New History Books
Last updated: November 16, 2024
In our new history books section, we keep track of some of the books coming out by Five Books interviewees and frequently recommended authors. We're also scanning catalogues and highlighting interesting new history books being published that come to our attention. It's impossible to cover all aspects of history, so these choices inevitably reflect personal preferences and quirks, but do send us an email ([email protected]) if you see a particularly glaring omission on our list!
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. Finding an enthusiastic audience among readers then encourages publishers to publish more of the same, in what will hopefully be a virtuous circle.
“Hitler’s People is a new book by historian Richard Evans…offering short portraits of major and minor players in the Third Reich, and what motivated them. It opens with a section on Adolf Hitler himself. I’ve never read any biographies of any of the men surrounding Hitler, so reading about their background and how they ended up getting involved made for interesting reading. Education and appreciation for culture were absolutely no guard against becoming a devout Nazi.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“It makes the case for India as a major driver of cultural change from about 250 BCE to 1200 CE. It tracks two things: the spread of Buddhism and the spread of Indian mathematics across the region and around the world…while I was familiar with the broad outlines of the story told in The Golden Road, most of the details I was not. Once I got past the introduction, I found the book hard to put down.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Also in military history and getting good reviews is The Vietnam War by Geoffrey Wawro.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“If you like Italy and history, one book that’s a lot of fun is The Shortest History of Italy, by Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome. In 234 pages, it covers the entire history from Aeneas’s mythical arrival and the founding of Rome to the present. It’s really satisfying to have Italy’s history told as a whole rather than the Roman Empire/Renaissance/Risorgimento etc. as separate history books.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Mid-2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“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
“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
“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
“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 16th 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
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.
Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline
by Paul Cooper
Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline is by historian and novelist Paul Cooper, creator of the Fall of Civilizations podcast. The book (based on the podcast) offers vivid storytelling and startling accounts of the decline and fall of civilisations—from the ancient Sumerians onwards, taking in the Aztecs, the Khmer, and the Songhai.
1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed
by Eric Cline & Glynnis Fawkes (illustrator)
1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed is a graphic adaptation of a 2014 book by American historian and archaeologist Eric Cline. It's a very lively and highly enjoyable way to find out what was happening and what life was like in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. It covers the 15th to the 12th centuries BC and shows us both what we know about it, and how we know it (Egyptian steles play a big part). Also out in April, 2024, is After 1177BC, a follow-up book subtitled The Survival of Civilizations, about what happened after the Bronze Age collapse chronicled in 1177BC.
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence
by Zeinab Badawi
An African History of Africa is by Zeinab Badawi, a well-known British journalist who is now the president of SOAS, part of the University of London. The book follows on from a TV series, and Badawi visited some 34 countries as part of her research. The aim was to tell local history from the point of view of African historians, thinkers, and storytellers. Badawi herself was born in Sudan and grew up speaking Arabic at home, but moved to the UK aged two.
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
by Stuart A. Reid
The Lumumba Plot by Stuart Reid is about what happened when the Congo (now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also called Zaire in the past) became independent from Belgium in 1960. The democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was killed in 1961, paving the way for the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. Reid follows the story of Lumumba, but also a cast of other characters, including Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General who was killed in a plane accident while on a peace mission in the Congo the same year. It's a well-told story, and a good way to learn about this period of history, which many people who have read Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novel, The Poisonwood Bible, may be curious about (Kingsolver spent two years in the Congo as a child, in the early 1960s).
Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City
by Dennis Romano
Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City is a new history of Venice by Dennis Romano, a historian at Syracuse University who has authored a number of books on the city. It's a long book (just over 600 pages) but covers the entire history of the city, from its mythic beginnings, through to the present with sections on medieval times, the Renaissance, 'old regime' Venicee as well as modern and contemporary Venice.
“If you like large-scale, broad history, there’s How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History by historian and archaeologist Josephine Quinn. The book opens in 2000 BCE in the town of Byblos, in modern-day Lebanon, bustling as a result of the advent of open sea sailing (though Quinn also discusses the invention of the wheel on the Eurasian Steppe) and goes up to the beginnings of the age of exploration. “ Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain
by Julian Jackson
🏆 Winner of the 2024 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for nonfiction
“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
“Much as I love history as escapism into the past, I do keep an eye out for books that shed light on some of the deeply worrying conflicts going on in the world today. One notable book for those trying to get a handle on the Middle East is a new book by Christopher Phillips, a professor of international relations at Queen Mary University of London. It’s called Battleground: 10 Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East. 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
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
by Anthony Kaldellis
The New Roman Empire by Anthony Kaldellis, a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, is a one-volume work, 918 pages long, that covers the entire history of Byzantium and what we know about it to date. Excluding the subtitle, the book actually avoids the words Byzantium and Byzantines as "misleading modern terms," but this is the period between Emperor Constantine's move of the Roman capital to the city that is now Istanbul in 330, and its fall to the Turks in 1453. This is a serious work of history, hard to hold in your hands if you're reading it in bed, but accessible to the layperson. It's an interesting empire to study the governance of because, as Kaldellis points out in the introduction, "Though other phases of Roman history are studied more, this was the longest one. The eastern Roman empire, known colloquially to its inhabitants as Romanía, was one of the most durable states the world has ever seen."
