55 Of The Best History Books That Every History Buff Should Read
Missed out on the classics or looking for something new? Check out some of the best history books of all time, from ancient marvels to Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction.
Best History Books: Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari
For a comprehensive understanding of human evolution post-Darwin, replete with modern science, check out this thrilling chronicle by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.Buy it here.Amazon
A History Of The World In 100 Objects — Neil MacGregor
British art historian Neil MacGregor wrote and presented a 100-part radio series for the BBC, in conjunction with the British Museum, discussing historic objects he believed illustrated a greater story of humanity as a whole. Here are the objects in a hefty, glossy, heavily-pictured side-table collection.Buy it here.Amazon
The Natural History — Pliny the Elder
As one of the largest single works to have survived the Roman Empire, this collection of Pliny’s intellectual musings on the creation of the world are invaluable to our understanding of Ancient Romans' scientific knowledge and philosophy.Buy it here.Amazon
The Age of Augustus — Werner Eck
Written by one of the world’s leading experts on Ancient Rome, this frank account documents the violent rise and reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, without any frills.Buy it here.Amazon
War Commentaries of Julius Caesar — Julius Caesar
Caesar wrote this pamphlet to both educate and sway potential political allies on military maneuvers. He covers his participation in both the Gallic and Roman Civil wars as a third-person narrative (which isn't crazy at all...).Buy it here.Goodreads
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire — Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon’s 18th-century, six-volume masterpiece begins with the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the "five good emperors of Rome" in the second century A.D., and details the more-than-a-millennium-long demise of the Roman Empire in a blow-by-blow account of the struggles between emperors both good and depraved.Buy it here.Amazon
The Art of War — Sun Tzu
Philosopher, general, and military strategist Sun Tzu was like the Ulysses S. Grant of ancient China. His thesaurus of Chinese military maneuvers and strategies still mystifies historians who aren't even sure that Sun Tzu was one man, but rather a conglomeration of wise philosophers of yore. The book became a bestseller in 2001 when Tony Soprano mentioned it to his therapist on the eponymous HBO.Buy it here.Amazon
The Swerve — Stephen Greenblatt
More than 600 years ago, a tireless book hunter recovered a first-century B.C. poem, On the Nature of Things, by the philosopher Lucretius. The poem was centuries ahead of its time, positing that the universe operates according to physical principles and not the rule of a divine entity. Lucretius even presaged the discovery of atoms by 2,000 years. The poem was all but lost to time until one Poggio Bracciolini brushed it off in a German monastery and had it reprinted, thus restoring its influence over the evolution of the human mind.Buy it here.Amazon
On the Nature of Things — Lucretius
An Epicurean philosopher's explanation for the creation of life, the universe, and everything else. In it, Lucretius tries to make compatible both free will and determinism, which were then hotly debated existential beliefs.Buy it here.Penguin Random House
Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed — Engelbert Kaempfer
Initially written by the German naturalist and physician Engelbert Kaempfer as he explored pre-modern Japan for two years, this is the first scholarly study of Tokugawa Japan produced by and for the West. The physician’s late 17th-century experiences were later translated by Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey, a professor of Japanese history.Buy it here.Amazon
1491 — Charles C. Mann
Mann's book blew open the history of the Americas for many who didn't know that prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the western hemisphere was not a sparsely inhabited land of savages. Rather, it hosted a thriving and sophisticated assortment of indigenous tribes that farmed, used irrigation, and had the power to fundamentally alter their environment.Buy it here.Amazon
Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
This is a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of how the modern world came to be — and how geography allowed the West to dominate that world.Buy it here.Amazon
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa — Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney’s account of African history, from the pre-colonial era to European colonialism, is an essential resource for understanding the politics and challenges that post-colonial societies are forced to grapple with long after establishing independence.Buy it here.Amazon
Decolonizing The Mind — Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o
Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o is perhaps Africa’s greatest living writer and a pre-eminent scholar of post-colonial African society. Shortlisted annually for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ngũgĩ consistently grapples with the cultural legacy of European colonialism. In this book, Ngũgĩ makes the case for newly independent nations of the Global South just stepping out from under the shadow of colonialism to reject the global political duopoly between the capitalist West and the communist world and to chart their own future independent of colonial control by reclaiming the history and culture that colonization tried to erase.Buy it here.Amazon
Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty — Dan Jones
Signed eight centuries ago in England, the original Magna Carta was a mess and declared illegal by the Pope. It utterly failed to stop a Civil War. So how did this once obscure letter — whose original tenets protected only nobles — become synonymous with western democracy and liberty? Historian Dan Jones tells a complicated story of politics, war, revisions and reinterpretations, and the evolution of government principles from the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 right up through modern times.Buy it here.Amazon
Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville
An analysis of the early days of American politics following the signing of the Declaration of Independence from a Frenchman's standpoint. In the book, de Tocqueville famously refers to America as a great experiment, in so many words.Buy it here.Amazon
The Journals of Lewis and Clark — Edited by Bernard DeVoto
Lewis and Clark's journals comprised some 5,000 pages of observations and images recorded during their years-long journey westward, but this edition only includes their most riveting entries. It also includes maps and illustrations as taken by the first white documenters of the West.Buy it here.Amazon
Undaunted Courage — Stephen E. Ambrose
This is the biography of Meriwether Lewis — yes, that Meriwether Lewis — and the birth of manifest destiny. Both personal and political, the account dissects the adventures of Lewis and Clark as a microcosm for the contemporary state of the American mindset regarding the West.Buy it hereAmazon
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
After reading the diaries of Lewis and Clark, you may want to pick up this American Book Award-winning chronicle of the history of America as told through the perspective of the some 15 million Native American who first inhabited it. It also tells the story of their systematic genocide in the name of Americans' manifest destiny.Buy it here.Amazon
A People's History of the United States — Howard Zinn
Renowned historian Howard Zinn retells the story of America's creation from the perspectives of the disenfranchised, including racial minorities, women, and factory workers.Buy it here.Amazon
On the Origin of Species — Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species — his theory for evolution, natural selection, and preservation — is perhaps as important as it is controversial to understanding the very basis of human existence. Sure, it's written in the verbose, dry vernacular of 19th-century thinkers, but it is nonetheless one of the most galvanizing pieces of writing you'll ever read. Plus it looks good to have in your personal library.Buy it here.Amazon
Bolívar: American Liberator — Marie Arana
Simón Bolívar expelled Spanish rule from the South American continent, built whole governments and constitutions, fought against slavery, and won impressive military victories. Rich with first-hand accounts from those who followed Bolívar into battle, those who fought against him, and world leaders who observed the impact of his revolutions, Bolívar is an excellent example of narrative nonfiction.Buy it here.Amazon
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Former slave and celebrated thinker Frederick Douglass is as revered for his storied past as he is for his literary prowess. His autobiography is at once a story of all slaves and also the account of one especially fortunate and rare man. Read this not just for the brilliance of Douglass' prose, but for a deeper understanding of life as a black man in pre-Civil War America.Buy it here.Amazon
Team of Rivals — Doris Kearns Goodwin
Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winner, follows Abraham Lincoln on his underdog presidential campaign against three organized and experienced rivals: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. Eager to unify his party, Lincoln then invited each of the men into his cabinet, and the four of them worked together to fight the Confederacy in the Civil War.Buy it here.Amazon
Best Books About History: Manhunt — James L. Swanson
With a cry of sic semper tyrannus and a single gunshot, John Wilkes Booth changed America's destiny. Manhunt details the notorious assassination, Booth's failed conspiracy to overthrow the government, and the search to find him. Thrillingly paced, Manhunt details the two weeks in 1865 when one of the country's most beloved actors murdered the president who kept the Union united.Buy it here.Amazon
The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
In his memoirs, the United States' shrewd 18th president emphasized his time in the military, particularly during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, and wraps up as he's dying of throat cancer. The original two-volume set was published by Mark Twain soon after Grant's death.Buy it here.
