Maybe you’re looking for history books for your kids or maybe you’ve just got a series aficionado on your hands like I do. Following several lists defined (often arbitrarily) by category that include more than 100 good nonfiction books about history. Writing historical nonfiction step 1: research, research, research. Higginbotham’s book draws from hundreds of hours of interviews. Joan’s eBooks LLC has a fine selection of historical nonfiction books about women for you to discover, purchase and read. The Iraqi view of life under Saddam Hussein, The Holocaust under the microscope of history, An impressionistic history of libraries and librarians through the ages, An intimate look at drug trafficking in Brazil, Simon Schama on Jewish history from 1000-1492. Take your pick of my four weekly newsletters. Historians typically zero in on the stuff of politics and policy, and in wartime on the ebb and flow of battle. Read the review. The central subject of this extraordinary book is the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer in October 1964. published 2015, avg rating 3.77 — Nonfiction (also spelled non-fiction) is any document or media content that intends, in good faith, to present only truth and accuracy regarding information, events, or people. published 2005, avg rating 4.04 — This is the story of a human-made tragedy, and the … How the Koch brothers are revolutionizing American politics, The President who launched the Mexican-American War, How today’s conservatism grew in the cotton fields of California, Murder and corruption under Hollywood’s bright lights, The shameful story of Japanese-American Internment in WWII, The shocking reality behind the secret US war on “terror”, Understanding the secret American campaign against Al Qaeda, From the Summer of Love to the Jonestown massacre, How the U.S. military wages war in Afghanistan, Citizens United, bribery, and corruption in America, A wrenching view of how the U.S. military fought the Vietnam War, Capitalism reexamined from an historical perspective, We never think about it, but our civilization is built on sand, A survey of Big History by the man who created the field, Exploring the arc of history over 70,000 years, More than you ever wanted to know about the history of paper, After the Columbian Exchange, nothing was ever the same, This book will challenge everything you know about ancient history, An extraordinary episode in Israeli history, Before Edward Snowden was “The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell”, How a novel helped speed the collapse of the Soviet Union, A gripping true-life tale of Cold War spycraft, A revealing account of life under the Nazis in occupied Europe, Shocking revelations: the secret military history of the Internet, How the CIA infiltrated the National Student Association, How Homeland Security went abroad to capture an Iranian arms dealer, The female Jewish spy who helped pave the way to the State of Israel, History versus fiction: How Netflix’s Versailles distorts the facts, Does history repeat itself? However, for most of cultural history, this someone was presumed to be male. 314,215 ratings — An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. published 2009, avg rating 3.91 — published 2001, avg rating 3.85 — No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, history is history, and it never hurts to remember it. 135,464 ratings — A Man Called Intrepid. Why do so many people hate Western values? The facts, just the facts, about the world as it really is, The geopolitical reality behind the “pivot to Asia”, An intriguing murder mystery set in 18th century China. As Erik Christiansen ... 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. Read the review. (If I review a book, it almost always means I read and enjoyed the book. When Americans today think of Richard Nixon, four or five episodes in his public life usually come to mind: Watergate, the Cambodia invasion, the opening to China, his TV debates with John F. Kennedy, and, perhaps, his kitchen confrontation with Nikita Khrushchev when still Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president. Science fiction fan? Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America by Conor Dougherty—Why are so many homeless in America? An account of Jewish history full of surprises, An historian explains how we came to think the way we do, A revisionist history of intelligence in World War II, The CIA murder conspiracy that ended JFK’s plan for peace, A thought-provoking view of world politics, An intimate view of Winston Churchill in WW2, Astonishing new evidence about the Americas before 1492, America’s surprising religious history in a highly readable book. The Man Who Never Was. Read the review. Call it selective memory: we tend to forget that the survival of our democratic system was by no means assured on March 4, 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as president. 138,070 ratings — 69,772 ratings — And the CIA was deeply involved in her murder. Read the review. In this list I narrowed down the topic a bit by focusing on books within the last 100 years or so, including some very contemporary ones, and I kept just a few genres: biography, memoir, history, social sciences, culture, science, and nature. Nonfiction books are rooted in truth. This is Jewish history full of surprises. Frequency 1 post / week Since Apr 2012 Blog copperfieldreview.com Facebook fans 2.6K ⋅ Twitter followers 6.7K ⋅ Social Engagement 11 ⋅ Domain Authority 33 ⋅ View Latest Posts ⋅ Get Email Contact. Here’s your all-access pass into the ultimate historical fiction guide: revisionist history, speculative history, and good old-fashioned historical fiction can all be found here, spanning Biblical Ages through to the early new Millennium. avg rating 3.99 — 66,057 ratings — So, I decided to focus on historical fiction and nonfiction book pairs. Epicurus was one of the central figures in the Axial Age (roughly 600 to 200 BCE), which gave the world Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, and other seminal thinkers across the grand sweep of Asia and Europe. She was JFK’s lover. Read the review. But readers loved the world building and threads of mythology weaved into the story. However, when the President was out of town for a week to meet with Winston Churchill early in 1941, future Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other powerful bureaucrats affiliated with the China Lobby contrived to put the embargo in place against Roosevelt’s express wishes. