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New History Books

It's a golden age for historical writing, as well-researched and sometimes quite specialist books by historians are written in an engaging style for a broad audience. History books out in recent months range from ancient Assyria to the CIA in the 21st century.

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A Cool Head in Hell: The Wartime Diaries of a British Doctor from Dunkirk to the Burma Railway

by Harry Silman & Jacqueline Passman (editor)

A Cool Head in Hell is a deeply moving book, partly because it's so understated. It's the diaries of Harry Silman, a doctor who enlisted in the British Army when World War II broke out and became a prisoner of war when Singapore surrendered. He ended up first in a prison camp at Changi and then, later, on the notorious Burma Railway, suffering unimaginable hardship as men dropped dead of illness, exhaustion, and malnutrition and once strong young men became skeletal frames of flesh.

The book was edited by his daughter, Jacqueline Passman, who does an amazing job of putting together diaries, letters and photos and explaining the context. Harry comes off as not only an unsung hero but also a wonderful, jaunty character. As Jackie writes of when she first read the diaries, "It was a shock for my sister, brother and me to find out what our father had actually been through, as he had made light of his wartime experiences, joking about the hardships and privations as if they were mere inconveniences."

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King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Unmaking of the Modern Middle East

by Scott Anderson

King of Kings is by Scott Anderson, author of an excellent biography of T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence in Arabia. In King of Kings, Anderson tells the story of the Iranian Revolution by focusing on the actions of three key players: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah himself; Jimmy Carter, the American president; and Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric who did not like the Shah's secular reforms. The book feels quite close up and personal: Anderson's own memories of the Shah's visit to D.C. to meet Carter (he ended up getting hit by a demonstrator), and interviews with people who were there. Two interesting points the book dwells on: firstly, how different the Middle East looked with Iran as a close US ally, and secondly, the extent to which the Iranian Revolution was a big surprise to almost everyone, including Khomeini himself.

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The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom

by David Woodman

The First King of England, by Cambridge historian David Woodman, tells the story of Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, who unified the kingdoms that make up today's England after defeating the Viking kingdom of York in 927. There's not much of a contemporary narrative source about Æthelstan's life, so this book is a careful piecing together of other sources and evidence, making for a really interesting read about late 9th-, early 10th-century Britain.

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The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century

by Tim Weiner

In Legacy of Ashes, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner told the story of the CIA in the 20th century, an agency set up to collect information but pressed by successive presidents into carrying out covert action. The Mission, according to Weiner, is "the first chronicle of the twenty-first century CIA, told in the words of those who lived it." It opens with the run-up to 9/11 and a defunded and demoralized CIA finding its way again following the disappearance of its chief raison d'être, the Soviet Union.

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The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World

by Selena Wisnom

The Library of Ancient Wisdom by Selena Wisnom is the story of ancient Mesopotamia, in particular the story of Ashurbanipal and his library. Ashurbanipal was the king of the Assyrians in the 7th century BCE, at that time the largest empire the world had ever seen. He loved books—which in his day took the form of clay tablets written in cuneiform. Used for more than three millennia, more than half of human history was written in cuneiform, the author points out, in a plea for more people to study it.

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The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb

by Garrett Graff

🎧 Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award for a truly exceptional audiobook

If you love hearing people's own accounts of what happened during big historical events, you'll love the work of Garrett Graff. In The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, he puts together the story of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki using 450+ first-person accounts. We hear from scientists, their wives, soldiers, generals, and those who survived the bombings. The audiobook comes highly recommended by AudioFile Magazine.

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The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life

by Sophia Rosenfeld

☆ Shortlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize

The Age of Choice is a book by Sophia Rosenfeld, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. It's an intellectual history of choice, but with a focus on our ordinary activities (chapter one is about shopping) and how our attitudes to choice affect society. We more or less take for granted that more choice is always a good thing, but where did that view of the world originate, and what price do we pay for it?

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The Death of Stalin

by Sheila Fitzpatrick

The Death of Stalin is by Sheila Fitzpatrick, a pioneer of Soviet history. By homing in on one event, Fitzpatrick manages to pack in an enormous amount of information about the history of the Soviet Union, including how the US approached its Cold War opponent, in less than 100 pages—and that even includes photos. It probably helps to watch the darkly comic Armando Iannucci movie, The Death of Stalin, before reading it, though as Fitzpatrick writes, "not everything about Stalin's death is comic. It had serious implications for his country and the world in the twentieth century and beyond; this book sets out to unravel them."

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Augustus The Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco

by Tim Blanning

🏆 Winner of the 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography

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“Augustus the Strong—and I think, if you took the exact translation, he was known as ‘Augustus the Physically Strong,’ which implied that brain power didn’t have much to do with it—was a man who fought first and thought second. He was a bit of a rascal and a warmonger, and a notable fornicator and adulterer who shocked many of his contemporaries. In terms of power politics, he was the Elector of Saxony who forced his way into becoming elected King of Poland, which was an absolute disaster for Poland and for him.” Read more...