“As we like lists of ‘the best’ at Five Books, I’ll also mention The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a new book by British historian Bettany Hughes. She traces where the idea of these ‘seven wonders’ came from, and then visits each of the sites. Hughes does a lot of TV documentaries, and that’s slightly the vibe of the book, you want to be there and see what she’s seeing.” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“World War II seems to be of perennial interest to readers, but events in Europe—whether it’s important battles or the Holocaust—seem to take precedence. Much less well covered is the war in Asia, including its aftermath. While many of us know about the Nuremberg trials, fewer know much about the prosecution of Japan’s leaders as war criminals after they lost the war. Gary Bass, a professor at Princeton and a great writer, takes this on in his new book, Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia. This is a very long, detailed book, for someone who really wants to understand the history of that period—which remains very much alive in East Asian politics today.” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“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
“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
“In another Yale series, Ancient Lives, there’s a new biography of the 2nd-century Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whose book, Meditations, is often recommended for those interested in the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. It’s by Donald Robertson, a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist and a firm believer that Stoicism has much to teach us in our daily lives.” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“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
“One very readable book from Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series is a biography of Alfred Dreyfus, the man at the centre of the Dreyfus Affair. It was a cause célèbre that rocked 19th-century France, but as historian Maurice Samuels points out in the introduction, not much attention has been paid to the life of the man most affected by it. If all you knew about Dreyfus was that he was a Jewish army officer who was wrongfully convicted of treason and imprisoned on Devil’s Island, this is a nice way to find out more (and if you’ve never heard of him at all, start with The Man on Devil’s Island or the historical thriller An Officer and a Spy).” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“The hapless ambassador to the second-order monarch finds himself in these extraordinary palaces, where he hangs around and it’s not even clear that he’s going to be given an audience. Das is conjuring this world. Every sentence gives you a present. It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s constructed like a Swiss watch: everything locks in and returns. One moment you find yourself in Jacobean London, and then, the next moment, you’re encountering something oriental and remote.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize
Susan Brigden, Historian
“Another new history book that’s reliant on other disciplines is the latest by Cat Jarman, a bioarchaeologist. In her book, The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo Saxons, she turns her attention to chests at Winchester Cathedral that are purported to contain the bones of various kings—and one queen, Emma—of the kingdoms that sprang up in the British Isles after the Romans left. Winchester was in Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, and one of the more powerful ones. As in her previous book…Jarman likes to combine straight history with imagining what it must have been like. The new knowledge that DNA brings to this period, when England was so much in flux, is fascinating.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Much broader in scope is a new book called Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE by Christopher Ehret, a professor at UCLA. Ehret rejects the ‘artificial separation of our human story into something called ‘history’ and something else called ‘prehistory’’ and starts his story in 68,000 BCE. I love this approach and just wish it was taught more in school. As he writes, ‘Barely more than fifty thousand years ago, the primary ancestors of every single human being alive today lived in eastern Africa. World history to that point was African history.'” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Newly translated from the German, there is also Theoderic the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans, by Hans-Ulrich Weimer, about the man who ruled over the Western Roman Empire from Ravenna and whose mausoleum you can still visit there.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“There are also new books out, or due out shortly, about some of the later Roman rulers, including Julian, the subject of Gore Vidal’s 1964 historical novel. Philip Freeman, a professor at Pepperdine University, brings us Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor, about the man who tried to ditch Christianity and return the empire—by then based in Constantinople—to paganism.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age
by Tom Holland
Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age by British historian Tom Holland is now out in both in the US and the UK. It's the third book in a trilogy that started with Rubicon, about Julius Caesar and the last years of the Roman Republic, and then went on to Dynasty, covering the rule of the Julio-Claudian family, the emperors we know so well: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Pax starts with the funeral of Nero's pregnant wife, covers the years when the Roman Empire was at its largest under Trajan, and ends with Hadrian (whose beautiful villa in Tivoli you can still visit).
“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
“Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials is by Marion Gibson, Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter. This is a very easy way into a tough topic and the book is very informative and nicely done, showing the changing meaning of the word over time.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
by Peter Frankopan
The Earth Transformed is by Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford and a specialist on Byzantium. However, in The Earth Transformed he tells the story not of political dynasties and wars but of the world's climate. Frankopan is a nice writer so this is a good way to get up to speed on the world's climate history, though it is long—650 or so pages—so it's more compendium of information than quick summary.
The World: A Family History of Humanity
by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The World: A Family History by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a doorstopper of a book but a fabulous way to read about world history on a truly global scale across thousands of millennia. What holds it together is a focus on families, starting with the first footprints of a family ever found right the way through to the Trump family. As Sebag Montefiore explains at the beginning, this a work of synthesis, based on his reading and travels over the decades, written up during the Covid lockdowns. It's a really remarkable work of popular history, and a lot of fun to read.
