History Book Recommendations

[KevTheGooner]

Howard Zinn - People's History of the US
Dee Brown - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Wallace Stegner - Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (bio)
Studs Terkel - The Good War
Edward Countryman - The American Revolution

more later when I get home to refresh my memory on some authors.

[Zenit]

A qucik spin through the best I've read, in English.

900 Days - Harrison Salisbury
Lenin's Tomb & Resurrection - David Remnick
Rasputin File, Stalin & The Last Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky
Lenin - Robert Service
The Red Orchestra - Gilles Perrault
East of the Sun - Benson Bobrick
Body of Secrets - James Bamford
Anything by Barbara Tuchman, but especially The First Salute & A Distant Mirror

[KevTheGooner]

Zenit - I just finished Peter the Great, by Robert Massie. Always wondered how a Russian would find this book, since it was written by a yank. I loved it...all 880 pages!

Others:
John Keegan - The Face of Battle
Norman Davies - Europe, A History
Richard Rhodes - Making of the Atomic Bomb

all of them must reads..if you've got the time!

[DynamoKiev_USA]

You've got to go with Will Durant.

Heroes of History
History of Philosophy
Greates Minds and Ideas of All Times.

[YankHibee]

I've decided I will only post one at a time. So to start--The Making of the English Working Class, EP Thompson

[Karl K]

Howard Zinn - People's History of the US

Leftist claptrap.

Required reading, in that it is so influential, but in the end, anti-capitalist, hate-America claptrap.

Whenever someone holds up Zinn as an icon, I always go to the 11th grade essay written by Pamela Weintraub, and published a review on Amazon. If this 11th grader can skewer Zinn, what does that tell you?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0060528370/ref=cm_rev_next/104-8135033-1475941?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=41


The following is an essay I wrote today for my Honors Eleventh Grade American History class, for which this book is the text:


In Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, history is told from the point of view of the oppressed rather than of the oppressors. Therefore, instead of trying to find a middle ground of truth, Zinn deems it a moral crime to side with oppressors (as he believes traditional American history text books do), and then simply sides with the other extreme (the oppressed). As a result of viewing history through the eyes of the oppressed, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States ends up being even more skewed and partisan than traditional history texts.

...

In A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn's black and white approach to American history whittles down all of the complexities and nuances of almost two hundred and thirty years into a simple, easy-to-understand struggle between executioner and executed. That, according to Zinn, is all that American history is, and beyond more than two centuries of oppression, it is not important to understand anything else about American history; indeed, Zinn almost seems to suggest that there is nothing else to American history. But even this approach is not simple enough for Zinn's readers. No, to relate the viewpoints of both the oppressors and the oppressed would be too complicated, and so Zinn only gives us the viewpoint of the oppressed. History is not an abstraction, and it is not to be presented as opinion. History is real, it is fact, it happened, and when an historian begins taking sides, he ceases to be an historian, and becomes a moralist. History as told by a moralist should never be relied on as fact; it is opinion, nothing more.

[KevTheGooner]

Leftist claptrap.

Required reading, in that it is so influential, but in the end, anti-capitalist, hate-America claptrap.

Whenever someone holds up Zinn as an icon, I always go to the 11th grade essay written by Pamela Weintraub, and published a review on Amazon. If this 11th grader can skewer Zinn, what does that tell you?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0060528370/ref=cm_rev_next/104-8135033-1475941?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=41

Hey man..did I say he was an icon? hell no. I said it was a good book, for what its trying to do. Of course its leftist. But it ain't claptrap if you read it with open eyes. The guy is telling stories about people who don't get their stories told..women in factories in Lynn MA working 75 hour weeks and being fired when they're an hour late...hardscrabble farmers losing everything to the banks...black tenant farmers losing ground at the end of the 19th century...vicious union busting in Flint MI. Its not pretty. Yeah, Zinn tries too hard to paint a leftist portrait of capitalism. But along the way he did open my eyes to some painful stories that are worth hearing.

[ElJefe]

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

[KevTheGooner]

You've got to go with Will Durant.

Heroes of History
History of Philosophy
Greates Minds and Ideas of All Times.

What about Story of Civilization? Just looking at Amazon...it looks amazing. I'd never heard of the guy thanks!

repped

[DynamoKiev_USA]

What about Story of Civilization? Just looking at Amazon...it looks amazing. I'd never heard of the guy thanks!

repped


He is really really smart, and really really ideology-free.

If you're into audio-books, Durant's audio-books are extremely well narrated.

[DynamoKiev_USA]

Leftist claptrap.

Required reading, in that it is so influential, but in the end, anti-capitalist, hate-America claptrap.

