Historic Reads

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Our history in books

A curated list of great books about history ▾

Historic Reads is a collection of the best history books, presented on a timeline to help readers gain a better understanding of the ebbs and flows of historical events.

Ancient History

The History of the Ancient World

Susan Wise Bauer

A History of the Ancient Near East

Marc Van De Mieroop

The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child

Susan Wise Bauer

The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt

China: A History

Harold M. Tanner

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years

Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Post-Classical History

The Wars of the Roses

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Barbara W. Tuchman

The Discoverers

Daniel J. Boorstin

The History of the Medieval World

Susan Wise Bauer

The Civilization of the Middle Ages

Norman F. Cantor

The Silk Road in World History

Early Modern History

The History of the Renaissance World

Susan Wise Bauer

The Age of Wonder

A People's History of the United States

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Joseph J. Ellis

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

James M. McPherson

The Blue Nile

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Adam Hochschild

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia

Christopher Clark

The Story of American Freedom

Modern History

On China

Henry Kissinger

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill

William Manchester

The Rape Of Nanking

No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

The Fifties

David Halberstam

The Great Influenza

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

James W. Loewen

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A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

Samuel Noah Kramer

The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries

Stonehenge - A New Understanding

Mike Parker Pearson

The Phoenicians

Sabatino Moscati

The Complete Tutankhamun

Nicholas Reeves

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides, Robert B. Strassler

Plato: Complete Works

Plato, John M. Cooper

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Caesar

Adrian Goldsworthy

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Complete Pompeii

The Life and Times of Constantine the Great

D. G. Kousoulas

The Story of the Goths

Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire

The Story of Mohammed Islam Unveiled

Harry Richardson

The Vikings

Charlemagne

The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great

Benjamin Merkle

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger

The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

The Crusades

Thomas Asbridge

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

1215: The Year of Magna Carta

The Incas

Terence N. D'Altroy

The Aztecs

Michael E. Smith

Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali

P. James Oliver

The Renaissance: A Short History

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death

Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann

Here I Stand - A Life Of Martin Luther

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

Suleiman the Magnificent

Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms

A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos

Ivan the Terrible

The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England

Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai

Katsu Kokichi, Teruko Craig

Love and Hate in Jamestown

Galileo's Daughter

Mayflower

Nathaniel Philbrick

China's Last Empire: The Great Qing

William T. Rowe

Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World

James MacGregor Burns

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

The Salem Witch Trials

Marilynne K. Roach

The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV

The Republic of Pirates

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention

Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War

Farther Than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook

1776

David McCullough

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Washington: A Life

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West

Stephen E. Ambrose

Napoleon: A Life

The Mexican Wars for Independence

Timothy J. Henderson

A. Lincoln: A Biography

Ronald C. White Jr.

Civil War Volumes 1-3

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Nathaniel Philbrick

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse

The Devil in the White City

The Oxford History of World Cinema

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

The Wright Brothers

David McCullough

I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford

The Last Place on Earth

Roland Huntford

The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I

Barbara W. Tuchman

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

Margaret Macmillan

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Simon Sebag Montefiore

One Summer: America, 1927

The Great Crash 1929

John Kenneth Galbraith

FDR

Jean Edward Smith

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

William L. Shirer

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire

The Second World War

D-Day: June 6, 1944

Stephen E. Ambrose

Making of the Atomic Bomb

The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution

Frank Dikötter

The Diary of a Young Girl

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

David Halberstam

Parting the Waters : America in the King Years

The Right Stuff

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert F. Kennedy

Five Days in November

Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution

The Things They Carried

The Yom Kippur War

Abraham Rabinovich

All the President's Men

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein

Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer

Paul Freiberger

Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences

Voices from Chernobyl

Svetlana Alexievich

The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited

The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall

Mary Elise Sarotte

Big Picture History

In Detail History

Update: Feb. 12th, 2015

Thank you to everyone who gave us such tremendous praise and feedback! We're delighted to hear that people are enjoying our take on great history books.

We've added the following books to the timeline: The Phoenicians, The Oxford History of World Cinema.