How I Learned My History
I’ve recently received requests for history book recommendations. I know I’m leaving out a lot, but I think I’ve compiled a good starter list.
So, without further ado:
General Histories (covering large sections of history):
The Evolution of Civilizations, by Carroll Quigley. An excellent look back – all the way to the Ice Age and even further.
The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler. Examines human civilization from its origins to what’s coming next. Chapters 1-10 are a brilliant must read, but the rest of the book is dated and unnecessary.
The State, by Franz Oppenheimer. A serious look at the institution of the State.
The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph Tainter. How centralization has destroyed culture after culture.
Art: A New History, by Paul Johnson. A superb history of art and all that pertains to it, from the beginning of human history.
Specific Periods & Subjects:
The End of the Bronze Age, by Robert Drews. The collapse of 1200 BC is one of the most important events in all of recorded history, yet very few people know anything about it.
Caesar and Christ (The Story of Civilization III), by Will Durant. A masterful history of Rome.
The Life of Greece (The Story of Civilization, Vol. 2), by Will Durant. The history of Greece.
The History of Civilization In Europe, by Francois Guizot. An excellent overview of what happened.
The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics), by Hendrik Spruyt. An in-depth look at feudalism and the formation of states in medieval Europe.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges. Journalism mixed with some history, but a very important look at the ugly truth about war.
Gunfighters, Highwaymen And Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, by Roger D. McGrath. A serious analysis of the old American West. See the “wild west” as it really was, not as portrayed on television.
The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization, by Michael Balter. An excellent start on the great archaeological find at Catalhoyuk. (See FMP #37.)
The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk, by Ian Hodder. More on Catalhoyuk. Hodder’s archaeology is excellent, but I find many of his interpretations flawed.
Barbarians To Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered, by Peter S. Wells. How Rome became Europe.
In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, by Norman F. Cantor. How the great pestilence of 1348 AD changed Europe.
The Medieval Underground, by Andrew McCall. Another side of the middle ages.
The Commercial Revolution in the Middle Ages, by Robert S. Lopez. How commerce created Europe.
Smuggling In The British Isles: A History, by Richard Platt. Great stories you won’t find elsewhere.
Conceived In Liberty (4 Volume Set), by Murray N. Rothbard. Four volumes of historical facts on the American Revolution, most of which are hard to find elsewhere.
Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm. As much psychology as history but a fascinating look at the industrial revolution and the character flaws it spawned.
A Child of the Century, by Ben Hecht. Hecht was involved in a number of historical events and tells the stories from the inside. Plus, it’s the best autobiography you’ll ever read. The world shouldn’t have forgotten about Ben Hecht.
The Reawakening, by Primo Levi. Levi survived Auschwitz, but that’s not what this book is about. It’s about the end of World War II and returning to life afterward.
The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt. Antisemitism and totalitarianism in 20th century Europe.
Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community, by Spencer Klaw. The fascinating story of the Oneida colony in 19th century New York State.
Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, by Stephen Koch. The seduction of American and European intellectuals by Soviet agents.
In God’s Name, by David Yallop. An investigation into the murder of Pope John Paul I.
Evidence of Revision: The Assassination of America. A DVD set of original footage, interviews, etc. The best material I know on the Kennedy assassination.
Courses:
I’m a fan of The Great Courses from The Teaching Company. These courses are expensive, but they are often on sale. In particular, I liked these:
- Late Antiquity: Crisis and Transformation
- Ancient Greek Civilizations
- The Origin of Civilizations, Parts 1-4
- The Early Middle Ages
- The High Middle Ages
- How The Crusades Changed History
- The Birth of The Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries
- Early Christianity: The Experience of The Divine
As I say, I’m missing a lot (half my library is not in front of me at the moment), but this should be a good list to work from.
If you’ve got one, two (or ten) that you think should be added, please feel free to comment below.
Have fun!
Paul Rosenberg
[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]
That’s a great list, can’t wait to get my new kindle and load some of them onto it.
Also if there are any fans of history out there I highly recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. It’s really good and free – well he asks for a dollar donation, but totally worth it IMO.
Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman – best history about the lead up to World War I
If you’re going to study the dawn of civilization, you might want to toss in some stuff about Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
Göbekli Tepe was discovered by an American back in the 1960’s, but was so baffled by what he found, he abandoned the site. The Germans came along a few years ago and rediscovered it.
The site is spread out over several hilltops. They’re calling it a series of temples. Monolithic construction, each stone weighing in between 40 to 60 tonnes. Lots of relief carving.
Thing is, they’re dating the site to 12,000 years ago. Which puts it solidly in the Neolithic period- 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid was built. 6,000 years before Stonehenge. And which supposedly predates animal husbandry/domesticated animals, pottery, villages, agriculture, engineering, mathematics, metalworking, and even large hierarchical societies…
If it predates all that, and they know it does, then how do you explain how they built the temple complexes? You need big, organized groups for that. Someone with vision to lead them. You have to be able to feed them all. You need working knowledge of metalworking to make the tools to carve the stone, let alone excavate it and transport it.
“The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date,” according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archeology program. Enthusing over the “huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art” at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: “Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.”
That whole “civilization started in the fertile crescent” theory is starting to look real shaky…
http://gobeklitepe.info/index.html
Any of Ken Follett’s historical novels especially “Pillars of the Earth” and “World Without End” for medieval early Christian church history and building of the cathedrals. “Fall of Giants” and “Winter of the World” for early 20th Century through WWII. I know they are novels, but the are brilliantly written and loaded with clear historical references that give a clear picture of the people, lives and politics of the times.
Bob.
JJ3 – I love Hardcore History too/
I am just about finished with Conceived in Liberty by Rothbard.
The best book on the colonial period and revolution I have read.
I have read just one of those books, Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. I guess that makes me uneducated.
How about the old testament .Full of correct history.
Tax slave – the Fall of Rome series is excellent, just finished the Mongols series as well. I really like how Carlin tries to get into the mind of the people that lived through his historical lessons.
His other podcast – Common Sense is very good as well, he leans libertarian, but needs to read more Rothbard, he rejects abolution of the State outright and that is where I disagree with him, but I agree with him on 90% of his political analysis.
He just released an interview with William Binney – the original NSA whistleblower who tried to go through the correct channels and got blackballed and his business destroyed for trying to follow his conscience. Binney’s experience is what made Snowden do things the way he did, without trying to go through proper channels, because he realized where that would get him.
Hey Billy,
Thanks for mentioning Gobekli Tepe — it’s a pretty fascinating site.
One of the reasons that it’s so important is that it throws up in the air the entire raison d’etre of civilization itself. Previous theories were that large-scale human settlements grew from humans settling into first horticulture, then agriculture during the Neolithic period. However, the archaeological evidence from Gobekli Tepe doesn’t support that.
The theory surrounding Gobekli Tepe is that people began to form large-scale human settlement there not spurred by agriculture, but rather by religion. It was effectively a permanent settlement that grew up around a pre-neolithic totem complex.
Now, just because this may have been true at Gobekli Tepe doesn’t mean that it holds true for the other early civilizations elsewhere on the earth (Fertile Crescent, Huang He, Nile, Mesoamerican). But it does raise some interesting questions, nonetheless.
BTW– Catal Huyuk (also in Turkey) predates the early Mesopotamian civilizations as an early neolithic permanent settlement. The main debate among historians and archaeologists doesn’t seem to be so much about WHERE it started first as it is about HOW it started.