The Warmth of Other Suns — Isabel Wilkerson
A poignant chronicle of the exodus of some six million freed blacks from the southern United States to the north. Wilkerson focuses on the lives of three individuals, whose stories she pieced together through more than 1,000 interviews.Buy it here.Amazon
Devil in the White City — Erik Larson
An eerie true-crime account that reads like a novel, Devil in the White City is the chilling story of one group of men trying to erect a utopia in Chicago while a murderer lurks in the shadows. The 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago provides the backdrop for the grisly crimes of H.H. Holmes, a conman-turned-serial killer, who targeted vulnerable visitors to the fair's White City to kill and sell them to medical schools desperate for practical experience on human remains. The creepiest bit: The hotel he built to trap his victims was complete with secret passages and trapdoors.Buy it here.Amazon
In the Heart of the Sea –— Nathaniel Philbrick
The American classic Moby-Dick is actually based on the tragic shipwreck of the 1820 whaler, Essex, whose history Philbrick explores in exacting detail. Though the book chronicles a very real account of a sperm whale attacking and eventually sinking a commercial whaler, it is also cloaked in the gothic uncanniness that comes with the open seas, beasts of unimaginable size, and a perilous journey into the unknown.Buy it here.Amazon
To The Finland Station — Edmund Wilson
A painstaking look at the climate of European politics and society from the French Revolution to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. If you’re looking for a summary of the modern history of Europe that doesn’t skimp on any of the most galvanizing moments, then this account is for you.Buy it here.Amazon
The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Of all the books you probably shouldn't have missed in history class, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' manifesto is one of them. The 1848 pamphlet is the written birth of the theory of Communism and provoked a series of revolutions in Germany the very year it was published.Buy it here.Amazon
The Guns of August — Barbara Tuchman
A masterpiece of political and military history, Barbara Tuchman's work chronicles the outbreak and first month of the First World War. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tuchman's retelling of the politics of the war, the shell-shock experienced by the combatants, and the staggering number of casualties in the first weeks of modern mechanized warfare, is unparalleled.Buy it here.Amazon
The Radium Girls — Kate Moore
In 1917, 15 years after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre isolated the radioactive substance radium, watch factories began applying the luminescent substance to watch dials — and assigned women to apply it. These so-called Radium Girls were instructed to create a point with their paintbrushes using their lips, and as a result many of them died from radiation poisoning.Buy it here.Amazon
My Own Story — Emmeline Pankhurst
This is the 1914 memoir of the badass British suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, who wasn't afraid to use violence to earn women the vote. She famously said to a crowd of women, "I incite this meeting into rebellion!", forever changing the face of protest in the suffrage movement the nation over.Buy it here.Goodreads
The River of Doubt — Candice Millard
Of all his exploits, Theodore Roosevelt's venture into the Amazon following his defeat in the 1912 presidential election proved to be his most epic and life-threatening. The absolutely torturous expedition met Roosevelt with tribal attacks, disease, and poisonous creatures; he nearly died of tropical disease. His success up the Amazon River not only proved his own fortitude, but changed the map of the Western hemisphere.Buy it here. Amazon
History of the Russian Revolution — Leon Trotsky
Trotsky's retelling of the Russian Revolution shook the foundations of the modern world. The account is unapologetically partisan, yet remains one of the greatest histories of the Russian Revolution of 1917 ever produced, and was written by one of its prime movers. Rarely do histories enjoy such an intimate vantage point.Buy it here.Amazon
The Diary of Anne Frank
If the diary of a Jewish teen in hiding wasn't on your school reading list, then maybe add it to your current one. For two years, Dutch 13-year-old Anne Frank hid in an annex with her family and others. The diary is remarkable for its poignancy and painful honesty. Even in the face of genocide and her own mortality, Anne Frank is nothing but a positive, lovesick, teenaged girl.Buy it here.Amazon
The Longest Day — Cornelius Ryan
Cornelius Ryan's definitive chronicle of the D-Day invasion of Normandy by the Allies in World War II retells the ground-level stories of commanders, officers, paratroopers, and civilians who fought and lived through the largest amphibious invasion in modern history. Ryan's account of the invasion is based on extensive first-hand reporting and interviews conducted with people involved in the fighting up and down the chain of command, on both sides of the conflict.Buy it here.Amazon
A Bridge Too Far — Cornelius Ryan
