What's the best piece of narrative history you've ever read?
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Comments (236)
Not sure if we're counting it, but anything by Robert Caro is really interesting.
A. Beevor's Stalingrad or Thucydides' Pelopponesian Wars. Alan Clark's Barbarossa is entertaining but not always reliable (understandable, since he lacked access to the Soviet archives).
Best style: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Man, can Gibbon write.
Otherwise: Parting the Waters and Battle Cry of Freedom.
At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange. A close second is The Franco-Prussian War by Michael Howard. Also love The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Can't forget A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheean.
I was just going to suggest Robert Caro - The Power Broker is still the best history of New York (through the doings of Robert Moses) that I've ever read.
Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town; Caro is right up there as well.
If we're talking only about books with an historical / political bent, I'd have to nominate Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein. It's about the formation of the modern conservative movement around Barry Goldwater's seemingly-catastrophic 1964 presidential run, and how that built into the movement that got Ronald Reagan into the White House (and that loves George W. today).
Not only is the book vital to understanding our current political situation, but it's beautifully written, and unwinds compellingly.
I, too, enjoyed The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I also like some of Stephen Ambrose's WW II books
Does The Odyssey count?
Here's another vote for Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie. Also, I'm not sure where Tuchman's reputation stands these days among historians, but I loved A Distant Mirror when I read it years ago.
Sheehan and Rhodes are pretty terrific, but I think the best I've read is Chancellorsville: The Souls of the Brave by Ernest Furgurson.
The late Dumas Malone's multi-volume of Thomas Jefferson is the work I read most eagerly.
Boy, good call on Gibbon. More recently, the enormous, multi-volume series on the 100 Years' War by...Jonathon Sumption (thanks, Amazon!) is dense, detailed, and yet very enjoyable. It's driving me nuts to have to wait for Vol 3.
Excellent question! There are so many to choose from, but a couple of my personal favorites are The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos (for early-American history buffs) and The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (for people interested in WWI). And while we're on the subject of history (although it isn't precisely a narrative history), I'd have to recommend the great E.P. Thompson's classic The Making of the English Working Class. I'm so glad Josh got us on the subject of history. Judging by the quick flurry of comments already posted, it seems like this is a topic we should continue exploring on this site.
E.P. Thompson, "The Making of the English Working Class."
The Perlstein book is pretty damn good too.
For enjoyable reading, I would choose The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald -- an absolutely riveting accounting of the ADA lysine price fixing scandal that reads like the wildest mystery/thriller I've ever read.
For traditional history, I would choose Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler -- Hitler: Hubris, and Hitler: Nemisis; essential reading, particularly in these times
For American History, I would choose Truman by David McCollough. Not just a great biography, but a great history of America in the first half of the 20th century.
I don't think anything could possibly compare with Robert Caro's work. The first and third volume's of The Years of Lyndon Johnson are absurdly good. The Power Broker is quite simply the best book ever written about politics (In my humble opinion). :o)
I would concur that Before the Storm is a remarkable book. It kind of ruined political history for me for a couple months, because nothing I read was as lively as Perlstein.
I'm not ready to compare it to Gibbon, but it's required reading for people wondering how the heck we ended up where we are today.
Guns of August is an excellent choice! The essential work on WWI
Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama. He's an incorrigible showoff, but he's got a lot to show. Also, Peter the Great, by Robert K. Massie; one of those exceptional biographies that doesn't assume the reader knows the territory to start with, and gives a real sense of time, place, context and relevence to boot.
Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth Jackson. You never knew you wanted to read it until you start.
I'll also second (or is it fourth by now) Caro. If you don't want to read all of the Power Broker, just read the chapter on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
Ditto to jackrussel's pick of Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie.
&
Tuchman's A Distant Mirror
I'll add Samuel Eliot Morison's The Two Ocean War
to the terrier's list. Read the short history if you don't have time for the 15 volume set. :o)))
/fred
If you're a Southern California native like me, (or anyone who is affected by water battles in the West) a fascinating read is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Great narrative and insight as to how Mulholland and others worked the system to pump water from the West into Los Angeles....
J. Anthony Lukas's _Big Trouble_ is certainly up there, the fact that it may have needed one more edit notwithstanding. I think it's even more elegant in conception than _Common Ground_.
Peter Brown's biography of St. Augustine also makes my list, if you can count a biography as narrative history. So does Mary Beard's new little book on the Parthenon, if only to demonstrate that a narrative history needn't be an enormous marble monument, even when it is about an enormous marble monument. Again, though, there's the question of whether the book fits the category.
My nominations go to:
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms — about the trial for heresy of an Italian miller, about 50 years before Galileo’s trial
Alex Keyssar, The Right to Vote — how "the right to vote" has evolved
David Potter, The Impending Crisis — the coming of the Civil War
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow — how the mixture of segregation laws developed, largely after Reconstruction
And two honorary mentions, compelling books which didn’t quite make the list because the reading was a bit more work than it probably should have been:
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy — just what it sounds like, though published in 1972, so it doesn’t include more recent events
George Chauncey, Gay New York — fairly self-explanatory, noteworthy for the argument that the sharp divide between homo- and heterosexual didn’t arise until after WWII
I second Beevor's Stalingrad -- I had to read it last semester for a sociology class on the western way of war, and it blew me away. I definitely need to learn more Soviet history.
When I read non-fiction I tend to go for stuff on smaller less well documented stories. Recently i read "Pirate Hunter" by Richard Zaks, interesting revising of the story of Captain Kidd. Off the top of my head "Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton" by Edward Rice was good. "Midnight in Sicily" by Peter Robb is a sort of history of the mafia trials in Sicily over the last 40 years. I'll have to look at my bookshelves when I'm home tonight to remember others I've read recently and liked:-)
Anonhero: Exactly. The chapter on the Cross-Bronx E-way is remarkable. If we're letting historical biographies slide in here, I'd include Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life. Cadillac Desert is a great, maddening book. I appreciate this thread, Josh. It's giving me some ideas for summer books!
Crucible of War : The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, by Fred Anderson.
His goal was to show the reader that this was an important war, setting the stage for everthing that came after (namely, the Revolution). To be honest, I don't know enough history of the era to really judge his thesis, but he's very convincing.
And the opening is great--a young George Washington surrounded by gunfire in a field, inadvertently kicking off a chain of events that led to the war--an 18th Century Gavrilo Princip! Hmmm, I should know if that's apocryphal before I go recommending the book..
Beevor on the Spanish Civil War is also excellent.
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, about the Battle of Thermopylae and the events leading up to it. Written from the perspective of a conscripted slave/squier and in an incredibly rich and descriptive narrative style.
To the already impressive list, I would add
1) Jill Lepore's The Name of War
2)Donna Merwick's Death of a Notary
3)Paul Gilje's Liberty on the Waterfront
Thank you for mentioning that wonderful, wonderful book. I'm no professional historian, but I can't tell you how many academics I've talked to who inexplicably haven't read it. Absolutely, positively essential foundational seminal, whatever. Not just on religious history, microhistory, etc, but simply on the characteristics of what is original work in the field. A thousand Donald Kagans couldn't even come close.
In addition to Massie's Peter the Great biography, his book about the pre-WWI Anglo-German naval arms race Dreadnought is so well written that it makes what could be an exceedingly dry topic come to life. As a historian, Massie is not particularly strong in that he relies too much on the personalities of the participants (such as Kaiser Willhem II) to explain why things unfolded as they did, however, he is a tremendous writer of popular histories.
