History Books–Top Ten TUesday

Hello! Today is Tuesday, and The Artsy Reader Girl is hosting another Top Ten Tuesday. Today is a genre freebie. I decided to write about a genre I normally don’t get to write about a lot on Top Ten Tuesday: history books.

While I have written about some of these books, they don’t always get their own spotlight. Today I’ll try to make my choices some of the more fun books to read, rather than the ones that might have more jargon and are written primarily for history geeks. Although I think my favorite history era is Medieval, there aren’t as many of those books, so you’ll only see a couple.

So here are ten history books that perhaps you might like too?

1. Defying Hitler—Sebastian Haffner. I have talked about his book on Top Ten Tuesday before, and I think it’s a pretty important book. It’s his unfinished memoir about his time in Germany, from his childhood to 1933, which was a pivotal year for Germany, where people went from being mostly normal to being fanatical about Hitler and even beating up people who wouldn’t give the Nazi salute.

2. In the Garden of Beasts—Erik Larson. I recently reread this book. This also takes place in early Nazi Germany, from 1933 to 1934, although it does have some scenes that take place before and after those pivotal years. This book follows that ambassador to Germany and his daughter, Martha. The ambassador, William, was hoping that Germany would be a fairly easy job that would allow him to write his history on the Old South before the Civil War. It didn’t exactly turn out that way.

At first, Martha thinks that Germany is great and that everybody is exaggerating things. As the year progresses, things slowly change.

If you haven’t read any books by Erik Larson before, they’re always great. This was the first book I read of his, but I’ve read several others. I’m sure I’ll read more in the future. He tries to write them like a story, even though they’re nonfiction.

3. A Rome of their Own—Emma Southon. When most people think of history, funny probably isn’t the first word that comes to their minds. Most of Emma’s books can be described that way, however. I would definitely recommend this book, as well as A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. I don’t remember A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum being quite as funny (I mean, the book was all about murder, so there’s that), but it was also pretty informative.

She does put quite a lot of curse words in her books, but if you’re looking for Roman history that isn’t stuffy, you might want to try out her books.

4. Pox Romana—Colin Elliott. During the time of Marcus Aurelius, there was a plague that took over Rome. It may have left an impression on his son, Commodus, that made him such a terrible emperor. I suppose it probably helps to know a little bit about Ancient Rome before reading this book, but you don’t have to be an expert or anything. It’s a book about plague! I like reading about plagues; I’m probably not the only one.

5. A Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England—Ian Mortimer. If you ever wake up in the 14th century, you’re going to wish you had read this book. This is probably the most entertaining book on Medieval times I have read (they often tend to be a little more serious). This book will help you understand a little better about how to get around, how to dress, and what you’ll be eating. It’s not all knights and kings! Or the plague, which started to run amok in the middle of this century.

6. The History of the Medieval World—Susan Wise Bauer. Ms. Bauer wrote some really good history books for homeschoolers that I used with my kids when they were little, called The Story of the World. She wrote three volumes on history for adults. My only disappointment is that she wrote four books for the kids, but only three books for the adults. Her books cover history from all over the world, not just in Europe, which a lot of people think of when they think of “Medieval”. Each chapter contains a timeline, so you can see how the chapter you just read fits in with the overall history of the time. There’s a lot here, and at some points it gets a little more graphic than the history textbooks you may have had when you were in high school.

7. The Discoverers—Daniel J. Boorstin. I first read this book in college and although it came out in 1983, it’s one of my favorites. It covers the history of discovery and covers topics that I never really thought about otherwise. Why do we say “o’clock” when we tell the time? Was there any other kind of time? How did people figure out how there were 365 1/4 days in the year anyway? While I think I’ve always liked history, I think this book was the one where I really started becoming interested in it. Although at the time, the History Channel actually had history on it (I know, weird concept) and I used to always love their show In Search of History.

8. The Hello Girls—Elizabeth Cobbs. If you want a book to make you angry, you should read The Hello Girls by Elizabeth Cobbs. This is the story of the phone operators that were enlisted as soldiers during World War I. The US Army decided it wanted ladies that spoke French to operate these positions because they typically could do a better job than the guys; they needed to be able to speak French because they would have to deal with a lot of French speakers as a lot of the battles were being fought there. Sadly, after they had done their time, the US government didn’t want to acknowledge their status as veterans. It took decades to fix this wrong (most were already dead by the time they did).

9. Goliath’s Curse—Luke Kemp. This book goes over the history of how over time, people have tended to group together in societies headed by leaders. Sometimes (often) the leaders tend to become corrupt and hoard a lot of the wealth for themselves, and how ordinary people sometimes benefit when these societies collapse. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions about what should be done in the future, but I did find the history really interesting.

10. 1177 BC—Eric H. Cline. About a millennium before Jesus, the world as the people at the time knew it drastically changed. We think there was a drought for nearly 100 years. People migrated from the places they were born to other places where they could more easily find food. The Egyptians left records complaining about the “Sea Peoples” invading. And the Minoan civilization, which some people think were the origin of the Atlantis story, disappeared from history.

He does have a follow-up book, After 1177 BC, which talks about how things changed after the collapse (and I believe he’s turning this topic into a trilogy). Cline did work with Luke Kemp on Goliath’s Curse as well. I don’t know a great deal about this period of history, but it was interesting to learn about the Bronze Age Collapse and how it led to the formation of new societies like the Israelites and the democracy of the Greeks (although part of that is talked about in the follow up book).

So there are ten books that talk about history.

What genre did you write about this week?