Books

After seeing it placed in an episode of Ozark, I took on reading Tony Judt's Postwar. Such an incredible recount of the lived experiences of Europeans from 1945 to 2005.

While I was reading it, I stumbled into an article titled "The Man Who Freed Me From Cant" written by Ta-Nehisi Coates — another of my favourite authors. Though not a historian, his books and articles record contemporary history with combination of indomitable force and ineffable grace.

The Indifferent Stars Above It’s a book about the Donner Party. Unfortunately all lost people learn about is “people eat each other” but the actual story so much more intriguing and that one little anecdote really minimizes the whole thing. It’s a string of bad luck coupled with greedy speculators, classism, hubris, and plain stubbornness.

The crazy thing to me is how close they almost made it to not being stuck in the mountains, one day. They sent a group out to try and get to California and alert people to their plight, that story is harrowing in its own right. Add to that, many of the survivors settled in some of the most beautiful and now expensive land in California and it’s just a wild ride from beginning to end.

It's not a perfect fit for the question, but I absolutely loved the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser.

Flashman was the antagonist in a much older book called Tom Brown School Days. Flashman was the school bully who made Tom's life hell.

In the Flashman novels, he has been expelled from the private school and joins the military. As an officer in the British army, he is present at and influences most of the major battles of the early and middle 19th century.

He is an appalling coward, a disgusting misogynist, and generally all-round horrible person.

But the books do an excellent job of describing the politics and military actions, as well as the cultures where they are set. There may be better history books, but nothing has stayed in my mind as well as Fraser's descriptions as the retreat from Afghanistan, Little Bighorn, The charge of the light brigade, and many others.

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2020) Rashid Khalidi

IDK about best, but it's the history that affected me. If you're looking for something that covers the entire Israel/Palestine conflict, this is an excellent resource.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin.

The history of oil is so much more interesting than it might appear at first glance. It's part technological history, corporate intrigue, political thriller, and more.

Honorary second place to The Long Shadow: the Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century. WWII tends to get a lot more attention in popular histories, but WWI really set the stage for the trajectory of Europe in the 20th century and the end of colonialism.

Best General-ed goes to A History of the Popes by O’Malley. It’s a great throughline that touches on a massive swath of western history and adds depth to common narratives of the church. (You can probably skip it though if you’re the type who already has strong opinions on the Council of Calcedon or papal investiture.)

Best Prose goes to The Power Broker by Caro. Too much ink spilled on that one for me to do it justice, but suffice it to say it’s a widely-cited nominee for greatest all-time nonfiction works.

Best Insight goes to Hamalainen’s Comanche Empire. I don’t have enough praise for this one: It’s the story of the Comanches from ~1600-1900, but has wider insights that tie into empire and culture on a global level. Highly recommend as a paired reading with McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

William Dalrymple's books on South Asian history. The man could have easily been a novelist with his writing style.

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is quite good. It explores Reserve Police Battalion 101, composed of “ordinary men” who become ruthless killers conducting the early stages of the holocaust. It’s a heavy subject so I’d advise you ensure you’re in a good headspace before reading. But the lessons it teaches in how a regime radicalizes its citizens to commit heinous crimes against innocent people are, unfortunately, quite relevant today.

The Execution of Private Slovik by William Bradford Huie. Very niche book, but tightly wound narrative that sticks to the facts while giving you the complexities to come to your own nuanced opinion. It's a biography of the only man to ever be executed in the 20th century for dereliction and refusing to fight after having been drafted. The entire affair is a microcosm of human tragedy.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I listen to the audiobook at least once a year. It's the history of a lot of science.

It's a niche topic but this is a genuinely well-written and weirdly exciting book considering we all know how the story ends. A thoughtful theory on how the damage to Titanic occurred when she hit the iceberg.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-last-log-of-the-titanic/david-brown/9780071364478