Alan Clark's also not entirely reliable because he was not entirely sane: a ruthless, boozing sexual bully who married a fifteen year-old and named his dog Eva Braun. Cute. But he wrote well, and Barbarossa's as readable and interesting as other great military study, The Donkeys (about WWI idiot generals).
Howard Zinn's People's History is fascinating and an essential companion to any American history.
But, for a couple of different kinds of history, how about Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything," an amazing and compelling brief history of science and what we know from it (essentially). Beautifully written, too.
And finally, Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire is a history of sorts, of some plant life (better said, of the interaction between some plant life and humans.). Potatoes, apples, tulips, and marijuana are treated.
Anything by Robert K. Massie would qualify in my estimation, particularly his Dreadnought describing events leading up to WWI and the first real arms race.
I'm in the middle of George Reisch's just-released How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science, and it's a damn good read, if you like that sort of thing.
Blood & Vengeance - One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia by Chuck Sudetic. Compelling and shattering.
This thread is full of goodies, but here are a couple from my reading list of the past year or so:
Chernow "Alexander Hamilton." Among other things, you'll never see Thomas Jefferson the same way. It's fantastic.
R. W. Southern "The Making of the Middle Ages," nice and academic.
Maraniss "They Marched Into Sunlight"
Orwell "The Lion and the Unicorn". This is stretching the narrative history mandate a bit, but it's worth it. Orwell comments on the past and future of British society ca. 1940. And as usual, he gets in right. It's usually published in collections of Orwell's essays, which are their own treat.
Another vote for Before the Storm, and The Making of the Atomic Bomb
I’ll add Winchell : Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity by Neal Gabler.
More than a biography, it traces the creation of the remaking of the American press by the creation of the newspaper gossip column, and spawned café society and concept of celebrity that we know today. What I found especially interesting was how the competition, and vicious battles waged by daily columnists actually resemble the blogging of today.
I'd reccommend "Downfall" by Richard B. Frank. It covers the fall of Imperial Japan. He makes use of recently released documents, including the Emporer's 1946 account of the political dealings inside Japan. The scope is broad. There are invasion plans, ordinary bombing, fire bombing, and the atomic bombs. There are plans to partially demobilize the US Army and send troops from Europe to Japan (which was a catastrophe in the making). There is Yalta and the Soviet commitment to fight Japan. There is Admiral King versus General Marshall. In short, all one could ask for.
Shelby Foote The Civil War: A Narrative History
Not exactly an earth-shattering subject, but fascinating, with several illuminating lessons about the unintended consequences of puritanical thought:
American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine, by Paul Lukacs
Two of my favorite works of narrative history include J. Anthony Lukas' Nightmare, about Watergate and the Nixon years, and David Halberstam's The Powers That Be, about the rise of the corporate media.
Can I cheat?
I think the award should probably go to The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age by J. Leslie Fitton. She's detailing the history of the archaeology, but she quite effectively folds in the Greek Bronze Age itself. (She has to.)
I would say 'I think...' because I could also mention: Hitler and Stalin by Alan Bullock (which just trumps Kershaw's recent biography). Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Creasy is classic for good reason. Rainbow's End, The Crash of 1929 by Murray Klein was great. From Dawn to Decadence was spiffy, but I dunno if that qualifies. The Shaman's Coat, A Native History of Siberia by Anna Reid is the best book nobody has ever heard of which made me happy that at least I read it. Reds by Ted Morgan is very very informative.
ash
['Ask me again tommorrow when I'll have five different choices.']
but For Us, The Living, by Myrlie Evers (the wife of Medger Evers) is a beautifully written rememberance of Evers' civil rights work in Mississippi. Evers was gunned down by white terrorists the same night President Kennedy gave a televised speech calling for a civil rights statute.
Plus, I met her yesterday in Chicago! What a wonderful woman.
A complete history of the Mississippi Freedom Movement is Local People by John Dittmer.
How can you choose just one? Different things at different times mattered. Bruce Catton and Walter Lord were my introductions to history many years ago. And A stillness at Appomattox and Incredible Victory are still great reads. THe smae goes for Costain's history of the Plantaganets. Big Trouble by Lukas has alredy been mentioned. Just looking at the shelf, Dreadnought by Massie, William Leuchtenberg's Franlin Roosevelt and the Coming of the New Deal is pretty great. Also, Eliot Asinof's Eight Men OUt and Ross King's Brunelschi's Dome stand out.
Is The Right Stuff narrative history? It is great writing.
But if I had to choose, the top three would be Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, Mcpherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and John Dowher's War Without Mercy.
Are you serious about the Southern book? I had to read it in college (20 years ago), but just reread it in the last year or two because I'm on a bit of a medieval kick. I wouldn't exactly call it gripping!
I don't read much US history, so I haven't done much in the way of comparison, but I very much enjoyed Founding Brothers.
"A Bright Shining Lie" by Neal Sheehan. The best book I've seen on the Vietnam War also stands out as the best narrative history I've read.
"A History of The Modern World" by R.R. Palmer and friends. A textbook that is actually fun to read.
Sometimes while reading Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile, I forgot I was reading non-fiction. Gibbon and Tuchman are great too, though. Tough decision.
If you're into economics at all, Henwood's After the new Economy or any Niall Ferguson before he decided to be a tory-hawk.
Thucydides' Peloponnesian War.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by HST.
Hiroshima by John Hersey. Periodic Table by Primo Levi.
Well, yes, I was serious. I never said the thing was a page-turner. But I find myself thinking about it rather often, and it was a pleasure to read, like being invited into the private study of someone brilliant and learned.
I haven't read Founding Brothers, though Chernow quotes it in many places in Hamilton. What's the deal with Ellis? I guess that little fabrication thing didn't absolutely destroy his reputation.
Here are three all-time favorites of mine not mentioned so far (I think):
<i>Rising Tide</i>, by John Barry. It centers on the great flood of the Mississippi in 1927 in a way that touches on all sorts of related and fascinating side topics, for example the hydrology of the river, high society in New Orleans, and the appallingly discriminatory manner in which relief was managed, which the author asserts was the beginning of the transfer of the political allegiance from the GOP to the Democrats.
<i>The Nightingale's Song</i>, by Robert Timberg. The author, a Naval Academy graduate himself, traces how the careers of five fellow graduates, John McCain, John Poindexter, Bud MacFarlane, Ollie North and James Webb, intersected in the Iran Contra affair.
<i>Getting There</i>, by Stephen Goddard. This book is about the intense conflict in the twentieth century between rail and road transportation, centering on the career of the argely unknown bureaucrat who led the road forces, one Tom (or was it Tim) McDonald.
Also strong seconds for the afore mentioned <i>Bright and Shining Lie</i>, <i>Cadillac Desert</i>, which has parallels with <i>Getting There</i>, and the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson.
Re my previous comment about "Rising Tide", my brain got ahead of my fingers and I skipped over the phrase that it was the African American's allegiance that the author contends began to shift as a result of the maladministration of flood relief.
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I must throw in one of my all-time favorites: Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom--an ironic, tragic account of how those two institutions not only came to co-exist, but to mutually support each other--and what that says about our own mixed-up attitudes about class and race.