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II There’s a broad array of subjects and stories that fall under the umbrella of historical nonfiction, … Of course not! published 2016, avg rating 3.95 — Read the review. It was Epicurus who laid the foundation for science and the scientific method by his insistence that nothing should be believed unless it could be established through direct observation and logical deduction. The Devil in the White City book. Through a geopolitical lens, Planet Earth, and the machinations and foibles of earthly leaders, look a lot different than they do in most history books. FDR, the gold standard, and the Great Depression, J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and the violence in 1960s Berkeley, When America’s secret government ran amok, Friendly fire and bumbling generals in WWII, “The greatest catastrophe in human history”, The fateful year when the world stepped back from war, The amateur scientist who helped deliver radar and the atomic bomb, From the ashes of the Holocaust, a gift of lessons for living, One woman’s obsessive quest to learn how her grandmother died in the Holocaust, Bomber Command’s most successful attack on Nazi Germany was not on its cities, How the Western democracies stumbled into war with Nazi Germany, The WWII technology breakthrough with the proximity fuse, The secret mission to stop the Nazi atomic bomb, A story of an anti-Nazi commando worthy of Hollywood, Why the U.S. failed to speak out against the rise of Hitler’s Germany, How German radar technology helped Britain win World War II, A new spin on why the Normandy invasion succeeded, How the Allies fooled the Nazis with a corpse and assured victory, A scholar surveys armed conflict through the ages, A gripping history of China in World War II, The truth about the French Resistance, dug out of old records, “Survival is sweet revenge:” The odyssey of a Holocaust survivor, The sad story of FDR’s complicity with the Holocaust, Conspiracy theories, fake news, and other delusions in American history, America revealed through the lens of a single mid-sized city, When religion dominated the views of American conservatives, The conflict between the U.S. and Al Qaeda, Berkeley in 1969: Black Panthers, the FBI, and the Vietnam War, Teddy Roosevelt: progressive, champion of primary elections, and a racist, The ugly US-Iran war, past, present, and future, Life in the maelstrom of Hurricane Katrina, Teacher training, normal schools, and “bad teachers”, The case that helped put the FBI on the map, A stirring account of the watershed 2008 election, Early 20th-century America viewed through the life of one extraordinary woman, Economic inequality deconstructed in a brilliant historical study, An entertaining history of the post office, When a U-boat sank the Lusitania and changed history, Historical perspective on “the vast Right-Wing conspiracy”. Read 29 662 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. With his eyes focused on the harsh realities of that all-consuming conflict, Hastings debunks the myths that inspired these books and takes their exaggerations down a peg with a long-lacking sense of perspective. If you enjoy reading history in fictional form, check out 20 most enlightening historical novels (plus dozens of runners-up). Each historical fiction book pairing includes one fiction book and one nonfiction book set in the same time period. Stand a few feet away from a globe and squint: if the globe is properly positioned, what you’ll see is one huge, three-tentacled landmass (Asia-Africa-Europe); a second, much smaller one that consists of two parts joined by a narrow connector (North and South America); and several even smaller bits of land scattered about on the periphery (Australia, Greenland, Japan, Indonesia). History is one of the most important topics to study, and we've found the best history books to read this 2021. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. 13,611 ratings — If you details wrong, you’ll undo every good thing your book accomplishes. They shaped twentieth-century Chinese history, Kim Jong Il’s North Korea from the inside out, An amazing true story of Israeli spies in the country’s War of Independence, A survivor’s eye-opening tale of life in the North Korean gulag, Blaine Harden: how North Korea came to be what it is today, Escape from North Korea: a first-person account, Indian history portrayed through biography, Mao, Truman, and the birth of Modern China, A revealing history of U.S.-China relations. Donald Trump’s playbook revealed in a penetrating new book, “How Fascism Works”, 12 good books about the Holocaust, including both fiction and nonfiction, 5 top nonfiction books about World War II (plus many runners-up), 20 most enlightening historical novels (plus dozens of runners-up), Top 10 historical mysteries and thrillers reviewed here (plus 100 others). 789,349 ratings — published 2017, avg rating 4.07 — published 1992, avg rating 4.26 — What we didn’t know—or, at least, what I didn’t know—was that J. Edgar Hoover and Ronald Reagan were personally and directly engaged not just in monitoring but in managing the secret government campaigns that helped raise the temperature to the boiling point again and again. published 2011, avg rating 4.34 — Now, Talbot has delved more deeply into the record and taken a far more critical look at Dulles’ career. Many of those biographies might also be classified as history, as they cast light on the times in which their subjects lived. 31,081 ratings — Nor do they include those featured in Science explained in 10 excellent popular books or the Great biographies I’ve reviewed: my 10 favorites. History can certainly inform the present….that is, if we the people aren’t informed. As Fast reveals in this eminently readable and endlessly fascinating story, neither of those myths is true—but the true stories are even richer and more compelling. 46,556 ratings — One Nation Under Gods is an ideal companion volume to Howard Zinn’s classic secular history, A People’s History of the United States. Diamond hypothesized that the arc of human history was dramatically shifted by geographic, environmental, biological, and other factors, resulting in the worldwide dominance of the leading industrial powers during the past 500 years. 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