The Best Historical Biography: The 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize

Roy Foster, Historian

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The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin

by Lucy Ash

Vladimir Putin was mocked for being a bore when he lectured Fox News’s Tucker Carlson about Russian history from the 9th century onwards. But this book proves that the past holds many valuable lessons for the Russia of today, in particular the power of the Orthodox Church for would-be rulers of Russia. Ash deftly recounts a concise and never-boring timeline of the collaboration and competition between the Church and the state throughout the centuries, building up a powerful thesis: under Putin’s Russia, the Church has once again become an arm of the state.

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‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate

by Donald Rayfield

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“The book shows how the Crimean khanate, which existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, was an important geopolitical power that played a role in economic and political dynamics in the region, along with the Ottomans, the Russians, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There was complex diplomacy between these powers. The Crimean khanate made decisions on the economic flows, on slavery, etc. For four centuries, it was an important political formation.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books on Russia: The 2025 Pushkin House Prize

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Political Scientist

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Battleground: 10 Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East

by Christopher Phillips

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“It’s an accessible introduction to conflicts across the region, written, according to the author, for readers wanting to understand the complex reality of the Middle East and looking for a place to start. He explains that by conflict he means not just outright wars, but also fraught politics and region-wide disputes. He covers Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Kurdistan and The Gulf as well as The Horn of Africa.” Read more...

Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism

by Yanni Kotsonis

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“The book is provocative, not only in what it argues about Greece, but what that means for nationalism generally—in particular states forged around the wholesale expulsion of an ethnic or religious group. It’s a very sad story with, as the title of the book suggests, horrible levels of violence.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Early 2025

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022

by Frank Trentmann

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“It starts in Nazi Germany with the stories of individuals, illustrating the moral dilemmas of being part of a nation which is doing something utterly evil to some of its own people and to others too. Then there is the utter desolation, the devastation of 1945…Then the next decades, as Trentmann lays them out, are interesting. They are a story of what happens when you, or most of you, have utterly rejected the ideology in which you’ve lived. You’ve painfully reconstructed something which the victors imposed, but which is very different in its embrace of democracy and its obstinate wish to tell truth.” Read more...

The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion

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Maria Theresa: Empress

by Richard Bassett

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“For anyone wanting to celebrate female leadership in past centuries, she’s one of the most interesting exemplars. Richard Bassett’s biography is very pro-Maria Theresa (the subtitle is ‘the making of the Austrian Enlightenment’) and you find yourself rooting for her against Frederick the Great and other men of the time, including, at times, her own advisers.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Early 2025

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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The Vietnam War: A Military History

by Geoffrey Wawro

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“Also in military history and getting good reviews is The Vietnam War by Geoffrey Wawro. Wawro’s argument is that it was not a fear of the domino effect in Asia or geopolitical calculations that led (and kept) America in Vietnam, but domestic politics: successive leaders did not want to appear weak on Communism. This is what made for a complete lack of strategy and half-heartedness in how the US pursued the war .” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

by Nicholas Radburn

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“Once you’ve read this book, you can’t sustain complacent cliches about the Western part in the slave trade. The detail is extraordinary. What I found particularly interesting and different was the sense of the commercial dynamic driving it. The story starts with one monopoly company, the Royal African Company, chartered by the English monarchy. It’s based in London but is elbowed out of the way by provincial merchants in Bristol and Liverpool. They create a trade that’s far more profitable because it is much better organized, with absolute cynicism about the subject of the trade: human beings. They’re treated as commodities with advantages and disadvantages. There are the young, the elderly, the weak, the sick, and then there is the absolute prize: healthy young adult males. The essence of the trade is to acquire those assets, sort them out, and get them across the Atlantic with minimum loss, i.e. death.” Read more...

The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion

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The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt

by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

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“The Cleopatras by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is about all the queens called Cleopatra: the one most of us know about being, in fact, Cleopatra VII. You learn a lot about Ptolemaic Egypt as well as what was happening further East (the first Cleopatra was from Syria). Very striking is the marriage of brothers to their sisters within the royal family, and why that was seen as a good thing.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Mid-2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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The Roads to Rome: A History of Imperial Expansion

by Catherine Fletcher

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“Another book that captured my attention was The Roads to Rome by Catherine Fletcher, which looks at the ancient road network across the Roman Empire but also across the centuries since they were built. It’s a travelogue, kind of: you join her going around Rome—including to the Via Appia Antica where, even today, the giant stones continue to give an idea of what parts of this 100,000-kilometer network of roads once looked like—and then out across 14 countries. It’s an account of how the roads captured people’s imagination, from writers like Goethe to dictators like Hitler.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Mid-2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

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“It’s about the period of American history between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the beginning of the American Civil War. (Note that in the UK, the book’s subtitle is: ‘Abraham Lincoln and America’s Road to Civil War’: this is not a story we are as familiar with on this side of the Atlantic).” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Mid-2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World

by Roger Crowley

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“It’s about the battle for spices in what is now Indonesia and focuses on the rivalry between Spain and Portugal over 60 years in the 16^th century. That spices should be worth more than their weight in gold and prompt people to risk death exploring treacherous routes to get to them is a compelling story and Crowley tells it well.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction Books of Mid-2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War

by Nick Lloyd

The Eastern Front is the second book in British military historian Nick Lloyd's trilogy about the First World War (the first book was about the Western Front). The book is around 500 pages long but it's highly readable. In it, Lloyd looks at the 'greater' Eastern front: from Riga in the Baltic down to Thessaloniki in the Aegean. This is a less well-known story to English readers than the battlefields of France and Belgium, and the focus on the war from the point of view of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires makes for very interesting reading. Russia lost more than 2.3 million soldiers in the war; the Austro-Hungarians over 1.1 million, only to collapse in 1918—with, as Lloyd writes in the preface, "the disintegration of both empires creating a human catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions."