All historians will recognize one thing that the question refers to -- their long-running, on-and-off debate about the value of storytelling and the need for narrative approaches, at least as a way for them not to lose their broader audience entirely.
There's a steady accumulation of works by established historians that take on the task of "narrative history" -- like the already-mentioned books by John Demos and Alan Taylor, and David Hackett Fisher's Paul Revere's Ride. (An early Americanist, like our site editor, must be pretty familiar with those.) A few other ideas, from more recent periods:
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in 19th-Century New York. An engrossing look at a celebrated case, how the press covered it, and what it shows about city life at the time.
Steven Weisenburger, Modern Media: A Family Story of Slavery and Child Murder in the Old South. Tells about a famous episode in which an escaped slave killed her children, rather than allowing them to be recaptured.
David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. Perhaps the standard survey text for its period, but also a masterful work of storytelling.
Don Carleton, Red Scare! A really well-written explanation of how McCarthyites took over the Houston school board.
I like all of these, but think there are questions about what narrative does, and why exactly is it so important, that these works (even the self-conscious exercises in narrative) don't generally address. Can you boil down a set of circumstances into a coherent story while still doing justice to the different ways they were experienced?
Take New York City in 1977, the "summer of Sam." James Goodman (Blackout) and Jonathan Mahler (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning) have written compelling but totally different narrative histories. Mahler zeroes in on a few individual subjects whose stories are worth telling (Rupert Murdoch, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson) but don't necessarily represent the experiences of others, or explain seriously how we got from there to here. Goodman tries harder to capture a range of experiences, and weave together personal stories not so easily found or frequently told. But can a story do justice to the complexity of things, and still really remain a story?
I also wonder whether there are nearly as many works of history out there that aren't "narrative history" -- more descriptive, analytical, etc. -- that also appeal to general readers.
Ditto. The same two authors, Bruce Catton and Walter Lord, were also my introduction to history. I just finished re-reading Catton's 3-volume history of the Civil War. I must admit I liked them better when I was younger but they are still excellent.
No mention of Churchill's history of the Second World War? Can we count that as history and not autobiography? Either way it is excellent for a great many reasons (perhaps unbiased accuracy is not among them).
Thus far no mention of the "classics" of American history - Bailyn (Voyagers to the West was my favorite of his) and Wood (Radicalism of the American Revolution)
Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism - I'm always re-readnig that one.
Edmundo Morgan Inventing the People.
Enough... I could go on and on.
My two (very different) favorites:
1) "Citizens" by Simon Schama ("Landscape and Memory" isn't bad either);
2) "The Power Broker" by Caro (already mentioned, and deservedly so).
I know this is historical fiction, but none-the-less an extremely fascinating read about the history of civilization and religion.
I agree with you about the Southern Book. I think writing about the Founders in sympathetic way may give Ellis a lease on his career.
Albion's Seed.
I'm just starting to read Arthur Schlesinger's series, The Age of Roosevelt.
Thanks for the thread. I've added several suggestions to my reading list.
I had forgotten about "A Bright Shining Lie." Also, if you're looking for an unbelievably short Revolutionary War book, it's hard to beat Edmund Morgan's "Birth of the Republic." Actually, it's hard to beat Morgan on anything.
Josh, you're killing me. Figuratively, of course.
Herodotus, The Histories. “The father of history and the father of lies.”
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. “The first journalist.”
You know, I really wanted to like Botany of Desire, but I just couldn't get into it. The writing seemd to strive too often for poetic effect. Maybe I'll have to give it another try.
Morgan's American Slavery/American Freedom was going to be the one I recommended too. Marvelous book, though in many ways considered old-fashioned today. I've read books since graduate school that I may have found more engrossing. But Morgan's mix of social and political history is tour de force. It was something I had in mind myself as I wrote my dissertation.
They Marched into Sunlight is one of the best books of the decade--a combination of painstaking research & a natural narrative flow. Fantastic book.
Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages allowed me to see how differently different people can think and make sense of their world. Is it 'narrative' history - I guess so...
David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo, a history of how we came to know what we now know about evolution and extinction, is the most riveting nonfiction read I've ever experienced.
Second place goes to Tuchman's The Guns of August.
Another great book about Vietnam & its affect on the US is Paul Hendrickson's The Living & The Dead, which begins with an account of the life of Robert McNamara, then tells the stories of five Americans whose lives were affected by his policies in the Vietnam era. Did you know that an artist once almost succeeded in throwing McNamara off the deck of the Martha's Vineyard ferry in a fit of rage over the Vietnam war?
I am always surprised that William Lee Miller is not better known. He has written two of the most compulsively readable history books I've read, both on a topic done to death-- Lincoln and the Civil War. Arguing About Slavery is a wonderful, often hilarious book about the excesses of Congressional debate in the florid pre-Civil War period--specifically the effort to forestall debate about slavery in Congress (on the grounds that it was a state matter entirely out of Congress' purview), which was conducted in the most pompous, grandiloquent style by the South and with malicious glee in tormenting such windbags by the Congressman and former president John Quincy Adams. Lincoln's Ethics-- still a narrative history, albeit from the point of view of one topic-- is one of the best books about the reality of politics, and how Lincoln navigated the narrow straits between his ambition and his ethics. At the time (and still) many people thought he was using, and probably betraying, the abolitionist movement; the reality, of course, is that he, not the idealists and the holier than thous, was the only one who understood how to make the movement's ideals reality. Not, of course, that there's anything like that going on today.
Tuchman's Guns of August is a powerful and well-written book on the First World War, so I second, third, or fourth the others who have mentioned it.
A narrative work in British history that is also well-written and filled with ascerbic asides and comments from the author is George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, about the turbulent decade before the First World War.
It's been a long time since I enjoyed, and felt I learned as much from a book, as from reading James Carroll's Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.
Definitely Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army.
Thucydides. Also, I see that someone else just noted The Strange Death of Liberal England, which is great. And WH Lewis' The Splendid Century is also wonderfully written.
If it is alright to have a second post another wonderful book is Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World. Not only a great story about New Amsterdam but also provides an interesting perspective to some current debates about the nature of the United States.
I didn't notice any votes for Gore Vidal, sorry if I missed them. i'd have to put "Burr" and "Lincoln" as my two faves. really brilliant history/fiction amalgam.
the last three philip k dick books--transmigration of timothy archer, valis, and...the other one...are the 70s through the looking glass. and while i'm up, "A Scanner Darkly" though written in 1977 and about 1994, seems to have somehow been written with full knowledge of what would happen, making it feel pseudo-historical.
confusing.
Top 5 1) Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson (The best one volume history of the Civil War and if you don't understand the Civil War you don't understand the US)2) Robert Kennedy and his times, Authur Schlessinger, Jr. (The sixties through the lens of RFK. One of the two or three books I've read more than twice)3) The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins, Tim Pat Coogan (The place to start if you want to understand what is going on in Northern Ireland)4) Lone Star Rising & Flawed Giant, Robert Dallek (Everyone keeps talking about Caro's LBJ but Dallek is more reliable and better)5) Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch (The sixties through the lens of King. Read this and the Kennedy book and you've got most of it) Others: The Trial of Socrates, I.F. StoneArguing About Slavery, William Lee MillerGladstone & Churchill, Roy JenkinsBright Shing Lie, SheehanThe Making of the Atomic Bomb, RhodesSpeak Now Against the Day, John EgertonCitizens, Simon SchamaAbraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg
My favorite writer is Tacitus -The Annals of Imperial Rome, but the all-time slam dunk rouser is Xenophon - The Persian Expedition.
