History Books to Read
A reddit reader posed the question "I want to read 12 history books in one year to know 'all the things', what should be on the list?"
After much debate, the 12 below were chosen.
1. A History of the Modern World
…offers a wide-ranging survey that helps readers understand both the complexities of great events (e.g., the French Revolution, the First World War, or the collapse of great imperial systems) and the importance of historical analysis. It also provides a careful summary of the modern political changes that have affected the social and cultural development of all modern cultures.
2. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
This is the best history we have of Europe in the postwar period and not likely to be surpassed for many years.
3. Walking Since Daybreak
Part history, part memoir, this unconventional account of the fate of the Baltic nations is also an important reassessment of WWII and its outcome.
4. A People's Tragedy
Written in a narrative style that captures both the scope and detail of the Russian revolution, Orlando Figes's history is certain to become one of the most important contemporary studies of Russia as it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
5. China: A History
Keay's narrative spans 5,000 years, from the Three Dynasties (2000–220 BC) to Deng Xiaoping's opening of China and the past three decades of economic growth. Broadly chronological, the book presents a history of all the Chinas—including regions (Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria) that account for two-thirds of the People's Republic of China land mass but which barely feature in its conventional history.
6. The Arabs, A History
No better guide to the modern history of the Arab world could be found than Eugene Rogan. He is attentive as much to the insider accounts in Arab memoirs as to the imperial schemes hatched in drawing rooms in Paris and London, as concerned with popular movements and uprisings as with elite reformism, and unafraid to confront directly and with the best evidence and documentation available the vexed issues of colonialism, Orientalism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
7. Orientalism
Regardless of whether the reader agrees with it, anyone with an interest in the Middle East should have read this book at least once.