“Of global history books out this spring, there’s The World of Sugar by Dutch historian Ulbe Bosma. It covers the history of the sweet stuff, first produced in granulated form in the 6th century BC, but not a huge commodity until more than two millennia later. This is not a quirky book about a single commodity in the style of Mark Kurlansky, but very much a reckoning with sugar. As he points out early on, two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic went to sugar plantations. He writes, ‘The ubiquity of sugar tells us about progress but also reveals a darker story of human exploitation, racism, obesity, and environmental destruction. Since sugar is a relatively recent phenomenon, we have not yet learned how to control it and bring it back to what it once was: a sweet luxury.'” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“The Russo-Ukrainian War is by Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian historian at Harvard who looks to history to understand the conflict, seeing it as an ‘old-fashioned imperial war’ with its roots in the 19th and 20th centuries. As he notes in the preface, ‘I take a longue durée approach to understanding the current war. I decline the temptation to identify the date of February, 2022, as its beginning, no matter the shock and drama of the all-out Russian assault on Ukraine, for the simple reason that the war began eight years earlier, on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament.'” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
Rebels Against the Raj
by Ramachandra Guha
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography
The foreigners who fought against Franco in Spain are much feted in literature and the popular imagination, those who helped India fight for its independence from the British Empire not so much. In this book, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha tells the story of seven of them (five Brits and two Americans), rescuing them from obscurity.
“For a new coffee table book, there’s Ancient Rome: The Definitive Visual History. Two University of Oxford academics, Andrew James Sillett and Matthew Nicholls, consulted on the book. Nicholls specializes in 3D digital reconstruction of ancient Rome. The book starts in 753 BCE and goes through to the death of the last emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 CE. There is also some coverage of the Byzantine Empire, including Justinian’s legal code.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“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
“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
“For a lighter read there’s A Little History of Music, in one of my favourite series, the Yale University Press Littles Histories series. In principle, the series is aimed at young adults, and this book opens with the basic question: ‘What is music?'” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Also in European history, there is a new book on the Franco-Prussian war, Bismarck’s War by Rachel Chrastil, a professor of history at Xavier University.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“There’s a brilliant book by Katja Hoyer called Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990, which analyses the impression that the West has of East Germans at that time. They were viewed as being miserable and desperate, and wanting to flee. Both Siblings and Beyond the Wall depict the East Germans in a more nuanced manner. The GDR was the reality in which they were born, got married, and died. They had hook-ups and rubbish jobs.” Read more...
Peerless among Princes: The Life and Times of Sultan Süleyman
by Kaya Şahin
A new biography of Süleyman (often called 'the Magnificent' in the West, but not in this book), the Ottoman sultan who ruled from 1520 to 1566. He was one of the most powerful men in the world but to the modern reader, his life seems utterly tragic. The book is by Kaya Şahin, a historian at Indiana University, who is able to bring his knowledge of Turkish sources to the story. Another aim of the book is "to restore Süleyman's place among the major figures of the sixteenth century"—which also included Henry VIII, Charles V and Francis I (Europe), Ivan IV (Russia), Babur and Akbar (India), Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasb (Iran).
The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
by Anna Keay
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Pol Roger Duff Cooper prize for nonfiction
“You hear so much about the Civil War and the Restoration, but this republican period has a fascination all of its own and she really brings that out. I thought, ‘Why didn’t I know more about such a pivotal period in English history?’ It also gives you a very rounded view of Oliver Cromwell. He’s a figure whose name we all know, but fewer of us know what he was like or where he came from. I certainly didn’t, so I found that incredibly illuminating. It’s a terrifically researched work of history—erudite, but so brilliantly told. What Anna Keay has done is picked out the lives of fascinating people on different sides of the conflict. It’s easy to go straight to Samuel Pepys to hear about this period, but she’s done something really original.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Caroline Sanderson, Journalist
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations
by Simon Schama
Foreign Bodies is a book about pandemics and vaccines across the millennia by Anglo-American historian Simon Schama. Schama is a professor at Columbia but also a brilliant popular historian, very talented at getting on top of huge amounts of information and getting it across in a memorable way. This book gives a historical perspective on the Covid pandemic, even as Schama predicts more will follow.
The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism
by Toby Matthiesen
To understand world politics, it's important to understand the Middle East, and to understand the Middle East, it's worth understanding Sunnism and Shiism. The Caliph and the Imam by British historian/political scientist Toby Matthiesen looks at the history of these two branches of Islam from 632, when the Prophet Muhammad died and views differed on who should be his successor. Sunni stands for 'The People of the Tradition and the Community,' and supported four caliphs; Shia stands for 'Party of Ali', supporters of Ali as the sole successor. The book is above all a call for a less simplistic approach to sectarian differences as an explanation of problems in the Middle East. For, as Matthiesen writes, "sectarian identity is most salient when political powers instrumentalize it" and it's the interaction of doctrinal and political tensions that leads to conflict.
Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500
by Peter Wilson
For those of you interested in Prussian/German/Austrian military history—you know who you are—Peter Wilson, author of an excellent book on the 30 Years War—has a new book out that covers half a millennium of it. This is an excellent, accessible account, even just the title clarifying a misquotation many of us learned in school (Otto von Bismarck spoke of iron and blood, not blood and iron, in his famous 1862 speech, a reference to an 1813 poem).