No way that that book could possibly be described as a piece of "narrative history."
"Truman" by McCullough is devastating. Recommended very highly.
I also thought "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Yergin was a great read.
Want to really have some fun? Read "Lies Across America" by Loewen. It just eviscerates the southern revisionism that is rampant in public monuments.
"Citizen Soldiers" by Ambrose was great too.
Hate to be a me-too guy, but I will gladly add to the vote count for Robert Caro's incomparable "The Power Broker," David McCullough's "Truman," and Robert Timberg's severely underacclaimed "The Nightingale's Song."
Then, refusing to join a chorus, I admit that I could not finish Neal Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie," but an earlier book, "The Arnheiter Affair," about a real-life Caine Mutiny, is one of the strangest, most compelling stories about how weird life can be in the military that I've ever come across.
does William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" count as a "narrative history"?
it's a mighty useful and informative collection of words
I liked "A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II by William L. Oneill. Among other points, Oneill lays out the case that Amercan public education created a significant strategic military advantage for the US in the Second World War. In other words, American military personnel had superior ability to process written instructions, orders and information, and that advantage accrued to their ability to fight. Thats not the only strategic advantage he cites, but the idea of universal public education as a military advantage is certainly provacative.
Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, an examination of the men in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who involved us in Vietnam, is a great book that reads like a political thriller.
Rising Tide by John Barry is a fine one. And cheers to Robert Caro's Power Broker. And for a nod to a great popularizer historian, I enjoyed Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Nothing like a refreshing of the memory of the Guilded Age to add perspective to the present.
Excellent reading list this post is generating. On a different tack, how about David Rothman's two superb volumes on the history of the American penal system, Discovery of the Asylum, and Conscience and Convenience. Beutifully written, penetrating analysis. And timely today.
Garrett Mattingley - The Armada
I took Founding Brothers into the shower. Could not put it away. Likewise with John Barry's Rising Tide, the story of the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Classic narrative in its ability to pull together so much--hydrology, the rise of the welfare state, the strange business and political cultural of New Orleans, and the state of Mississippi Delta race relations--into the story of a rainfall.
Sheehan and Rhodes get my vote as well. Also enjoyed Francis Fitzgerald's "Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. Sadly some of the characters are still on the stage.
I tend to go with the most recent which is The Reformation by Diarmaid McCulloch.
I'll second Mattingly's The Armada and add Macaulay's History of England. For books by writers who are still alive, I'll say Jonathan Spence's Gate of Heavenly Peace.
Bill Burns
<p>I could not agree more. Caro breathes life into history, but not at the expense of historical accuracy. Indeed, his books are so amazing because he has so carefully researched his subjects that the anecdotes he uses to support his theses are rock solid.</p>
<p>It has been more than a decade since I read The Power Broker, but I still vividly recall vignettes like Robert Moses ordering the razing of a playground in Central Park to make way for Tavern on the Green so he could avoid having angry moms standing in front of the bulldozers.</p>
<p>One of my most fervent hopes in life is that Mr. Caro completes his LBJ series. It's not that he is particularly old, just that he is so damned thorough in his research and precise with his writing that it takes him forever to write these books.</p>
<p>After he finishes, I would love to see him do a one-volume Nixon bio. It would be the perfect next subject for a historian who is fascinated with political power and how it is wielded.</p>
Everyone must have forgotten about Herdotus, the Histories...
Not only did they generate the genre, they also set the standard.
I really enjoyed Peter Duffy's The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest and E.B. White's Here is New York. My dad, who loves history and reads nonstop, will read anything written by David Halberstam.
"Not sure if we're counting it, but anything by Robert Caro is really interesting."
For me, choice of subject matter is crucial. And the four books Caro has written perfectly dovetail with my interests. I'm obsessed with city architectures in general, and Manhattan architecture in specific. And I'm mega-obsessed with Lyndon Johnson.
Caro should be the guy for me, no?
And the fact that he's superb at the other aspects of his job certainly doesn't hurt. (If he dies before he finishes the next LBJ volume, I'm going to kill him.)
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Another book that's been special to me is Bob Woodward's The Agenda. It's the story of the decision making process early in the Clinton administration.
Again, the choice of subject matter is crucial to my level of interest. But it's worth noting that as much as we all like knocking Woodward from time to time, the guy is unparalleled at his forte - getting powerful people to tell him their story.
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And given my stated LBJ fetish, it should be no surprise that I'd be a big fan of The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam's other work is also tasty.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and I'm fascinated by it. This should be required reading in every American History class.
Rick Rettberg, Downers Grove, IL
I'd pick Barbara Tuchman's <span class="sans">Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45</span><span class="sans">. It's a classy narrative, a biography, and a Pulitzer Prize winner, all at the same time. I read it in High School and it is probably the first book that 'woke me up' to history. </span>
Bryson is amazingly diverse, isn't he? There's so much to like in 'A Short History of Nearly Everything.' What I found especially useful was how he explained the relevance of very, very small and very, very big numbers. The long view, if you will. We could use more of this in many of today's issues' debates.
I would have to agree with the posters above who mention The Power Broker by Robert Caro. Exhaustively researched and it reads like a novel. Such a wonderful view of how individual personalities and contingent occurrences radiate to create what from the outside appears to be a monolithic history.
The other book I would mention is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. A similar level of detail and equally compelling personailty profiles of the key figures that led to Trinity. Rhodes's portraits of Oppenheimer and Bohr are particularly telling.
that is totally my prayer also... that Caro finishes the series! It's still probably 8-10 years away, but if he does, he will have completed the best "life" ever of an American president.
Haven't read all of the comments, so sorry if this is repetitive, but I've been reading American history for over twenty-five years (mostly Southern history), and these are among the best narrativehistories I've encountered:
Stephen Oates, The Fires of Jubilee
Shelby Foote, The Civil War (3 vols.)
David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride
Robert Caro, The Power Broker
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, & Isaac's Storm
Edward Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Louis Masur, 1831
Nat Turner
I'm not a historian by trade, but I did enjoy Robert Service's "Lenin" and appreciated (enjoy's not quite the right word) John McElroy's "This Was Andersonville", a biased (for understandable reasons) but gripping account of his time spent in the Confederacy's most notorious prison.
Comments (236)
Not sure if we're counting it, but anything by Robert Caro is really interesting.
June 8, 2005 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
A. Beevor's Stalingrad or Thucydides' Pelopponesian Wars. Alan Clark's Barbarossa is entertaining but not always reliable (understandable, since he lacked access to the Soviet archives).
June 8, 2005 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Best style: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Man, can Gibbon write.
Otherwise: Parting the Waters and Battle Cry of Freedom.
June 8, 2005 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange. A close second is The Franco-Prussian War by Michael Howard. Also love The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Can't forget A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheean.
June 8, 2005 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was just going to suggest Robert Caro - The Power Broker is still the best history of New York (through the doings of Robert Moses) that I've ever read.
June 8, 2005 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town; Caro is right up there as well.
