History is not about understanding the past for the sake of it, it's about understanding human nature, says the historian and novelist Ian Mortimer.

It was a war that devastated Europe and left more than one-fifth of the German population dead. The complex peace agreement that ended it, the Treaty of Westphalia, is still credited with establishing our modern state system. Peter Wilson, Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University and author of the most recent general history of the war, Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War, recommends books to read for a nuanced picture of Europe's cataclysmic 17th-century conflict.

In the years immediately after World War II, the Holocaust was little studied. That all changed with the publication of Raul Hilberg's book, The Destruction of the European Jews. Steven Katz, professor of Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University and former Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, introduces the best Holocaust books.    

A "powerful and aggravating absence of consensus" came to define the Irish political experience, says the historian Richard Bourke. Here he picks the best books for gaining a range of perspectives on Irish history, singling out James Joyce as offering insight into the divergence of nationalist opinion.

Which history books are ideal to take on holiday, authoritative and yet entertaining? We turned to historian Suzannah Lipscomb—whose most recent book, The Voices of Nîmes, uncovers the lives of ordinary women in Languedoc in early modern France—for her top five.

Cultural and philosophical changes that occurred in late antiquity are essential to our understanding of the world today, but few us know much about that period. Historian Robin Lane Fox recommends the best books to read to get a good sense of late antiquity.

Which were the best history books published this past year? Each year, the UK's Wolfson Prize tries to sort through the hundreds of history books that are published to find outstanding books that are both important and readable. Wolfson Prize judge Carole Hillenbrand introduces the six books that made 2018 shortlist.

Have science and religion been fundamentally at war throughout history? Are they incompatible? Has religion always held back scientific progress? These views may seem intuitive but few historians would defend them. Professor Peter Harrison looks at the complexity of science-religion interactions, including the cases of Galileo and Darwin, and considers how we frame the debate.

From female spies during the English Civil Wars to the enduring distinctiveness of Iran, there is much left to be understood about history globally. Editor of History Today Paul Lay recommends the best history books that hit the shelves in 2018.

New England: it's the northeastern-most region of the United States, encompasses six states, is slightly larger than England itself, and half of it is rural, remote Maine. Yale Professor Mark Peterson introduces us to the rich history of New England, going back to its Puritan roots and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Harvard professor and Pulitzer prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn recommends reading on three centuries of empire, conflict and slave trading between the Americas, Europe and Africa

The idea of Boston as "a place of revolutionary fervour because liberty is somehow baked into its bones" is loaded with a "very heavy dose of self-mythologizing," says American historian Jane Kamensky. Here, the Harvard professor lifts the veil on this quintessential New England city and recommends five books for understanding its history

From the first book he recommends to students coming up to Oxford to read ancient history, to a short, popular book that weaves together all the scholarly research on the fall of the Roman Empire and the terrible things that happened as Rome was sacked by the Vandals, Oxford historian Harry Sidebottom talks us through five must-read books on Ancient Rome.

The foreign affairs commentator explains why US presidents have less room to manoeuvre on foreign policy than they think, and why President Obama had to set aside his “minimalist” inclinations.

Photographers Beth and Thom Atkinson, authors of the acclaimed photobook Missing Buildings, discuss five books that explore the mythology of war.

The former BBC war reporter picks out essential reading on the Bosnia and Vietnam wars and explains why a book of poetry speaks more to him about the reality of conflict than any other writing

Turkey is rediscovering its Ottoman past, says the British professor living in Ankara. He picks five books for compelling insights into Turkish history.

Historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash describes the "mongrel genre" between reportage and scholarship and says using the historian’s tools to analyse the present is a vital undertaking

The failure of the Stuarts to win back the English or Scottish throne changed the course of history, enabling the buildup of a highly centralized British state and, possibly, America's war for independence. Murray Pittock chooses the best books on Jacobitism, the 18th century phenomenon that nearly overthrew the British government.

Race is a real and powerful force and one he has spent his adult life trying to understand, says Anglo-Nigerian historian, writer and producer, David Olusoga. He talks us through five books on the tragedy of slavery—from the horrors of the gulag, to the plantations of Virginia, to the Islamic slave trade.

Few people have had their ideas reinvented as many times as the German intellectual and political activist, Karl Marx. Professor of political theory, Terrell Carver, takes us through the most influential books, in English, about Marx, Marxism and his friend, publicist and financial backer, Friedrich Engels.

