Best History Books read lately?

[Zuni]

my personal favorites that I have read in the last several months are:

Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow.
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War by Eric Foner.
The Battle of Berlin by Antony Beevor.
Sideshow by William Shawcross.
Six Days of War by Michael Oren.
Downfall by Richard B. Frank
The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour Hersh
Dien Bien Phu by Howard Simpson
Seven Roads to Hell by Donald Burgett

I read very fast, and several books at once, so I have a lot of books on my list. I rarely ever watch TV, so my down time is almost always spent reading.

[Padraig18]

1. My choices (history major here):

"Lincoln", by Gore Vidal, "Knight of Another Sort (Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger)" by Gary DeNeal and "The Lincoln Reader", by Paul Angle (retired Illinois State Historian). :)

[Zuni]

2. If anyone is interested in Soviet History

which is one of my very favorite subjects
I would recommend A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes and Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick. Both are compulsively readable and are among the best books out there on Soviet History.

[NWHarkness]

7. Figes

That's a brilliant book. Good call!

[Zuni]

15. Have you read 'Gulag' by Anne Appelbaum?

It looks good, but I am hoping it will go the Library soon, so I do not have to buy it.

[joshdawg]

3. Campaigns of Napoleon

by David Chandler, but then that was some time back. Did enjoy Beevor's study on the fall of Berlin.

[Zuni]

4. What was the title?

I would love a good book on the Napoleonic Wars.

[Zuni]

5. you listed the title

sorry-my mistake.

[dwckabal]

6. Mid-19th century US history

So, I've read:

April 1865
Battle Cry of Freedom
With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln at Gettysburg

Mix of fact & fiction:

Raising Holy Hell (about John Brown)
Grant Speaks (about the "original" biography he wrote)
The Dante Club

Many many more I can't think of

[Zuni]

10. You would love Free Labor etc by Foner

it is about the abolition politics in the 1850s.
Battle Cry of Freedom is a great book. If you like the Civil War I recommend Bruce Catton's trilogy on the Union Army of the Potomac and Shelby Foote's trilogy on the whole way. Both are excellent.
A good Lincoln Book I read a while ago is 'The Day Lincoln was Shot.'

[dwckabal]

17. Thanks

I'll look those up!

[WilliamPitt]

8. 'An Unfinished Life' by Robert Dallek

about Kennedy. Extraordinary.

[Zuni]

12. I love a good biography

and love Presidential History.
My friend has a book which he says is a good analysis of George H.W. Bush's life (critical but not a demonization) and I hope to read it--called something like Lone Star Yankee

[WilliamPitt]

16. You'll love the Dallek book

[VelmaD]

9. Just finished "Aushwitz and the Allies"

for the hundredth time over the weekend. That book still disturbs me every time I read it.

DV

[WoodrowFan]

11. my list, heavy on the Progressive Era and Gilded Age

I do the same thing as an earlier poster, I have several books going at once. Here’s a recent list of those books I enjoyed in the past month.

Bosses in Lusty Chicago. Wendt, Lloyd & Herman Kogan

Paris: 1919 by Margaret Macmillan

All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 by Robert W. Rydell

Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915 by Catherine Cocks

Brinnin, John Malcolm: The Sway Of The Grand Saloon (Sea travel on the North Atlantic)

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw

[Zuni]

13. Paris 1919

Is a book I hope to check out. I have a long interest in the World Wars.

[dwckabal]

18. have you read

The Devil In The White City? Fantastic book by Erik Larson about the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the US' first serial killer, and the assasination of the Mayor of Chicago.

[pansypoo53219]

14. The Good War

By Studs terkel.
the greatest generation SUCKS in comparison.
and the Caligula Bio was VERY instuctive in Bush parallels-due for that assasination any day now(bringing him down).

[Toby109]

19. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer for obvious reasons. But its giving me the willies. One interesting parallel I have found is Mein Kampf and PNAC. Also, A Bright and Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.

[dobak]

20. yeah

Tom Paine: Apostle of Freedom

Thomas Jefferson - Richard Bernstein (new bio)

Under the Banner of Heaven

--

I am currently reading

A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America 1870-1920

[bpilgrim]

21. The Assasination of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome by

Michael Parenti


Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. They regard Roman commoners as a parasitic mob, a rabble interested only in bread and circuses. They cast Caesar, who took up the popular cause, as a despot and demagogue, and treat his murder as the outcome of a personal feud or constitutional struggle, devoid of social content. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the distinguished author Michael Parenti subjects these assertions of "gentlemen historians" to a bracing critique, and presents us with a compelling story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. Parenti shows that Caesar was only the last in a line of reformers, dating back across the better part of a century, who were murdered by opulent conservatives. Caesar's assassination set in motion a protracted civil war, the demise of a five-hundred-year Republic, and the emergence of an absolutist rule that would prevail over Western Europe for centuries to come.

Parenti reconstructs the social and political context of Caesar's murder, offering fascinating details about Roman society. In these pages we encounter money-driven elections, the struggle for economic democracy, the use of religion as an instrument of social control, the sexual abuse of slaves, and the political use of homophobic attacks. Here is a story of empire and corruption, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, slumlords and urban rioters, death squads and political witchhunts.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar offers a compelling new perspective on an ancient era, one that contains many intriguing parallels to our own times.

more...

it makes you realize once again that the only thing new in this world is the history you don't know.

two thumbs up ;->

peace

[DemoTex]

22. "Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot" by Simson is excellent.

Better is Hell in a Very Small Place: The Seige of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall. Jules Roy's The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is very good too. Howard Simpson's Tiger in the Barbed Wire is a good read too.

For the flavor of war in a strange and different time, read The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham. Sheds light on Winston Churchill's early military/spy career.