June 8, 2005 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we're talking only about books with an historical / political bent, I'd have to nominate Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein. It's about the formation of the modern conservative movement around Barry Goldwater's seemingly-catastrophic 1964 presidential run, and how that built into the movement that got Ronald Reagan into the White House (and that loves George W. today).
Not only is the book vital to understanding our current political situation, but it's beautifully written, and unwinds compellingly.
June 8, 2005 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I, too, enjoyed The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I also like some of Stephen Ambrose's WW II books
June 8, 2005 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does The Odyssey count?
June 8, 2005 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's another vote for Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie. Also, I'm not sure where Tuchman's reputation stands these days among historians, but I loved A Distant Mirror when I read it years ago.
June 8, 2005 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sheehan and Rhodes are pretty terrific, but I think the best I've read is Chancellorsville: The Souls of the Brave by Ernest Furgurson.
June 8, 2005 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The late Dumas Malone's multi-volume of Thomas Jefferson is the work I read most eagerly.
June 8, 2005 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boy, good call on Gibbon. More recently, the enormous, multi-volume series on the 100 Years' War by...Jonathon Sumption (thanks, Amazon!) is dense, detailed, and yet very enjoyable. It's driving me nuts to have to wait for Vol 3.
June 8, 2005 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent question! There are so many to choose from, but a couple of my personal favorites are The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos (for early-American history buffs) and The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (for people interested in WWI). And while we're on the subject of history (although it isn't precisely a narrative history), I'd have to recommend the great E.P. Thompson's classic The Making of the English Working Class. I'm so glad Josh got us on the subject of history. Judging by the quick flurry of comments already posted, it seems like this is a topic we should continue exploring on this site.
June 8, 2005 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
E.P. Thompson, "The Making of the English Working Class."
The Perlstein book is pretty damn good too.
June 8, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
For enjoyable reading, I would choose The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald -- an absolutely riveting accounting of the ADA lysine price fixing scandal that reads like the wildest mystery/thriller I've ever read.
For traditional history, I would choose Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler -- Hitler: Hubris, and Hitler: Nemisis; essential reading, particularly in these times
For American History, I would choose Truman by David McCollough. Not just a great biography, but a great history of America in the first half of the 20th century.
June 8, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think anything could possibly compare with Robert Caro's work. The first and third volume's of The Years of Lyndon Johnson are absurdly good. The Power Broker is quite simply the best book ever written about politics (In my humble opinion). :o)
June 8, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would concur that Before the Storm is a remarkable book. It kind of ruined political history for me for a couple months, because nothing I read was as lively as Perlstein.
I'm not ready to compare it to Gibbon, but it's required reading for people wondering how the heck we ended up where we are today.
June 8, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Guns of August is an excellent choice! The essential work on WWI
June 8, 2005 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama. He's an incorrigible showoff, but he's got a lot to show. Also, Peter the Great, by Robert K. Massie; one of those exceptional biographies that doesn't assume the reader knows the territory to start with, and gives a real sense of time, place, context and relevence to boot.
June 8, 2005 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth Jackson. You never knew you wanted to read it until you start.
I'll also second (or is it fourth by now) Caro. If you don't want to read all of the Power Broker, just read the chapter on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
June 8, 2005 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ditto to jackrussel's pick of
Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie.
&
Tuchman's A Distant Mirror
I'll add Samuel Eliot Morison's The Two Ocean War
to the terrier's list. Read the short history if you don't have time for the 15 volume set. :o)))
/fred
June 8, 2005 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're a Southern California native like me, (or anyone who is affected by water battles in the West) a fascinating read is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Great narrative and insight as to how Mulholland and others worked the system to pump water from the West into Los Angeles....
June 8, 2005 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. Anthony Lukas's _Big Trouble_ is certainly up there, the fact that it may have needed one more edit notwithstanding. I think it's even more elegant in conception than _Common Ground_.
Peter Brown's biography of St. Augustine also makes my list, if you can count a biography as narrative history. So does Mary Beard's new little book on the Parthenon, if only to demonstrate that a narrative history needn't be an enormous marble monument, even when it is about an enormous marble monument. Again, though, there's the question of whether the book fits the category.
June 8, 2005 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
My nominations go to:
And two honorary mentions, compelling books which didn’t quite make the list because the reading was a bit more work than it probably should have been:
June 8, 2005 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I second Beevor's Stalingrad -- I had to read it last semester for a sociology class on the western way of war, and it blew me away. I definitely need to learn more Soviet history.
June 8, 2005 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I read non-fiction I tend to go for stuff on smaller less well documented stories. Recently i read "Pirate Hunter" by Richard Zaks, interesting revising of the story of Captain Kidd. Off the top of my head "Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton" by Edward Rice was good. "Midnight in Sicily" by Peter Robb is a sort of history of the mafia trials in Sicily over the last 40 years.
I'll have to look at my bookshelves when I'm home tonight to remember others I've read recently and liked:-)
June 8, 2005 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anonhero: Exactly. The chapter on the Cross-Bronx E-way is remarkable. If we're letting historical biographies slide in here, I'd include Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life. Cadillac Desert is a great, maddening book. I appreciate this thread, Josh. It's giving me some ideas for summer books!
June 8, 2005 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Crucible of War : The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, by Fred Anderson.
His goal was to show the reader that this was an important war, setting the stage for everthing that came after (namely, the Revolution). To be honest, I don't know enough history of the era to really judge his thesis, but he's very convincing.
And the opening is great--a young George Washington surrounded by gunfire in a field, inadvertently kicking off a chain of events that led to the war--an 18th Century Gavrilo Princip! Hmmm, I should know if that's apocryphal before I go recommending the book..June 8, 2005 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beevor on the Spanish Civil War is also excellent.
June 8, 2005 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, about the Battle of Thermopylae and the events leading up to it. Written from the perspective of a conscripted slave/squier and in an incredibly rich and descriptive narrative style.
June 8, 2005 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
To the already impressive list, I would add
1) Jill Lepore's The Name of War
2)Donna Merwick's Death of a Notary
3)Paul Gilje's Liberty on the Waterfront
June 8, 2005 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for mentioning that wonderful, wonderful book. I'm no professional historian, but I can't tell you how many academics I've talked to who inexplicably haven't read it. Absolutely, positively essential foundational seminal, whatever. Not just on religious history, microhistory, etc, but simply on the characteristics of what is original work in the field. A thousand Donald Kagans couldn't even come close.
June 8, 2005 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
In addition to Massie's Peter the Great biography, his book about the pre-WWI Anglo-German naval arms race Dreadnought is so well written that it makes what could be an exceedingly dry topic come to life. As a historian, Massie is not particularly strong in that he relies too much on the personalities of the participants (such as Kaiser Willhem II) to explain why things unfolded as they did, however, he is a tremendous writer of popular histories.
June 8, 2005 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alan Clark's also not entirely reliable because he was not entirely sane: a ruthless, boozing sexual bully who married a fifteen year-old and named his dog Eva Braun. Cute. But he wrote well, and Barbarossa's as readable and interesting as other great military study, The Donkeys (about WWI idiot generals).
June 8, 2005 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howard Zinn's People's History is fascinating and an essential companion to any American history.
But, for a couple of different kinds of history, how about Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything," an amazing and compelling brief history of science and what we know from it (essentially). Beautifully written, too.
And finally, Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire is a history of sorts, of some plant life (better said, of the interaction between some plant life and humans.). Potatoes, apples, tulips, and marijuana are treated.