Emperor of Rome
by Mary Beard
Emperor of Rome by British classicist Mary Beard covers a number of emperors. According to a synopsis first reported in The Bookseller, "it's much more than the usual emperor-by-emperor collection of biographies...For most Romans, one ruler was much like another and she takes a thematic approach instead – looking at the fact and fiction of these rulers, asking what they did and why, and how we have got such a lurid view of them. The themes are autocracy, corruption and conspiracy – and also the day-to-day practicalities of the emperors’ lives (who did the cooking, or took the dictation?)."
The Scythian Empire
by Christopher Beckwith
In The Scythian Empire Christopher Beckwith, Distinguished Professor in Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, makes the case for the Scythian Empire as "one of the least known but most influential realms in all of world history." Scythian was an old Iranic language, and 2,700 years ago, speakers of the language were active around Asia on horseback. Beckwith makes the case that this was the largest empire the world had seen up to that point; even if you disagree it's an interesting read about a period many of us know little about.
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
by Janina Ramirez
Femina is a really interesting book about medieval women and history by Oxford-based historian Janina Ramirez. The title is revealing in itself: ‘FEMINA’ was what Ramirez found scribbled in library catalogues alongside texts known to be written by a woman. It's likely they were considered less important and hence not preserved. In the book, Ramirez introduces various medieval women and what we know about them, authors of famous texts like Julian of Norwich or the Loftus Princess, who lived in the 7th century when Christianity was just coming to England and we know only from her bones and her pendant. As Ramirez writes at the opening of the book, "Far from being 'unrecoverable,' developments in archaeology, advancements in technology and an openness to new angles have made medieval women ripe for rediscovery." Ramirez is a very engaging writer and knows just how to pique your interest (she also presents history on TV).
Women and the Crusades
by Helen J. Nicholson
Women and the Crusades is by Helen Nicholson, Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University in the UK. It's an analytical book, looking at the entire period of the Crusades, from the 11th to the 16th century. As anyone who has read "The Wife of Bath" in The Canterbury Tales knows, medieval women enjoyed going on pilgrimages, including to the Holy Land, so it's not surprising to find them engaged in crusading efforts. The book is one way to find out about both medieval women and the Crusades.
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
by Ramachandra Guha
A new edition (the 3rd) of India after Gandhi by Indian historian Ramachandra Guha is due out in 2023. It's already available in India, but won't appear until July in the UK. This is one of the best books on modern India—according to people we've interviewed on Five Books—and well worth reading for Guha's historical perspective on the latest political developments.
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
by Lindsey Fitzharris
For those who like the history of medicine and aren't squeamish, the much-awaited new book by Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art, is now out. It went straight onto the New York Times bestseller list and does not disappoint.
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History
by Dan Stone
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History is a book about the Holocaust by Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway (part of the University of London). As a Holocaust specialist, he is able to explain what the Holocaust was and where we're at with our understanding of it—both in terms of scholarship and popular consciousness. This is a book for anyone who has felt uncomfortable at the number of novels and movies about the Holocaust aimed at a popular audience which, while sad, completely gloss over the horror of what happened.
The Story of Russia
by Orlando Figes
The Story of Russia is a highly readable account of the whole of Russian history, from the early days of the Rus to the current war in Ukraine, in fewer than 300 pages. Historian Orlando Figes, author of our most recommended book on Russian history—A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution—shows how that history is essentially a story. This is no different from any other country's national history, constantly changing to reflect current concerns, but it is a story many Westerners are unfamiliar with and crucial to understanding Russia today.
Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945
by Halik Kochanski
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Wolfson History Prize
“It’s comprehensive, and that’s very important because a problem with history writing in general, but particularly with resistance, is that it tends to be written from a nation-centric point of view…But this was a pan-European movement and what she does really well is to identify first of all the commonalities. In all of these countries, when you look at underground resistance movements, similar things happened. They had clandestine literature, they collected intelligence, later on they started engaging in sabotage and armed conflict. All of this is happening at different moments and in different ways, but it is happening across Europe. But looking at it across Europe gives you a sense that geography, too, matters. What happens in Eastern Europe is different from Western Europe. That’s the other big takeaway from the book. The Nazis, beyond a certain point in the East, simply regarded these territories as fodder.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
Kennan: A Life between Worlds
by Frank Costigliola
Kennan: A Life between Worlds is an excellent biography of George Kennan, the American diplomat and Russophile who first raised alarm bells about Stalin after World War II, authoring an anonymous article in Foreign Affairs and "The Long Telegram". His biographer Frank Costigliola brings to life a man who loved Tolstoy and Chekhov, was devastated at never knowing his mother, and spent most of his life opposing the policy of containment towards the Soviet Union that he's best known for.
A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism
by Julia Boyd (with Angelika Patel)
Starting with locals coming back from fighting in World War I, A Village in the Third Reich is a really interesting, close look at how inhabitants of the German mountain village of Oberstdorf in Bavaria responded to the rise of Nazism.
The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam
by Christopher Goscha
At the battle of Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954) Vietnamese forces defeated the French in a pitched battle, paving the way for the colonial power's departure from Vietnam a few months later. Christopher Goscha, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, looks at how, from almost nothing in 1945, Ho Chi Minh managed to build up the Viet Minh army.
Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II
by Paul Kennedy and Ian Marshall (illustrator)
Paul Kennedy, a historian at Yale and author of the iconic The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, charts the rise of America as a global superpower. The book grew out of a plan to accompany the watercolours of the late Ian Marshall (the illustrations are a key part of the book) but ended up arguing for the key role of US naval supremacy, which was absolute by the end of World War II. "At no other time in history did the naval balances of power change as much," he argues.
Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle
by Ben Macintyre
An excellent account of the characters and life in one of the most infamous World War II POW camps. Even if you think you know the story of Colditz, Ben Macintyre brings new insights and context to the Gothic castle, its inhabitants and the surrounding area.
Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
by Antony Beevor
The latest book by popular military historian Antony Beevor. One reviewer called it a 'masterpiece.' At just under 600 pages (22 hours for the audiobook), this isn't a short book, but Beevor's style is highly readable and draws you into the narrative.
“This book is extraordinary because Rudolf Vrba and a fellow inmate, Alfred Wetzler, were the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Jonathan Freedland is a fiction writer too—he writes thrillers under the name Sam Bourne—so there is an element of thriller in the way that he describes this escape and the build-up to it. It is incredibly heart-in-your-mouth compelling. But it’s a bigger story than just one man’s breakout. Vrba goes on to try and put the word out about what’s going on in Auschwitz and saves many lives in the process. The book is memorializing one man’s heroism.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Caroline Sanderson, Journalist
Persians: The Age of The Great Kings
by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
In Persians: The Age of the Great Kingsby Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire—the largest empire of antiquity—from the point of view of the Persians. The book starts in 1000 BCE and ends in 330 BCE, after Alexander the III (aka the Great)'s defeat of Darius III. As Llewellyn-Jones points out, it's also the story of "one of the great dysfunctional families of history."
The Shortest History of the Soviet Union
by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Australian historian and 20th century Russia specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Shortest History of the Soviet Union covers its seven-decade, complex history in just 230 pages—with comfortable spacing and quite a few illustrations. It’s part of ‘The Shortest History of…’ series (which also has a highly recommended short history of China by Linda Jaivin).
Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World
by Anthony Sattin
It's not out yet, but Nomads looks to be a paean to the wanderers of history across the millennia and is by British travel writer Anthony Sattin.
“I love history and I find medical history in particular very gripping (especially the discovery of vaccines), so I really enjoyed The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus. The author, Lucy Ward, is a journalist so it’s good bedtime reading, bringing home nicely the story of the fight against the horrors of smallpox as well as focusing on Catherine the Great” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“If you’re reading this, you probably like books and may be disappointed to learn that Stalin was also a voracious reader. Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books is by British historian Geoffrey Roberts, author of several books on the Russian leader (plus one on Zhukov). Stalin had more than 20,000 books in his library and they weren’t just for show.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
The Last Emperor of Mexico
by Edward Shawcross
The surreal story of Ferdinand Maximilian (1832-1867), the Habsburg archduke and younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria who was executed after a brief reign as Emperor of Mexico. In addition to the inherent interest of this strange tale, the book is also a nice introduction to a period when Mexico—which had been the centre of the Spanish empire in the Americas for three centuries—became independent but also lost ground to the emerging power of the United States.
“It’s an incredibly ambitious book with a huge range. It presents this world in its full complexity. It’s an incredibly compelling read and it changes the way you see the world.” Read more...
Paul Lay, Historian
“It’s a spectacularly important book because it raises universal themes. We’ve been reading in our papers over the last few days and weeks what it means when war comes to an end, at least temporarily—permanently, I hope—in parts of Ukraine. In towns and small villages, the Russian occupier has been removed and a degree of normal business resumes. You begin to see the consequences in terms of getting hold of food, transportation, collaborators, culture, kids going back to school, all these issues. A lot of my work as a lawyer is dealing with horrendous international cases and it’s the same everywhere—Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Chile—what happens when a degree of normality returns. This book shows that in a powerful way. I found it very affecting.” Read more...
The British Academy Book Prize: 2022 Shortlist
Philippe Sands, Lawyer
Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy
by Anne Sebba
This is a biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the first woman executed in the United States not for the crime of murder, and mother of two small children, aged 10 and 6. Always paired with her husband as 'the Rosenbergs'—executed in New York State for spying for the Soviet Union—in this book Anne Sebba brings Ethel's own story to life, from her dreams for becoming a singer when she was young to the last hugs before she was put to death. As Sebba flags at the beginning, "Ethel Rosenberg was not, I believe, a spy." She was a committed communist, loyal to her husband and not well-turned out (because the couple were poor) or emotional on the witness stand. That, apparently, was enough for her to end up on the electric chair, where even her electrocution was botched. Like so many Cold War stories, it's a brutal one.
The Middle Ages: A Graphic History
Eleanor Janega and Neil Max Emmanuel (illustrator)
The Middle Ages: A Graphic History is by Eleanor Janega, a medieval historian who teaches at a number of London universities and blogs at going-medieval.com and Neil Emmanuel, an illustrator who also worked on Time Team, Britain’s longest-running historical TV show. It's a lovely breeze through a millennium of history, focusing mainly on Europe and the Near East (according to the book, the medieval period in China ended in 960, which means China became 'modern' about 600 years before Europe did). It's a lot of fun and you learn a lot in a couple of hours.