Note: if you're interested in reading about the Eastern Front in English, see also books by Alexander Watson, such as The Fortress.

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France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain

by Julian Jackson

🏆 Winner of the 2024 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for nonfiction

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“Pétain had been the hero of Verdun, a great figure, but he was being tried for treason for signing the armistice with the Nazi regime and being the leader of the Vichy regime in France. He was on trial for his life, accused of collusion with Nazi Germany, and the verdict wasn’t much in doubt. It’s about more than the fate of a particular person—it’s a judgment on these four years of French history. It was newly liberated France’s first opportunity to look back on what it had done and how it had come to this. It’s a terrible account of moral ambivalence, and what you should do when faced with a conquering army. France is asking itself what it could have done, faced with total defeat by Hitler.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize

Susan Brigden, Historian

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Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan

by Ruby Lal

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“Gulbadan was the daughter of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, and the aunt of Akbar, sometimes called ‘the Great.’ Gulbadan was born in Kabul, ended up in Akbar’s harem in Agra, and eventually went on a trip to Saudi Arabia, to visit the holy places of Islam. Lal manages to recreate all this beautifully.” Read more...

Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

by David Van Reybrouck

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“Revolusi is an epic work, but it is a rather overdue one, because Indonesia is a hugely important country that has been very much neglected. The case that he is making is not only that we should care more about it because it’s a large country, with the world’s largest Muslim population etc. He also argues that the anti-colonial struggle in Indonesia was the first anti-colonial struggle. It triggered and set the tone for a whole series of anti-colonial struggles thereafter. The conference at Bandung in 1955 was the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement—another theme which is very much around at the moment. It’s time that we looked at the role that Indonesia played in shaping post-colonial thinking.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist

Isabel Hilton, Journalist

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Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World

by Irene Vallejo

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“Irene Vallejo is a classicist and a novelist. She combines academic research and creative writing to produce a highly accessible book about the ancient world. The book deals with how, in the Mediterranean region, books were produced, cherished, read, burnt, and destroyed. Books are part of our lives now, but we can’t take them for granted. The book explores the history of libraries, specifically the famous library in Alexandria. In a nutshell, Vallejo explores how the ancient world invented tablets, papyrus, and later books. We learn about how Athens and Rome wrote and preserved the word.” Read more...

The 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

Madawi Al-Rasheed, Anthropologist

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Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire

by Nandini Das

🏆 Winner of the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

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“In 1615, Thomas Roe arrived as an ambassador to the Mughal Emperor from the court of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, hung around for three years, and really didn’t achieve anything. He was constantly ill. He misunderstood customs. He bigged himself up in his own mind but, very revealingly, left no trace in the diaries of the Mughal emperor, Jahangir, whom Roe presents as a bosom buddy and hugely impressed by him. Clearly, Jahangir wasn’t. Roe was a bedraggled person from a puzzlingly faraway country with which the emperor had very little dealings and not much interest.” Read more...

The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion

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Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

by Christopher Clark

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“It’s very vivid. He’s looking at the great revolutions of 1848, from Budapest and Vienna and Galicia and Moldavia to France and Milan and Sicily…He takes you to the particular sufferings of the peasantry and the townspeople—but finds that economic suffering may be partly a cause, but it’s not a sufficient cause of these revolutions. He’s looking to politics and political ideas…I read on, agog. It’s just full of wonders and surprises and particular people with whom you feel sympathy and the bravery of the participants in all this.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize

Susan Brigden, Historian

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Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings

by Toby Wilkinson

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“Other biographies out these past three months include Ramesses the Great by Toby Wilkinson, the Cambridge Egyptologist…Both rulers spent a lot of time and energy building their reputations, which may be why we’re reading about them three millennia…later” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023

Sophie Roell, Journalist

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Messalina: Empress, Adulteress, Libertine: The Story of the Most Notorious Woman of the Roman World

by Honor Cargill-Martin

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“Messalina, the wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, was not so lucky, going down in the history books as a debauched adulteress. In Messalina: A Story of Empire, Slander and Adultery, PhD student Honor Cargill-Martin makes a valiant attempt to restore her reputation, though it’s hard going as little is known about her, beyond that she was a young (perhaps very young) bride.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023

Sophie Roell, Journalist

November 5, 2025

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Sophie Roell

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Sophie Roell

Sophie Roell is editor and one of the founders of Five Books.

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