The third book Cornelius Ryan wrote about World War II, A Bridge Too Far, follows up on The Longest Day with the chronicle of the joint British and American "Operation Market Garden," an audacious plan in 1944 to quickly capture several key bridges on the road from the Netherlands to Berlin that would bring the war in Europe to a quick end. But the operation failed, and the Allied paratroopers' doomed fight to hold onto just one bridge produced twice as many casualties as the entire D-Day invasion.Buy it here.Amazon
Enemy at the Gates — William Craig
One of the most brutal and bloody fights in the history of warfare, the Battle of Stalingrad was where the Nazi advance was broken. William Craig travelled around the world to collect first-person accounts of the fight from both soldiers and civilians, producing a definitive documentary account of the battle that has no equal.Buy it here.Amazon
The Nazi Doctors — Robert Jay Lifton
Lifton's book delves into the role doctors and medical procedures played in perpetuating the Holocaust. It's horrifying, disturbing, and ultimately integral to understanding the lengths the Nazis took to promote their Aryan vision of utopia.Buy it here.Amazon
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
Shirer was a newspaper and radio correspondent living in Germany during the lead-up to World War II, and his 1960 book is considered the definitive history of Nazi Germany. Chronicling Adolf Hitler's rise from a lowly party functionary to one of the greatest villains in all of human history, Rise and Fall uses extensive personal reporting, documentary evidence, and interviews to reconstruct the complete story of the emergence and destruction of the Nazi regime.Buy it here.Amazon
The Last Days of Hitler — Hugh Trevor-Roper
When this book was first formally published in 1947, Hitler had been dead by his own hand just two years — and it was still news. Hitler had been missing for four months in 1945 when Hugh Trevor-Roper, a German intelligence officer, was sent to look for him. As Trevor-Roper pieces together the fate of the Führer, so too does the reader learn how it was that the Third Reich came to its violent end.Buy it here.Amazon
Eichmann in Jerusalem — Hannah Arendt
Jewish reporter and political theorist Hannah Arendt escaped Germany before the Holocaust and went on to chronicle the trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann for the the New Yorker. Her account is a terrifyingly intimate glimpse into the mind that facilitated the genocide of millions of people.Buy it here.Amazon
Enemies — Tim Weiner
Enemies "is the first definitive history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations," detailing agency's evolution from a tiny government agency with a few dozen employees to a post-9/11 security behemoth.Buy it here.Amazon
Notes of a Native Son — James Baldwin
James Baldwin's contribution to culture is exponential; it seems every year we're invited to revere him in another way. And with good reason. Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son is his first nonfiction work in which the writer deftly explores through a collection of essays, critiques, and observations, the racial climate of his time. It is perhaps in this account that Baldwin first established himself as the literary and cultural genius he was destined to become.Buy it here.Amazon
Silent Spring — Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring marries prose with science so artfully that even climate change deniers would be hard-pressed to remain unmoved. When first published in 1962, the general public was still largely unaware of its impact on the environment, but Carson's look at the adverse effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides on our ecosystems changed all of that. Carson uses anecdotes of her hometown to portray how humans have trampled and destroyed the environment, illustrating how once-lively forests as now eerily quiet and bereft of life. Silent Spring became the fuel for the modern environmental movement.Buy it here.Amazon
The Feminine Mystique — Betty Friedan
Friedan's groundbreaking feminist treatise was the impetus for American second-wave feminism. In 1963, the persistent, male-driven media narrative that women could only derive happiness from marriage and housewifery was driving hoards of women into depression. With her background in psychology, Friedan managed to translate complicated jargon into relatable prose, galvanizing a generation of (mostly white and middle-class) women to fight for equity and freedom.Buy it here.Goodreads
Lady Bird and Lyndon — Betty Caroli
A poignant portrait of the complex relationship between Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, President Lyndon B. Johnson, revealing just how much the president was influenced by his wife. Readers may be surprised to learn just how much power Lady Bird exercised during her husband's time in office.Buy it here.Amazon
The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Militant civil rights activist Malcolm X collaborated with journalist Alex Haley over two years to complete this work, which was published soon after his 1965 assassination. The book chronicles the activist's spiritual conversions, his philosophical treatises, and of course, his evolution into the international figure he became.Buy it here.Amazon
A Rumor of War — Philip Caputo
The harrowing memoir of a U.S. Marine during the early years of the Vietnam War. His story was featured in the Ken Burns documentary series, The Vietnam War, but Caputo's memoir proves a much more intimate and poignant experience. This 40th anniversary edition includes a forward by American novelist Kevin Powers, who wrote that when his own children come to him asking about the nature of war, he will answer with this book.Buy it here.Amazon