Surviving Katyń: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth
by Jane Rogoyska
Surviving Katyń is a history book that makes the blood run cold. Thousands of Polish prisoners of war were massacred in secrecy, on the orders of the NKVD boss, Lavrenty Beria. When mass graves were discovered in 1943, the Soviets blamed the atrocity on the Nazis, and didn't admit the crime until half a century later. Rogoyska previously wrote a gripping novel about Katyń, Kozlowski.
River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
by Cat Jarman
That many of the things we thought we knew about the Vikings is wrong was revealed to us in our Five Books interview about the Vikings with medieval historian Eleanor Barraclough in 2016. With our interest in Vikings awakened, it was exciting to see a book called River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads published in February 2021. River Kings is by archaeologist Dr Cat Jarman, who is a senior adviser to the new Museum of the Viking Age in Oslo. Specifically, she is a bioarchaeologist, which means she uses forensic tools—like isotope analysis, carbon dating, and DNA analysis—to try and figure out what happened to bodies buried more than a millennium ago. The book is absolutely mesmerizing, both about the techniques she deploys, and the story she tells about the Viking skeletons she uses those techniques on.
Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
by Serhii Plokhy
In Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy turns his attention to events in the 1960s which nearly led to nuclear armageddon between the US and the USSR. Plokhy's last book, on the Chernobyl disaster, was so brilliant that it won the UK's Baillie Gifford Prize, awarded for the best nonfiction book of the entire year. There are a number of books on the Cuban Missile Crisis told from the American side—starting with Robert F Kennedy's own memoir of that scary period—Thirteen Days—but Plokhy, who is a historian of the Ukraine, offers a more international perspective, including previously classified KGB documents.
We spoke to Serhii in December 2020 about the best books on Russia, selected annually by the judges of the Pushkin House Book Prize.
Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy
by Lyndal Roper
"Living I Was Your Plague, O Pope, dead, I will be your death" are the words Martin Luther wrote on the wall, in chalk, the night before he died. They were the epitaph he wanted to be remembered by. This book, by Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford, is based on the Lawrence Stone Lectures delivered at Princeton University. In some ways, the book is a reflection on her biography of Luther, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Wolfson Prize, and has been recommended on Five Books as one of the best books on the Reformation. She further examines his anti-Semitism. It's also about how he shaped his public image, through, for example, his collaboration with the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose distinctive artwork contributed "perhaps more to the Reformation's success than anything apart from Luther's own writings"
The Spymaster of Baghdad: The Untold Story of the Elite Intelligence Cell that Turned the Tide against ISIS
by Margaret Coker
The Spymaster of Baghdad is the fascinating story of an elite Iraqi intelligence unit–the Falcons, led by a man called Abu Ali al-Basri—who managed to infiltrate ISIS and collect vital information, particularly in tracking down Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Margaret Coker is an American reporter—her time in the Middle East included a stint as New York Times Baghdad bureau chief from 2017 to 2018—and she tells the story of two families in particular beautifully.
A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology
by Toby Wilkinson
A World Beneath the Sands by Cambridge Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson tells the story of our encounter with ancient Egypt, from the Greeks and the first time a celebrity tourist—Julius Caesar—went down the Nile to the 20th century. He focuses on a "heyday of Egyptology" bookmarked by two epoch-making events: the decipherment of hieroglyphics, thanks to the Rosetta Stone, in 1822 and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb a century later.
Our interview with Toby on Ancient Egypt is one of our most-read interviews on Five Books.
Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
by Andrea Pitzer
In Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Andrea Pitzer takes on the terrible story of the 16th century Dutch explorer and navigator William Barents, after whom the sea is named.
We previously spoke to Andrea about the best books on concentration camps.
The Western Front: A History of the First World War
by Nick Lloyd
The Western Front by bestselling military historian Nick Lloyd is the first volume of an epic trilogy covering World War I. It casts a terrible conflict often portrayed as futile in a new light and tries to bring it alive from both sides. Volumes about the Eastern Front and Africa and the Middle East are set to follow.
Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders
by Dennis Rasmussen
In Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders, political theorist Dennis Rasmussen—whose research focuses on the virtues and shortcomings of liberal democracy and market capitalism—looks at the fears the Founding Fathers of the United States had about the future of democracy.
We spoke to Dennis about the best Adam Smith books and his previous book, The Infidel and the Professor, was one of our best philosophy books of 2017.
On the Ho Chi Minh Trail
by Sherry Buchanan
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the quasi-mythical network of roads, paths and tunnels that North Vietnam used, in its war against South Vietnam and the Americans, to transport military supplies to its supporters in the South, the Viet Cong. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail is a travelogue, charting American journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan's trip down the trail in 2014, collecting the stories of the young women who played a vital role in keeping the trail open despite the constant American bombing. The book includes pictures of Vietnamese war art, maps and an itinerary (in case you want to follow in her footsteps!) and brings all of the author's knowledge of Vietnam to bear. It includes a photo of the author meeting with Võ Nguyên Giáp, the mastermind behind Vietnam's victory against both the French and the Americans, in 2006.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
by James Millward
It's hard not to be aware of what is going in Xinjiang (literally 'new province') in western China where concentration camps are making a comeback. It's where the Uyghurs live, a generally Muslim ethnic minority who have never appreciated being ruled from Beijing. Historically, relations between the Uyghurs and Beijing have tended to go downhill when the centre is too controlling, and the last two decades have been a disaster. In this updated edition of Eurasian Crossroads James Millward, a leading American historian of the region, explains the historical context of a situation we all have a responsibility to be aware of.
