Don't Know Much About History . . .

[junediamanti]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." 
<cindysphynx at c...> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Cindy -- too lazy to just go to the library and see what's out 
there

Russian History (BA Hons in Russian Studies)

The Great Terror by Robert Conquest the best if emotive on the 
Stalin period.

Anything by Geoffrey Hosking (my Prof at University he specialises 
in the 19th Century)
Any thing by Robert Service (Revolution and after period) - he 
taught me as well.
Simon Sebag-Monterfiore's recent Stalin biography.

For an entertaining read on Ancient Rome, Colleen McCullough's (yes 
the Thorn Bird's author) Masters of Rome series - Roman History at 
the fall of the republic and fantastically researched - they are 
called:

The First Man in Rome
The Grass Crown
Fortune's Favourites
Caesar's Women
Caesar
The October Horse.

Alternatively, Alan Massie has written some gems on Rome and I 
particularly recommend his "autobiography"of Tiberius Caesar for a 
very different spin on his presentation in "I Claudius".

European mediaeval:

Barbara Tuchman - A Distant Mirror, the Catastrophic Fourteenth 
Century.  This has the best depiction of the Black Death I have ever 
read.  Tuchman compares the 14th century as being similar to the 
20th in terms of disaster and moral decay.

Paul Murray Kendall - Richard III - history and a whodunit in one.

June