June 8, 2005 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anything by Robert K. Massie would qualify in my estimation, particularly his Dreadnought describing events leading up to WWI and the first real arms race.
June 8, 2005 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm in the middle of George Reisch's just-released How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science, and it's a damn good read, if you like that sort of thing.
June 8, 2005 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Blood & Vengeance - One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia by Chuck Sudetic. Compelling and shattering.
June 8, 2005 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
This thread is full of goodies, but here are a couple from my reading list of the past year or so:
Chernow "Alexander Hamilton." Among other things, you'll never see Thomas Jefferson the same way. It's fantastic.
R. W. Southern "The Making of the Middle Ages," nice and academic.
Maraniss "They Marched Into Sunlight"
Orwell "The Lion and the Unicorn". This is stretching the narrative history mandate a bit, but it's worth it. Orwell comments on the past and future of British society ca. 1940. And as usual, he gets in right. It's usually published in collections of Orwell's essays, which are their own treat.
June 8, 2005 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another vote for Before the Storm, and The Making of the Atomic Bomb
I’ll add Winchell : Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity by Neal Gabler.
More than a biography, it traces the creation of the remaking of the American press by the creation of the newspaper gossip column, and spawned café society and concept of celebrity that we know today. What I found especially interesting was how the competition, and vicious battles waged by daily columnists actually resemble the blogging of today.
June 8, 2005 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd reccommend "Downfall" by Richard B. Frank. It covers the fall of Imperial Japan. He makes use of recently released documents, including the Emporer's 1946 account of the political dealings inside Japan. The scope is broad. There are invasion plans, ordinary bombing, fire bombing, and the atomic bombs. There are plans to partially demobilize the US Army and send troops from Europe to Japan (which was a catastrophe in the making). There is Yalta and the Soviet commitment to fight Japan. There is Admiral King versus General Marshall. In short, all one could ask for.
June 8, 2005 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shelby Foote The Civil War: A Narrative History
June 8, 2005 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not exactly an earth-shattering subject, but fascinating, with several illuminating lessons about the unintended consequences of puritanical thought:
American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine, by Paul LukacsJune 8, 2005 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two of my favorite works of narrative history include J. Anthony Lukas' Nightmare, about Watergate and the Nixon years, and David Halberstam's The Powers That Be, about the rise of the corporate media.
June 8, 2005 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can I cheat?
I think the award should probably go to The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age by J. Leslie Fitton. She's detailing the history of the archaeology, but she quite effectively folds in the Greek Bronze Age itself. (She has to.)
I would say 'I think...' because I could also mention: Hitler and Stalin by Alan Bullock (which just trumps Kershaw's recent biography). Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Creasy is classic for good reason. Rainbow's End, The Crash of 1929 by Murray Klein was great. From Dawn to Decadence was spiffy, but I dunno if that qualifies. The Shaman's Coat, A Native History of Siberia by Anna Reid is the best book nobody has ever heard of which made me happy that at least I read it. Reds by Ted Morgan is very very informative.
ash
['Ask me again tommorrow when I'll have five different choices.']
June 8, 2005 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
but For Us, The Living, by Myrlie Evers (the wife of Medger Evers) is a beautifully written rememberance of Evers' civil rights work in Mississippi. Evers was gunned down by white terrorists the same night President Kennedy gave a televised speech calling for a civil rights statute.
Plus, I met her yesterday in Chicago! What a wonderful woman.
A complete history of the Mississippi Freedom Movement is Local People by John Dittmer.
June 8, 2005 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
How can you choose just one? Different things at different times mattered. Bruce Catton and Walter Lord were my introductions to history many years ago. And A stillness at Appomattox and Incredible Victory are still great reads. THe smae goes for Costain's history of the Plantaganets. Big Trouble by Lukas has alredy been mentioned. Just looking at the shelf, Dreadnought by Massie, William Leuchtenberg's Franlin Roosevelt and the Coming of the New Deal is pretty great. Also, Eliot Asinof's Eight Men OUt and Ross King's Brunelschi's Dome stand out.
Is The Right Stuff narrative history? It is great writing.
But if I had to choose, the top three would be Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, Mcpherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and John Dowher's War Without Mercy.
June 8, 2005 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you serious about the Southern book? I had to read it in college (20 years ago), but just reread it in the last year or two because I'm on a bit of a medieval kick. I wouldn't exactly call it gripping!
I don't read much US history, so I haven't done much in the way of comparison, but I very much enjoyed Founding Brothers.
June 8, 2005 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
"A Bright Shining Lie" by Neal Sheehan. The best book I've seen on the Vietnam War also stands out as the best narrative history I've read.
"A History of The Modern World" by R.R. Palmer and friends. A textbook that is actually fun to read.
June 8, 2005 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes while reading Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile, I forgot I was reading non-fiction. Gibbon and Tuchman are great too, though. Tough decision.
If you're into economics at all, Henwood's After the new Economy or any Niall Ferguson before he decided to be a tory-hawk.
June 8, 2005 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thucydides' Peloponnesian War.
June 8, 2005 4:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by HST.
June 8, 2005 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hiroshima by John Hersey. Periodic Table by Primo Levi.
June 8, 2005 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, yes, I was serious. I never said the thing was a page-turner. But I find myself thinking about it rather often, and it was a pleasure to read, like being invited into the private study of someone brilliant and learned.
I haven't read Founding Brothers, though Chernow quotes it in many places in Hamilton. What's the deal with Ellis? I guess that little fabrication thing didn't absolutely destroy his reputation.
June 8, 2005 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's by Frederick Lewis Allen
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin
History of Rome by Michael Grant
A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich
Blood of the Liberals by George Packer
"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
June 8, 2005 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here are three all-time favorites of mine not mentioned so far (I think):
<i>Rising Tide</i>, by John Barry. It centers on the great flood of the Mississippi in 1927 in a way that touches on all sorts of related and fascinating side topics, for example the hydrology of the river, high society in New Orleans, and the appallingly discriminatory manner in which relief was managed, which the author asserts was the beginning of the transfer of the political allegiance from the GOP to the Democrats.
<i>The Nightingale's Song</i>, by Robert Timberg. The author, a Naval Academy graduate himself, traces how the careers of five fellow graduates, John McCain, John Poindexter, Bud MacFarlane, Ollie North and James Webb, intersected in the Iran Contra affair.
<i>Getting There</i>, by Stephen Goddard. This book is about the intense conflict in the twentieth century between rail and road transportation, centering on the career of the argely unknown bureaucrat who led the road forces, one Tom (or was it Tim) McDonald.
Also strong seconds for the afore mentioned <i>Bright and Shining Lie</i>, <i>Cadillac Desert</i>, which has parallels with <i>Getting There</i>, and the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson.
June 8, 2005 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re my previous comment about "Rising Tide", my brain got ahead of my fingers and I skipped over the phrase that it was the African American's allegiance that the author contends began to shift as a result of the maladministration of flood relief.
June 8, 2005 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I must throw in one of my all-time favorites: Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom--an ironic, tragic account of how those two institutions not only came to co-exist, but to mutually support each other--and what that says about our own mixed-up attitudes about class and race.
June 8, 2005 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
All historians will recognize one thing that the question refers to -- their long-running, on-and-off debate about the value of storytelling and the need for narrative approaches, at least as a way for them not to lose their broader audience entirely.