The Age of Wood
by Roland Ennos
At Five Books, we love global history and that means we do have a weakness for books that take one element/material/thing and tell its story across time and space. Roland Ennos, a Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Hull, has focused on a material that has never taken its rightful place in the nomenclature of ages we've lived through (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age), possibly because the Wood Age is still ongoing.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (editors)
Four Hundred Souls is about African American history, from 1619—when the White Lion, the first African slave ship, arrived in Virginia—to the present, but it's also a really interesting book for anyone fed up with the standard historical narratives we learn in school. The book is a series of essays by historians and journalists, activists and poets. Altogether, it brings together 90 Black voices in 80 chronological chapters.
We spoke to Keisha N Blain, co-editor of the book, about Black women's history.
Feminisms: A Global History
Feminisms: A Global History by Cambridge historian Lucy Delap tells the history of an incredibly important—but also complex, confusing and at times contradictory—concept across time and space.
Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
by Ben Macintyre
Agent Sonya is the latest book by Ben Macintyre, who has made an art of writing nonfiction books about spies that read like thrillers (If you haven't read The Spy and the Traitor yet, you must). Agent Sonya was the codename of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew who ended up living in an English village and spying for the Russians.
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery
by Seb Falk
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery, by Cambridge historian Seb Falk, is about science and technology in medieval times and, as the title suggests, argues that this period does not deserve to be written off as 'the Dark Ages.' The tale is told through the eyes of John of Westwyk, an interesting figure who was, among other things, a monk, a crusader and an astronomer.
The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans
by David Abulafia
***Winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize***
The Boundless Sea is a fascinating book which tells the human story through our relation to the oceans—from the early settlement of the Polynesian islands of the Pacific 3,000 years ago to the present day. Extraordinary in its scope and fascinating in its detail, Abulafia ends with a plea for the sea to be protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to Paul Lay, editor of History Today, “David Abulafia is a remarkable historian and this is, I think, his masterpiece."
Editor's note: due to its size, it may be worth getting The Boundless Sea as an ebook, especially if you use an iPad or other tablet, and can still see the book's photos (many of sea-faring vessels) in full-colour.
“It’s sweeping in its coverage across time and space, and he has a magisterial command of the scholarship on the extraordinarily diverse range of regions, periods and events tackled. The sea covers most of the globe, but here we have a history that takes it as a single topic. It’s staggeringly learned but it’s also very readable.What’s impressive about it is that it’s not Eurocentric. It gives equal weight to the whole range of seagoing civilizations. So, for example, famously in the Middle Ages, the Chinese emperor had fleets built that sailed to at least Africa.He tells the fascinating story of these epic voyages, but also cuts it down to size. Legends have inflated the size of these fleets to quite unbelievable levels, and Abulafia takes a more realistic view without in any way diminishing their achievement.Global history has made great strides in the last 15 years or so, and The Boundless Sea is a very good example of how history on a global scale is being written in Britain at the moment.” Read more...
The Best History Books: the 2020 Wolfson Prize shortlist
Richard Evans, Historian
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
by Camilla Townsend
***Winner of the 2020 Cundill History Prize***
“It’s a ground-breaking book in many ways. Camilla Townsend has been doing work on this for a while at what you might call a high scholarly level, and this is an attempt to take that learning to a slightly wider audience…She has access to these documents called xiuhpohualli, which she translates as ‘yearly accounts’, but they are the Nahuatl people’s annals and, using these, she concentrates on a period of roughly about a hundred years either side of Hernan Cortes’s arrival. She is very concerned not to portray the Mexica, the Aztecs, as these people who indulge in human sacrifice and all the other things we know from Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. But it does go on and the human sacrifice actually increases with time.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2020
Paul Lay, Historian
The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began
by Valerie Hansen
"Around the year 1000, people around the globe started to realize for the first time that they could leave home, travel to other places, find out about their neighbors and adopt new approaches. A wave of Islam came to Northwest China as part of that movement. People embarked on ocean travel, who hadn’t strayed far previously. The Vikings cross from Greenland to what is today Canada. New routes linked the continents together."
We spoke to Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale, about the best books on the Silk Roads.
The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
by John Dickie
"I realized there was a fantastic world of stories to tell, once you got past the only two narratives that seem to be in circulation about the Freemasons" —John Dickie
In The Craft John Dickie, a leading expert on the Italian mafia, looks at the world of Freemasonry. Many of us associate the Freemasons with weird handshakes, strange rituals and possibly behind-the-scenes world domination. But truth can be stranger than fiction...
A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874-2018
by Paul Preston
A People Betrayed covers the entire, tumultuous, 20th century history of Spain up to the present and is by Paul Preston, one of the great historians of modern Spain. It received rave reviews in UK broadsheets, with the Daily Telegraph calling it a 'must-read.'
