What history books have/are you reading? (Page 2)

I will keep reading it eventually, “We Were Soldiers Once…and Young.”  Not exactly a history book but a recount of one battle in Vietnam.

Hogwarts, A History

"Skeletons on the Zahara" - the true story of an American merchant sailing crew who shipwrecked in Africa in the early 1800's and were taken into slavery by Saharan nomadic Arabs. Compiled from the journals that they kept during their captivity. Would make a great movie.

"Over the Edge of the World" - a very easy-to-read account of Magellan's attempt to circumnavigate the Earth.

"Collapse" by Jared Diamond (the Guns, Germs & Steel guy) - kind of academic and dry, but very interesting analysis of several failed societies and looks at the complex reasons why they failed.

Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year - all about man's quest to keep time and mark the passing of the seasons coupled with the development of mathematics, astronomy, and trade. Fascinating and very easy-to-read.

and my favorite historical book of all-time:

"Longitude" - very easy to read (and short) account of the development of the first clocks able to keep accurate time at sea (necessary to determine longitude) in the 1700's. Several of the clocks are in the Naval Observatory Museum at Greenwich England and some of them still run!

Now tackling:  Robert and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy:  The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present.

The authors are a husband-and-wife team of historians.  He's British and specializes in French history; she's French and specializes in British.  It got a great review in the Atlantic a couple of months back; will let you know how I like it. 

Hey Renee, thanks for starting this!  There's hope for civilization/CoJ after all.   

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (Zhai)

The Heritage of Chinese Civilization (Craig)

bts 

Another favorite of mine is "They Poured Fire on us From the Sky".  It's an amazing story about three small boys that fled their war torn villages in Sudan and trekked to the Ethiopia/Kenya border to a refugee camp.  I can't imagine surviving all that as an adult let alone as a seven year old child. 

 I was on an Ambrose kick for a while. He makes me feel like the average American today is a selfish complaining bloated comsumer compared to the men that fought in WWII.

+1 for Lies My Teacher Told me.

Another one that comes to mind is Bill Bryson's Made in America, about how the "American language" developed; where our words come from, grammatical idiosyncracies, and all kinds of interesting nuggets.

"Ordeal By Hunger" by George Stewart.  It's the history of the Donner Party.  I am pretty much a nut-job about this event in history, and have a collection of books about it.  Some other good ones to read are:

"History of the Donner Party" by C.F. McGlashan

"Winter of Entrapment" by Joseph A. King.  King is also a good Civil War historian, as is the late Wallace Stegner who also might have done some Donner Party work, though I have yet to uncover it.

"The Expedition of the Donner Party" by Eliza P. Donner Houghton, a surviving member or the ordeal.

"The Emmigrant's Guide to Oregon and California" by Lansford W. Hastings.  This is a reprint of the original guide that the Donners and the Reeds used to get themselves into their drastic situation.

A good addition to the above is the PBS documentary of The Donner Party, available on DVD.

Speaking to the medium of video, I really really really like Ken Burns' documentary Lewis & Clark

I thought it was the Donner Party of 9.  Gotta include Santa, you know, and the rest of the reindeer. 

Ooh, History of Beauty's been on my to-read list for a long time. Just have to remember to get it from the library!