Hi fellow readers! I have always been a fiction reader, and a lover of fantastical fantasy. However, I watched the revenant for the first time last night (I know it is not entirely accurate) but I had an epiphany, that I know barely anything about history, minus major historical events. Then after the movie ended I found myself going down a history rabbit hole on Google.
What are some non-fiction books about history that you would reccomend as good beginner books? I’m particularly interested in the start of the new world, WWI and II, and native American history.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn is a good one. It’s been a while since I read it, maybe five-seven years, but I remember it making history feel real. It made it feel like living through the here and now, through people’s eyes.
Antony Beevor and Max Hastings are two excellent WWII historians, The Second World War and Inferno are their respective books covering the whole war.
For a book covering WWI there are quite a few options but I forget how difficult of a read they are. John Keegan, Peter Hart, Martin Gilbert, G.J. Meyer. If your interest is strong I don’t think any of them should be a problem.
For the world wars I’ve found it useful to read a book covering the whole war first and then branch off from there. Also worth circling back around for another overarching account after you know more details.
For a Native American history Pekka Hamalainan is worth a look, I own but haven’t read his books.
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick (probably any of his books that are of interest)
Unbroken is phenomenal. The movie sucked. The book will sit with you a long time. Anything by Bill Bryson is you want to learn and laugh at the same time.
I’ve just finished Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash.
The book retells the story of one of the largest mutinies in history, led by one of the ship’s officers, Jeronimus Cornelisz, who oversaw the massacre of at least 110 people. The book explores the background of the period in history, and many of the people involved in the Dutch Republic. It casts a light on the tortuous trip from the Dutch Republic to the Dutch East Indies, and provides a detailed account of events after the captain and some of the crew’s departure for Batavia in an open boat.
Lord of the Flies meets Castaway, with all the isolation and desperation of something like The Terror, or The Martian, except it actually happened.
How there hasn’t been a film made of this story yet is beyond me.
I picked it up off the back of the excellent Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester.
Winchester examines the annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France, and the sound of the island’s destruction—per Winchester—could be heard as far away as Australia and India.
I really like Age of Discovery stories, anything to do with Indonesia, South East Asia. It’s way more interesting in terms of ‘New World Adventures’ than anything in North America (which, as an American, I’m mostly saturated on).
I just like saying the word boatswain. I think any book with a boatswain or an master of the watch, or where there are commissioned officers who are twelve years old called Mister Goodfellow and shit like that, is fantastic. I love it.