Sir Paul Preston recommended the best books on the Spanish Civil War for us.
Providence Lost: Cromwell's Last Year
by Paul Lay
"The reason I wrote the book—which is called Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate—is because the period has relatively little purchase with the wider public unlike, say, the Tudors or the Victorians or the Normans. That situation is particularly puzzling because there has been so much great scholarship on this period over the last two decades"—Paul Lay, Five Books interview, December 2019.
Paul Lay, editor of History Today, recommended the best history books of 2020 for us (and the best history books of 2018 and 2019 as well).
“Emma Smith’s book brings a lot of pleasure. It’s very enjoyable. There are lots of juicy, tasty, and heart-warming anecdotes. We liked the way in which the stories are woven together. You’re moving around from the 12th century to the present. It’s not in a random way because there is an overall movement and sense of direction, and the sixteen chapters have particular themes to them. You get a sense of the power of books. There’s power in a positive sense, but the Stephen King quotation is also about the potential for books to be, as Emma Smith says, sickening, disturbing and enraging. Books have that negative capacity, too. One of the chapters is about Mein Kampf. That chapter is topical because it’s all about freedom of expression, which is an important issue for us all at the moment.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
“What’s original about this book is that it tells us the story of Victorian London from 1780 to about 1870…from street level. He tries to recapture the first-hand accounts of the beggars, the thieves, the musicians, the sex workers, the porters…What is very impressive and touching is that this is a world full of poverty, violence and arbitrariness, but people do extraordinary things as well. That’s what’s so great about this book: you see all the sides. You see what a struggle it is just to eke out an existence. Sometimes, life in the Victorian era is sugar-coated. Until recently, people were talking about Victorian values as if it was a great thing to go back to that time. This dispels that myth, but it also isn’t a book that simply looks at poor people as victims. It shows that they are capable—under certain, very limited circumstances—of doing something wonderful with their lives, even if it’s just for a fleeting instance.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
“This one is taking a subject that we thought we knew a little bit about and giving it the full treatment…Adi brings all of this new material together and also gives this panoptic view of the—I’ll say Black, just for shorthand—presence in the British Isles. It’s 10,000 years from Cheddar Man to Black Lives Matter. It’s remarkable. You see Black people here in Roman times: the Black emperor, and the Black legionaries. You see African explorers alongside Francis Drake. You see Black people here in Tudor times. This is all pre-slavery. The Black presence before slavery is one of the many huge contributions of this book. Adi is a specialist of Pan-Africanism and he also has fascinating things to say about that story in the 20th century and the numerous contributions that Black people have made to British institutions like the NHS. It’s a book that is sweeping and comprehensive and, quite apart from anything else, destroys the myth, insofar as it needed to be destroyed, of white Britain—the idea that there was a point back in time when these islands were inhabited only by white people. You just can’t hold onto that view anymore, once you’ve read this book.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
“In a narrow sense, this is a twin biography. It’s about two translators who are actors in this big drama of the encounter between the British and Chinese empires in the late 18th and early 19th century…One of these two figures is George Staunton, who’s a child prodigy. He learns to speak Chinese when he’s very young and meets the emperor when he’s twelve years old…He stays on in China and becomes an interpreter for the East India Company. Then we have this remarkable character, Li Zibiao, who’s part of the Catholic tradition in China. A lot of people will discover the existence of this because there’s a general assumption that China in that period is completely inward-looking, and largely closed to the world. The fact that Li Zibiao goes to Naples, becomes a Catholic priest, and learns Latin doesn’t help his career. But at this particular moment, and in this encounter, he plays a very important role. The slightly larger story Henrietta Harrison is telling is about the role of these two translators in mediating the encounter between these two powers that are trying to reach some kind of accommodation. It’s a wonderfully subtle book because when you look at the diplomatic history, the way in which this encounter is normally written about, it’s about clashes, about oppositions. It’s generally written in a binary way. What she’s trying to do is go beyond those oppositions and find, through these two people, the spaces where compromise and mutual understanding could be reached.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
“With history books, sometimes you say they’re ambitious when they cover fifty or a hundred years. This is a book that starts in 1346 and makes an argument about the impact on the globe that stretches right into and up to the Industrial Revolution and beyond. This really is grand history, in the good old-fashioned sense of the term…To put it starkly, the argument of the book is that wherever the plague hit, these are the parts of the world that eventually benefited and prospered, and those places where the plague didn’t strike—India and China—ended up falling behind. He’s saying this is not about culture, this is not about institutions, this is not about religion—it’s the plague.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist
-
1
The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe
by James Belich -
2
Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945
by Halik Kochanski -
3
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers
by Emma Smith -
4
The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire
by Henrietta Harrison -
5
African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History
by Hakim Adi -
6
Vagabonds
by Oskar Jensen
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Sudhir Hazareesingh
The Best History Books of 2023: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Sudhir Hazareesingh
The Wolfson History Prize is the UK’s most prestigious history book prize. The judges, all professional historians, pick out books that combine excellence in research with readability. Oxford University historian Sudhir Hazareesingh, one of the Wolfson judges and author of Black Spartacus, talks us through the six terrific books that made the 2023 shortlist, from the Black Death and its critical impact on economic development to the magic of our relationship with books.