There's a steady accumulation of works by established historians that take on the task of "narrative history" -- like the already-mentioned books by John Demos and Alan Taylor, and David Hackett Fisher's Paul Revere's Ride. (An early Americanist, like our site editor, must be pretty familiar with those.) A few other ideas, from more recent periods:
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in 19th-Century New York. An engrossing look at a celebrated case, how the press covered it, and what it shows about city life at the time.
Steven Weisenburger, Modern Media: A Family Story of Slavery and Child Murder in the Old South. Tells about a famous episode in which an escaped slave killed her children, rather than allowing them to be recaptured.
David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. Perhaps the standard survey text for its period, but also a masterful work of storytelling.
Don Carleton, Red Scare! A really well-written explanation of how McCarthyites took over the Houston school board.
I like all of these, but think there are questions about what narrative does, and why exactly is it so important, that these works (even the self-conscious exercises in narrative) don't generally address. Can you boil down a set of circumstances into a coherent story while still doing justice to the different ways they were experienced?
Take New York City in 1977, the "summer of Sam." James Goodman (Blackout) and Jonathan Mahler (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning) have written compelling but totally different narrative histories. Mahler zeroes in on a few individual subjects whose stories are worth telling (Rupert Murdoch, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson) but don't necessarily represent the experiences of others, or explain seriously how we got from there to here. Goodman tries harder to capture a range of experiences, and weave together personal stories not so easily found or frequently told. But can a story do justice to the complexity of things, and still really remain a story?
I also wonder whether there are nearly as many works of history out there that aren't "narrative history" -- more descriptive, analytical, etc. -- that also appeal to general readers.
June 8, 2005 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ditto. The same two authors, Bruce Catton and Walter Lord, were also my introduction to history. I just finished re-reading Catton's 3-volume history of the Civil War. I must admit I liked them better when I was younger but they are still excellent.
No mention of Churchill's history of the Second World War? Can we count that as history and not autobiography? Either way it is excellent for a great many reasons (perhaps unbiased accuracy is not among them).
Thus far no mention of the "classics" of American history - Bailyn (Voyagers to the West was my favorite of his) and Wood (Radicalism of the American Revolution)
Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism - I'm always re-readnig that one.
Edmundo Morgan Inventing the People.
Enough... I could go on and on.
June 8, 2005 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
My two (very different) favorites:
1) "Citizens" by Simon Schama ("Landscape and Memory" isn't bad either);
2) "The Power Broker" by Caro (already mentioned, and deservedly so).
June 8, 2005 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know this is historical fiction, but none-the-less an extremely fascinating read about the history of civilization and religion.
June 8, 2005 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you about the Southern Book. I think writing about the Founders in sympathetic way may give Ellis a lease on his career.
June 8, 2005 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Albion's Seed.
I'm just starting to read Arthur Schlesinger's series, The Age of Roosevelt.
Thanks for the thread. I've added several suggestions to my reading list.
June 8, 2005 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had forgotten about "A Bright Shining Lie." Also, if you're looking for an unbelievably short Revolutionary War book, it's hard to beat Edmund Morgan's "Birth of the Republic." Actually, it's hard to beat Morgan on anything.
June 8, 2005 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh, you're killing me. Figuratively, of course.
Herodotus, The Histories. “The father of history and the father of lies.”
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. “The first journalist.”
Livy, The Early History of Rome. “Color.”
June 8, 2005 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, I really wanted to like Botany of Desire, but I just couldn't get into it. The writing seemd to strive too often for poetic effect. Maybe I'll have to give it another try.
June 8, 2005 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Morgan's American Slavery/American Freedom was going to be the one I recommended too. Marvelous book, though in many ways considered old-fashioned today. I've read books since graduate school that I may have found more engrossing. But Morgan's mix of social and political history is tour de force. It was something I had in mind myself as I wrote my dissertation.
June 8, 2005 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
They Marched into Sunlight is one of the best books of the decade--a combination of painstaking research & a natural narrative flow. Fantastic book.
June 8, 2005 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages allowed me to see how differently different people can think and make sense of their world. Is it 'narrative' history - I guess so...
June 8, 2005 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo, a history of how we came to know what we now know about evolution and extinction, is the most riveting nonfiction read I've ever experienced.
Second place goes to Tuchman's The Guns of August.
June 8, 2005 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another great book about Vietnam & its affect on the US is Paul Hendrickson's The Living & The Dead, which begins with an account of the life of Robert McNamara, then tells the stories of five Americans whose lives were affected by his policies in the Vietnam era. Did you know that an artist once almost succeeded in throwing McNamara off the deck of the Martha's Vineyard ferry in a fit of rage over the Vietnam war?
June 8, 2005 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am always surprised that William Lee Miller is not better known. He has written two of the most compulsively readable history books I've read, both on a topic done to death-- Lincoln and the Civil War.
Arguing About Slavery is a wonderful, often hilarious book about the excesses of Congressional debate in the florid pre-Civil War period--specifically the effort to forestall debate about slavery in Congress (on the grounds that it was a state matter entirely out of Congress' purview), which was conducted in the most pompous, grandiloquent style by the South and with malicious glee in tormenting such windbags by the Congressman and former president John Quincy Adams.
Lincoln's Ethics-- still a narrative history, albeit from the point of view of one topic-- is one of the best books about the reality of politics, and how Lincoln navigated the narrow straits between his ambition and his ethics. At the time (and still) many people thought he was using, and probably betraying, the abolitionist movement; the reality, of course, is that he, not the idealists and the holier than thous, was the only one who understood how to make the movement's ideals reality.
Not, of course, that there's anything like that going on today.
June 8, 2005 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tuchman's Guns of August is a powerful and well-written book on the First World War, so I second, third, or fourth the others who have mentioned it.
A narrative work in British history that is also well-written and filled with ascerbic asides and comments from the author is George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, about the turbulent decade before the First World War.
June 8, 2005 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's been a long time since I enjoyed, and felt I learned as much from a book, as from reading James Carroll's Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.
June 8, 2005 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Definitely Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army.
June 8, 2005 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thucydides. Also, I see that someone else just noted The Strange Death of Liberal England, which is great. And WH Lewis' The Splendid Century is also wonderfully written.
June 8, 2005 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it is alright to have a second post another wonderful book is Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World. Not only a great story about New Amsterdam but also provides an interesting perspective to some current debates about the nature of the United States.
June 8, 2005 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't notice any votes for Gore Vidal, sorry if I missed them. i'd have to put "Burr" and "Lincoln" as my two faves. really brilliant history/fiction amalgam.
the last three philip k dick books--transmigration of timothy archer, valis, and...the other one...are the 70s through the looking glass. and while i'm up, "A Scanner Darkly" though written in 1977 and about 1994, seems to have somehow been written with full knowledge of what would happen, making it feel pseudo-historical.
confusing.
