Don't Know Much About History . . .

[David]

Cindy wrote:

> Has anyone read any good non-fiction history books they could 
recommend?  
> 
> I'm looking for something that is an entertaining read (as 
contrasted
> to the dry-as-dust history books I was forced to read in school), 
and
> I'm more interested in quality than subject matter, really.  
European
> history, Russian history, Chinese history, African history . . . it
> all works for me.

Are you a visual person?  If so, try to get a decent historical 
atlas.  The use of maps makes an unconscious Euro-centric (or 
American-centric) approach harder to maintain, and allows you to get 
some impression of contemporary events in different places.  Here in 
the UK we have the Times Atlas of World History and the two volume 
Penguin Atlas.  Doubtless these are available from Amazon.co.uk, but 
possibly National Geographic or someone has done one in the US.

Otherwise, 'Millennium' by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto  - more a 
scattering of snapshots than a complete sweep.

'Nathaniel's Nutmeg' by Giles Milton, about shenanigans in the Spice 
Islands (Moluccas) culminating in a hard bargain driven by the Dutch 
in which they grabbed the fabulously exotic and wealthy island of 
Run from the British, and fobbed them off with a crummy island 
nobody wanted in the Hudson River in America in exchange.

A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson - a good readable overview.

I have a good history of China by IIRC someone called Cotrell, but I 
can't check right now.  Chinese history is interesting because the 
early period leading up to empire is like a completely separate 
world from ours, so IMO is a good test-bed for theories of 
international relations, e.g. I think it gives problems for the 
neorealist view that the number of states in a system stays more or 
less constant over time.

For my work I once had to look at some 20th century international 
crises, and the most memorable book from that was Keith 
Kyle's 'Suez', about the 1956 crisis.

If you are prepared to soil your hands with fiction then Umberto 
Eco's 'The Name of the Rose' is riveting stuff.  Fourteenth century 
Italy.  Gets you into the culture (or does a good job of making you 
think you have).

Finally, though it's hard to get, and not really history as 
such, 'High Albania' by Edith Durham.  Durham was a British 
traveller at the turn of the last century who ventured into the 
wilds of northern Albania and wrote a book about it.  Passionate, 
fascinating, informative, tragic - one of my all time favourite 
books, that I foolishly lent to someone who was planning on going 
there.  I never got the book back and they never went.

David, in the market for a good one on N America 1492-1773