The Most Dangerous Man in America — Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis
This truly stranger-than-fiction gonzo journalism account of the clash between culture and politics in the 1960swill satisfy conspiracy theorists and '60s-era obsessives alike. The book first chronicles the prison escape of ex-Harvard professor and LSD evangelist Timothy Leary, with the help of the militant leftist group the Weather Underground. Meanwhile, President Richard Nixon is mulling over what to do about Vietnam, unrest at home, and how this loose-cannon professor might disrupt his political agenda.Buy it here.Amazon
A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking
In layman's terms, Hawking explores life, the universe, and everything in between. Written by one of the foremost physicists of the modern era, the book was a massive success, staying on the New York Times Bestseller List for a whopping 147 weeks (that's nearly three years).Buy it here.Amazon
Into Thin Air — Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer is a mountaineer and an author, the perfect combo for a nail-biting account of what it's like to ascend the mountain of all mountains: Everest. This is the story of a 1996 ascent of Everest, and discusses those who tried and failed before Krakauer's expedition. It's a very exciting read.Buy it here.Amazon
Why Nations Fail — Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
Through the lens of economic history, an economist and a political scientist explore the evolutions and devolutions of various societies through time. Believe it or not, the account isn't even a wee bit dry.Buy it here.Amazon
55 History Books That Will Change Your Outlook On Life View GalleryThe holiday season is upon us — what would make a better gift than the gift of hindsight? From Ancient Rome philosophers to the gonzo journalists of the 1970s, these history books encompass the perils, the pitfalls, and the peculiarities of humanity's shared past.
"Historical nonfiction" is defined as a fact-based account as interpreted through the author's own imagination. In other words, it is the perfect synthesis of reality and one's interpretation of that reality. For this reason, historical nonfiction is an invaluable tool for interacting with and understanding our history.
Historical nonfiction has the power to transform what we think about the past, illuminating its relevance and meaning, and making it easier for us to grasp and remember.
A picture may say 1,000 words, but a memoir uses 1,000 words to achieve time travel.
The horrors of the Vietnam War are well documented, but imagine experiencing them through the eyes, the words, and the mind of a person who had endured it? That's what A Rumor of War, a memoir by Philip Caputo, does.
Some may know the story of Adolf Eichmann, the so-called Architect of the Holocaust, and how a teenage girl caught him after World War II hiding out in Venezuela.
His trial was then covered by a political theorist who was intimately affected by Eichmann's decisions, German-Jewish reporter Hannah Arendt, who was fortunate enough to flee Europe before the Holocaust. Her account of the Nazi official's trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem, has made this list of best history books.
For more stories from courageous Jewish women, you should also check out The Diary of Anne Frank, a must-read for World War II and literary buffs alike.
Some of these titles are not so much retrospectives as they are thermometers for the climate of a given time. The Communist Manifesto and The Feminine Mystique, for instance, are treatises on the pitfalls of their respective eras and pose questions for future generations while making bold predictions. Reading them now can show us either how far we have come or what still needs to be done.
The best history books of all time have proven to be truly galvanizing to the present since their publication. As Erik Christiansen reasoned in his Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America, post-World War II Americans were drawn to historical nonfiction as a means of grappling with the horrors they'd just endured on the world stage. We sometimes have to use the lens of what was in order to see what is.
As the old adage goes, "history is written by the victors." That is, too often the historical canon is written by those who've come out on top — and who have a vested interest in justifying their victories as good and right.
In an effort to avoid this folly, we've included titles that contradict each other. We present the history of exploring the American West as told by Lewis and Clark, but then again as experienced by the Native Americans who were driven from their ancestral homes as the victims of so-called Manifest Destiny.
The story of history is a varied, complicated, and altogether messy one, so we won't pretend to have chosen books that create a neat chronicle of time. We do hope, however, that this list makes you view history with empathy.
See something missing from this list of the best history books of all time? Be sure to comment below.
After this look at the best history books of all time, read up on James Joyce's absolutely filthy letters to his wife (if you can stomach it). Then, take a closer look at the most horrifying arena in World War II, the Pacific Theater.
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