June 8, 2005 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Top 5
1) Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson (The best one volume history of the Civil War and if you don't understand the Civil War you don't understand the US)2) Robert Kennedy and his times, Authur Schlessinger, Jr. (The sixties through the lens of RFK. One of the two or three books I've read more than twice)3) The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins, Tim Pat Coogan (The place to start if you want to understand what is going on in Northern Ireland)4) Lone Star Rising & Flawed Giant, Robert Dallek (Everyone keeps talking about Caro's LBJ but Dallek is more reliable and better)5) Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch (The sixties through the lens of King. Read this and the Kennedy book and you've got most of it)
Others:
The Trial of Socrates, I.F. StoneArguing About Slavery, William Lee MillerGladstone & Churchill, Roy JenkinsBright Shing Lie, SheehanThe Making of the Atomic Bomb, RhodesSpeak Now Against the Day, John EgertonCitizens, Simon SchamaAbraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg
June 8, 2005 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
My favorite writer is Tacitus -The Annals of Imperial Rome, but the all-time slam dunk rouser is Xenophon - The Persian Expedition.
June 8, 2005 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
No way that that book could possibly be described as a piece of "narrative history."
June 8, 2005 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Truman" by McCullough is devastating. Recommended very highly.
I also thought "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Yergin was a great read.
Want to really have some fun? Read "Lies Across America" by Loewen. It just eviscerates the southern revisionism that is rampant in public monuments.
"Citizen Soldiers" by Ambrose was great too.
June 8, 2005 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hate to be a me-too guy, but I will gladly add to the vote count for Robert Caro's incomparable "The Power Broker," David McCullough's "Truman," and Robert Timberg's severely underacclaimed "The Nightingale's Song."
Then, refusing to join a chorus, I admit that I could not finish Neal Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie," but an earlier book, "The Arnheiter Affair," about a real-life Caine Mutiny, is one of the strangest, most compelling stories about how weird life can be in the military that I've ever come across.
June 8, 2005 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
does William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" count as a "narrative history"?
it's a mighty useful and informative collection of words
June 8, 2005 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I liked "A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II by William L. Oneill. Among other points, Oneill lays out the case that Amercan public education created a significant strategic military advantage for the US in the Second World War. In other words, American military personnel had superior ability to process written instructions, orders and information, and that advantage accrued to their ability to fight. Thats not the only strategic advantage he cites, but the idea of universal public education as a military advantage is certainly provacative.
June 8, 2005 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, an examination of the men in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who involved us in Vietnam, is a great book that reads like a political thriller.
June 8, 2005 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rising Tide by John Barry is a fine one. And cheers to Robert Caro's Power Broker. And for a nod to a great popularizer historian, I enjoyed Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Nothing like a refreshing of the memory of the Guilded Age to add perspective to the present.
June 8, 2005 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent reading list this post is generating. On a different tack, how about David Rothman's two superb volumes on the history of the American penal system, Discovery of the Asylum, and Conscience and Convenience. Beutifully written, penetrating analysis. And timely today.
June 8, 2005 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Garrett Mattingley - The Armada
June 8, 2005 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I took Founding Brothers into the shower. Could not put it away.
Likewise with John Barry's Rising Tide, the story of the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Classic narrative in its ability to pull together so much--hydrology, the rise of the welfare state, the strange business and political cultural of New Orleans, and the state of Mississippi Delta race relations--into the story of a rainfall.
June 8, 2005 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sheehan and Rhodes get my vote as well. Also enjoyed Francis Fitzgerald's "Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. Sadly some of the characters are still on the stage.
June 8, 2005 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I tend to go with the most recent which is The Reformation by Diarmaid McCulloch.
June 8, 2005 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll second Mattingly's The Armada and add Macaulay's History of England. For books by writers who are still alive, I'll say Jonathan Spence's Gate of Heavenly Peace.
Bill Burns
June 8, 2005 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
<p>I could not agree more. Caro breathes life into history, but not at the expense of historical accuracy. Indeed, his books are so amazing because he has so carefully researched his subjects that the anecdotes he uses to support his theses are rock solid.</p>
<p>It has been more than a decade since I read The Power Broker, but I still vividly recall vignettes like Robert Moses ordering the razing of a playground in Central Park to make way for Tavern on the Green so he could avoid having angry moms standing in front of the bulldozers.</p>
<p>One of my most fervent hopes in life is that Mr. Caro completes his LBJ series. It's not that he is particularly old, just that he is so damned thorough in his research and precise with his writing that it takes him forever to write these books.</p>
<p>After he finishes, I would love to see him do a one-volume Nixon bio. It would be the perfect next subject for a historian who is fascinated with political power and how it is wielded.</p>
June 8, 2005 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Everyone must have forgotten about Herdotus, the Histories...
Not only did they generate the genre, they also set the standard.
June 8, 2005 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really enjoyed Peter Duffy's The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest and E.B. White's Here is New York. My dad, who loves history and reads nonstop, will read anything written by David Halberstam.
June 8, 2005 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Not sure if we're counting it, but anything by Robert Caro is really interesting."
For me, choice of subject matter is crucial. And the four books Caro has written perfectly dovetail with my interests. I'm obsessed with city architectures in general, and Manhattan architecture in specific. And I'm mega-obsessed with Lyndon Johnson.
Caro should be the guy for me, no?
And the fact that he's superb at the other aspects of his job certainly doesn't hurt. (If he dies before he finishes the next LBJ volume, I'm going to kill him.)
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Another book that's been special to me is Bob Woodward's The Agenda. It's the story of the decision making process early in the Clinton administration.
Again, the choice of subject matter is crucial to my level of interest. But it's worth noting that as much as we all like knocking Woodward from time to time, the guy is unparalleled at his forte - getting powerful people to tell him their story.
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And given my stated LBJ fetish, it should be no surprise that I'd be a big fan of The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam's other work is also tasty.
June 8, 2005 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and I'm fascinated by it. This should be required reading in every American History class.
Rick Rettberg, Downers Grove, IL
June 8, 2005 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd pick Barbara Tuchman's <span class="sans">Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45</span><span class="sans">. It's a classy narrative, a biography, and a Pulitzer Prize winner, all at the same time. I read it in High School and it is probably the first book that 'woke me up' to history.
</span>
June 8, 2005 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bryson is amazingly diverse, isn't he? There's so much to like in 'A Short History of Nearly Everything.' What I found especially useful was how he explained the relevance of very, very small and very, very big numbers. The long view, if you will. We could use more of this in many of today's issues' debates.
June 8, 2005 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would have to agree with the posters above who mention The Power Broker by Robert Caro. Exhaustively researched and it reads like a novel. Such a wonderful view of how individual personalities and contingent occurrences radiate to create what from the outside appears to be a monolithic history.
The other book I would mention is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. A similar level of detail and equally compelling personailty profiles of the key figures that led to Trinity. Rhodes's portraits of Oppenheimer and Bohr are particularly telling.
June 8, 2005 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
that is totally my prayer also... that Caro finishes the series! It's still probably 8-10 years away, but if he does, he will have completed the best "life" ever of an American president.
June 8, 2005 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Haven't read all of the comments, so sorry if this is repetitive, but I've been reading American history for over twenty-five years (mostly Southern history), and these are among the best narrative histories I've encountered:
Stephen Oates, The Fires of Jubilee
Shelby Foote, The Civil War (3 vols.)
David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride
Robert Caro, The Power Broker
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, & Isaac's Storm
Edward Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Louis Masur, 1831
Nat Turner
June 8, 2005 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not a historian by trade, but I did enjoy Robert Service's "Lenin" and appreciated (enjoy's not quite the right word) John McElroy's "This Was Andersonville", a biased (for understandable reasons) but gripping account of his time spent in the Confederacy's most notorious prison.