The professor of religion explains how medieval Jews and Christians collaborated. He recommends five books that have changed the way we look at medieval art.

The Professor of History outlines how our understanding of deceit has changed: from a devilish sin in the Middle Ages, to a social necessity in the Enlightenment

The social historian argues London is an intrinsically addictive city. He charts its history through its dependencies on chocolate, tobacco, coffee, and tea.

Which were the best speeches ever made? Clarence B Jones, lawyer, friend and adviser to Martin Luther King Jr—and contributor to the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech—chooses his top five, and explains what is that makes these famous speeches so good.

The explorer and author of Into the Silence, Wade Davis, tells us that the consequences of the Great War were much more than merely political. He says the war had a noticeable impact on exploration, arts and literature, and modernity itself.

Queen Victoria was anything but Victorian and Lord Byron was more vulnerable than we think, says writer Jonathan Keates – who considers emails a poor substitute for a hand-written correspondence.

As the Olympics open, David Runciman looks back at the two previous times that the Games have been staged in London and finds that the thrift of today looks modest compared with austerities of the past

The Belle Epoque combined a preoccupation with the noblesse of the old regime with the seeds for modernism, says Oxford history professor Ruth Harris, author of an award-winning book on the Dreyfus affair. She picks the best books on a golden period in France before the outbreak of World War I.

The freedom to pick up a book is something we take almost for granted today but women readers have faced all manner of obstacles throughout history, says Professor Belinda Jack, author of The Woman Reader. She recommends five key texts in the history of women readers.

The scholar of language tells us about the progress of the spoken word from 3000 BC to today, how two languages disappear every month, and the 50,000-word novel written without using the letter “e”

We can learn about the past not just through what was written but how it was read. Historian of books Leah Price tells us about reading aloud in Roman times, Gutenberg-era marginalia, and Middle Age solutions to information overload

The historian and author of The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, Daniel Pick, tells us what we can learn from attempts to use psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to understand Nazism.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, set during a hedonistic zenith before the Great Depression, has fresh appeal today as we face down our own crisis, says the professor of American literature

The historian and biographer of London Peter Ackroyd picks five books that shine a light on parts of this vast, complex and confusing city where, he says, pathos and pantomime meet.

The historian and author pilots us through a century of aviation, from the excitement that greeted the first airplanes to the transformative role of World War II.

The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.

The history professor and author of Too Much to Know tells us what researchers have been discovering about how earlier human societies collected, organised and used information

Best-selling science writer, Dava Sobel, recommends books about the men whose painstaking work changed our understanding of Earth’s place in the universe.

The roots of our (generally) open attitude to sex lie not in the sixties but the 1760s, says the historian and author of The Origins of Sex, who explores this earlier sexual revolution through its literature.

The author of The Maid and the Queen takes us on an enjoyable ride through European history, looking at well-connected women who outwitted their husbands or asserted their independence.

Nelson Mandela was a most unusual and unusually astute leader, says journalist and author of Playing the Enemy, John Carlin. He chooses the best books to understand Nelson Mandela, who used forgiveness as a political tool, and South Africa, the country he brought peacefully out of apartheid.

Until the 1970s, Britain was predominantly a working class society, says the historian David Kynaston. He tells us about books that explore how this changed, giving rise to the turbulent Thatcher years.

The traumas of the 20th century hit Eastern Europe hard – a region of changing borders, uncertain identity, and shattering of moral norms. The journalist and communism expert selects books that capture the spirit of the age.

Israeli historian Gabriel Piterberg tells us about works of scholarship that have challenged the Zionist Israeli narrative of modern history.

It was a bloody conflict that divided Spain and drew in Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Later, it inspired great works of art and literature. An eminent historian of the period tells us why it continues to fascinate him

Did you know that Santa Claus was a 4th century bishop in what is now Turkey? That Puritans tried to outlaw Christmas? Or Tiny Tim was originally Little Fred? Religious scholar Bruce Forbes recommends books that shed light on Christmas’s pagan past and consumerist present.

In October 1911, China’s last imperial dynasty fell. The legacy of that revolution remains deeply ambiguous in today’s People’s Republic. China scholar Rana Mitter tells us about the country’s tumultuous changes from 1911 to the present day.

History books often focus on big political or economic events, wars and leaders. But there's much to learn from studying the way people lived, and what made the Victorian age both like and unlike our own, as Judith Flanders explains.

There's a lot more to the story of colonists and Native Americans than the tale of the first Thanksgiving taught in school, says history professor Colin Calloway.