History of Greek Culture by Jacob Burckhardt Burckhardt was a towering scholar and a major influence on Nietzsche.

The Histories by Herodotus - the original history book, but what makes it so fun is that its 60% real history and 40% total bullshit- Herodotus is a drama-addicted gossip who will include the most absurd and lurid tangents you've ever read under the all-encompassing aegis of "Hey Man, that's just what I heard." The Crusades: War in the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge - Will really recontextualize your knowledge about the Crusades. Asbridge gives equal room to the Crusaders and their Islamic antagonists, and in doing so makes it especially obvious that the Crusaders weren't the Deus Vult badasses that reactionaries meme about, but stooges permitted to bumble around the desert to serve as a chess piece in the greater game between the rival Abbassid and Fatimid Caliphates. DisneyWar by James Stewart - An expose following the rise and fall of Disney CEO Michael Eisner. When Disney was at the height of its powers in the 1990's, the company was burning down behind the scenes due to executive in-fighting. This book has all the unhinged MBA energy of Succession but with an occasional cameo by Goofy.

The Cheese and the Worms. Not a lot of history focuses on human interiority within context. I guess because it's basically impossible to do.

Gonna second the Hobsbawm rec and add The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton

giovannigohome1 year ago(edited)

Man I actually read Ataturk by Kinross a few years back and I agree - incredible read Thanks for all the suggestions so far

mitchell1 year ago

I read Ataturk (The Rebirth of a Nation) by Patrick Kinross. It's a really fascinating biography of the guy who created modern Turkey. It can be slow in parts, especially prior to his gaining of any power, however, it's still very readable. Also, maybe it's just the length and the amount of time I spent learning about the guy, but by the end of the book when I could tell he was about to die I started crying. It felt like I was losing the grandfather I had never had and it was so gut wrenching. He's not a perfect person (feels like it's obligatory that I say this) but watching him go about shaping the world in his image, filling this void and modernizing his country was incredibly inspiring. I feel that we might be in the same situation today, that we need people to push the world out of the deluge of the present and wrench the collective imagination into the future. I would also recommend The Devil's Chessboard (Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government) by David Talbot. Talbot does admittedly take a few liberties and makes suggestions in how things could have played out without concrete proof. However, it's a real deep dive into the start of American intelligence and how it influenced the cold war, which I imagine will always be shrouded in some mystery. Also be warned, it made me feel like a schizophrenic for a few months after reading it. I wanted to start every conversation by asking, "What do you think really happened to JFK?"

I am currently obsessed with the Northern Ireland conflict so here are two recommendations about it: Killing Rage by Eamon Collins - Autobiography by an IRA man who got sucked into militant republicanism after the British military mistakenly raids his parental home and assaults him and his father. He joins the RA, rises through the ranks, orchestrates ambushes and attacks on his neighbors and work place and reaches the upper echelons of IRA leadership before he gets caught and turns on them in prison. Collins got killed a year after releasing the book presumably by the same people he was comrades with only a few years earlier. Great writing. Really illustrates the inner struggle and disillusionment he went through before turning on the republican movement. Bandit Country by Toby Hearnden - Comprehensive history of the most militant and operationally successful brigade of the IRA. Great insights in how the area of South Armagh has been an indepent borderland for centuries even before the partition of Ireland and how this shaped its rural folk in a way to make them perfect for a low intensity insurgency. The book is more than 20 years old but recently got a new edition.

entropyposting1 year ago

America's Kingdom - history of ARAMCO and its interactions with the US and the emerging kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A very interesting special case in our understanding of how the market and the empire interact.

Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy about the ''long 19th century'' is quite good: - The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 - The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 - The Age of Empire: 1875–1914

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Really insightfull re-telling of standard historical narratives and what their consequences might be.

I always recommend The Power Broker by Robert Caro. Citizen Kane-esque, Shakespearean even, in the treatment of its biographical subject, while simultaneously being an essential history of New York City. Subtitled "Robert Moses and The Fall of New York," it tells the story of how NYC was transformed physically and otherwise over the course of the middle 20th century, I also recommend Five Points by Tyler Anbinder. Tells the true history of the 19th century Five Points neighborhood which was made famous in the movie Gangs of New York. Separates the myth from reality and gives an account of slum life, how "gangs" functioned at that time as semi-militant ethnic social clubs, the Tammany political machine, the social lives of five-pointers i.e. the theater, boxing. Blood feuds lol These two books together will give a good starting point for a history of NYC

thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian war

Plutarch's Lives

I love Robert Garland. I first found him from his courses, and I'll say watching them is amazing. but his books are also great when it comes to the Greeks. Wandering Greeks: The Ancient Greek Diaspora from the Age of Homer to the Death of Alexander the Great Celebrity in Antiquity: From Media Tarts to Tabloid Queens Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks Are all fantastic

no_class1 year ago

I know It's a novel, but it's it tries really hard not to embellish the facts. HHhH by Binet. Really well researched book about the life and the assassination of Heydrich