Whenever someone holds up Zinn as an icon, I always go to the 11th grade essay written by Pamela Weintraub, and published a review on Amazon. If this 11th grader can skewer Zinn, what does that tell you?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0060528370/ref=cm_rev_next/104-8135033-1475941?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=41

Howard Zinn's is a fascinating book, and certainly extremely informative. It MUST be required reading, because Zinn is right -- the side of the oppressed is not represented in traditional histories. He says outright in the introduction, that the book is biased, and he intentionally takes the point of view of minority groups because it is a point of view that is not heard enough. It's pretty dumb to use Zinn's book as your sole source of information about US history, but I think that it certainly does provide a very well formulated "second opinion". There's no need to hide from the ugly parts of history.

[Mel Brennan]

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0684809079.01._AA400_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

The President of the University of Chicago submits:

[Pfaff's book]...observes that myths of history and utopian visions - especially in the wake of World War I, when warfare was mechanized and industrialized to the point of enabling unprecedented slaughter with no redeeming value whatever - motivated unprecedented inhumanity in the name of good works. Violence has been justified by beliefs in a utopian vision of the future and has been regarded as redemptive. The principle danger here has arisen from what Pfaff calls "tragic illusions about history..."

[Michael K.]

Spiro Kostof - A History of Architecture

The City in History - Lewis Mumford

Both excellent books about the history of the built environment and it's effects on and expression of human cultures.

Only history buffs can appreciate these Arch. books.


http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0375700447.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Joseph Rykwert - The Seduction of Place.

This was in that same vein, and as a non-specialist, I really got a lot out of it. I'll have to get my hands on the two you mention, cautious as I am about Mumford. (I know he's tremendously influential and all, I'm just more touched by Jane Jacobs.)

[DoctorJones24]

A Different Mirror: A Multicultural History of America (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316831115/ref=sib_rdr_dp/103-6001015-3231061?%5Fencoding=UTF8&no=283155&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&st=books)- Ronald Takaki
Where Zinn focused on class struggle, Takaki focuses on ethnicity. He's probably the father of Ethnic Studies, and this is a classic.

John Adams (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743223136/qid=1128053132/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-6001015-3231061?v=glance&s=books)- David McCullough
Compelling and informative, particularly in how his relationship with Jefferson emerges.

The Great War and Modern Memory (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195133323/qid=1128053320/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-6001015-3231061?v=glance&s=books)- Paul Fussell
Mandatory reading for anyone interested in how the 20th century turned into the age of irony.

The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201632217/qid=1128053536/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/103-6001015-3231061?v=glance&s=books) - Fatima Mernissi
Much more engaging (and grounded in brilliant historical analysis) than the title lets on. Mernissi convincingly calls into questions some basic hadiths used to justify much of Islam's current misogyny.

[Michael K.]

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0226518825.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought
by Uday Singh Mehta

Learn to love, or at least respect, Burke.

Recommended to Dr. Wankler a few months ago, recommended to you all now, though it is a bit academic.

[KevTheGooner]

Spiro Kostof - A History of Architecture

The City in History - Lewis Mumford

Both excellent books about the history of the built environment and it's effects on and expression of human cultures.

Only history buffs can appreciate these Arch. books.

Very cool...I'll look into these. I have been interested in the counter-hypothesis too, the effect of the natural environment on cultures, especially the America West. Marc Reisner's book Cadillac Desert, while biased, is a great example of that type of comparison.

[Toon³]

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/2253150959.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

My favourite book of all time. He is one of the best WW2 writers out there.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0140286969.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Not as good as Stalingrad but still an excellent book

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1862076553.02._BO01,224,223,220_PIsitb-dp-arrow,TopRight,22,-21_SH30_PE20_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

This has several stories about life under the Stasi Secret Police in East Germany. They are told by the people that experianced it and some of them are unbelieveable. Some of the best parts of the book are about the author trying to track down ex-stasi members.

[YankHibee]

We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis

some triumphalism, but still a good book

[Dr. Wankler]

Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought
by Uday Singh Mehta

Learn to love, or at least respect, Burke.

Recommended to Dr. Wankler a few months ago, recommended to you all now, though it is a bit academic.

Confirmed and seconded. Damn fine book.

[Dr. Wankler]

And I will also second The Making of the English Working Class, and add E.P. Thompson's companion volume, Customs in Common (While not directly history, Thompson's attack on French post-structuralist marxist Louis Althusser in The Poverty of Theory is also excellent.

Paul Fussell's Great War and Modern Memory is, as Dr. Jones said, excellent. His later work on WWII, Wartime isn't quite as good, but it's worth reading.

Also in the military history vein, John Keegan's The Face of Battle: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme is a compelling look at military history from the perspective of the soldiers fighting the battles, not the commanders executing the war.