Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography

by Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully

Recommendations from our site

“This is such an important book. It’s an epic micro-history, if you can have such a thing.” Read more...

The best books on The Body

Karen Harvey, Historian

Our most recommended books

Histories
by Herodotus
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
by Christopher Browning
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler
The Confessions
by Augustine (translated by Maria Boulding)
On War
by Carl von Clausewitz
The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce, please support us by donating a small amount.

About

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

Get our newsletter

History Books

Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography

by Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully

Recommendations from our site

Our most recommended books

Histories by Herodotus

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler

The Confessions by Augustine (translated by Maria Boulding)

On War by Carl von Clausewitz

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

About

Histories
by Herodotus

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
by Christopher Browning

Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler

The Confessions
by Augustine (translated by Maria Boulding)

On War
by Carl von Clausewitz

The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam