhat recanted on many of the things that she said. But, for me and still for many of my students, it’s a book that really opened my eyes. It showed me that you could theorize about things that you had always taken for granted and thought didn’t need explaining. Douglas set out to defamiliarize our own culture. One of her favourite party pieces is she goes through all the dietary prohibitions in Leviticus. She said, look at these carefully and you will see there’s a logic to them. What’s being prohibited in terms of eating is very often those animals or foodstuffs which don’t fit into a set category. For example, pigs don’t fall into any particular category because of their feet. In order to make sense of society, cultures like to group things. When objects fall outside those groups they are either reviled or revered. [source]