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[mid83]

Reading has become a primary hobby of mine over the past few years, primarily replacing gaming in how I spend much of my free time. I mostly read fiction novels. I also enjoy keeping up with politics and current affairs, mostly by reading the NYT, Economist and WaPo regularly. I'd love to gain a deeper understanding of geopolitics and history (and economics as well), therefore I think it's time to start adding in nonfiction to my reading diet on a regular basis. I know there are a number of people who read regularly on GAF, so I wanted to turn to all of you for advice.

I know it's a super broad topic, but what are some good nonfiction recommendations. I'm game for books about history, politics, international affairs and economics. Beyond just reading something for fun, I want to gain a deeper understanding of major issues facing the world, one you can't get from a 500 word news article.

Thanks all for your help.

 

[Magypsy]

SPQR by Mary Beard is good fun if you want to learn about ancient Rome

 

[G.ZZZ]

History of the independence of India. The last part is extremely graphic and i had difficulty reading it, but still. Essential to understand the plights of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and where a lot of them come from.

History of the birth of Turkey from the Ottoman empire. This book show how Turkey's "secularization" really wasn't so and also give you a brief glance on the birth of all the other states from the old Ottoman Empire (Syria , Lebanon etc...) and why a lot of them failed.

The birth of Islamic Extremism. This is self-explanatory, but the reasons SA fund extremism and militantism can be understood (up to a point) by this.

I have also read and liked a lot books about ellenism and the birth of the islamic empire, but i don't recall the titles, and those are also pretty "regional" books from tipically local authors that i read since i'm mediterranean myself. Ditto for the history of the XIX and XX centuries, i've read books from a famous italian historian, but i doubt you could even find them in english.

 

[miller.skippins]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Nanking_(book)

The Rape of Naking is a particular tough book for me to read as an ethnic chinese.....as it details the atrocities committed by the japanese army during the Sino-Japanese War

 

[kyser73]

A Companion to Marx' Capital by David Harvey

http://davidharvey.org/2010/02/new-book-a-companion-to-marxs-capital/

Distinction and
Fields of Cultural Production by Pierre Bordieu

For shits & lulz anything by Zizek

 

[Captain Skeleton]

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner gets my vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Ashes_(book)

 

[G.ZZZ]

One thing i really like from reading books is how ignorant you feel after reading them. How human history it's impossibly vast to really grasp , and how stupid we really are for thinking we can.

 

[Razorback]

If you're not sure yet what topic you want to explore in more detail, the best thing is to get a general view of the whole thing to see what picks your interest the most, and also to have a better sense of how everything relates to everything else.

The first book sapiens is what it says on the tin. A brief history of humankind. It won't go into detail telling you what king did what war in what year. It's not a list of sequential events that happened. It's taking a moment to look back and ask where these ape creatures came from and what are they doing on this floating sphere in the void? Why are they so different from all the other creatures?

Now the second book is the real mind blower. It's doing similar things that the first book did but looking into the future this time. It's not about coming up with crazy fun predictions. It's about taking in all the data and really be logical about where we are most likely going. There are many things we hear about today like genetic engineering and AI that are interesting, but once you're given the proper context of how these things fit into the big picture, then you truly realize the magnitude of what's coming.

 

[hidys]

If you are interested in a compelling history of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Extremes?wprov=sfsi1

 

[Kill3r7]

The Emperor of All Maladies aka the history of cancer. An amazing and worthwhile read.

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner gets my vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Ashes_(book)

Ditto. Also check out the episode of Revisionist History Podcast on this topic.

 

[Fugu]

I do a fair bit of history reading, to the extent that I would say that until recently history nonfiction had completely dominated my reading list. For reasons that I don't quite understand, one book that I always come back to is The Search for Modern China by Johnathan Spence.

It's almost a textbook so I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I find it very natural and easy to read while being informative. There are certainly less dry accounts of Chinese history but I like Spence's balance.

 

[NekoFever]

I just finished Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which was really good. He's written a couple of other books on Russian history (The Romanovs 1613-1918 and Young Stalin), both of which I can recommend.

Hiroshima by John Hersey is an amazing book that I recently finished too.

 

[Carn82]

I really enjoyed 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.

The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations of other areas and maintained dominance, despite sometimes being vastly outnumbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, who had no immunity, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs); and durable means of transport (steel) enabled imperialism.

Diamond argues geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics which favored early development of stable agricultural societies ultimately led to immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals and the development of powerful, organized states capable of dominating others.

Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.

 

[mid83]

If you're not sure yet what topic you want to explore in more detail, the best thing is to get a general view of the whole thing to see what picks your interest the most, and also to have a better sense of how everything relates to everything else.

The first book sapiens is what it says on the tin. A brief history of humankind. It won't go into detail telling you what king did what war in what year. It's not a list of sequential events that happened. It's taking a moment to look back and ask where these ape creatures came from and what are they doing on this floating sphere in the void? Why are they so different from all the other creatures?

Now the second book is the real mind blower. It's doing similar things that the first book did but looking into the future this time. It's not about coming up with crazy fun predictions. It's about taking in all the data and really be logical about where we are most likely going. There are many things we hear about today like genetic engineering and AI that are interesting, but once you're given the proper context of how these things fit into the big picture, then you truly realize the magnitude of what's coming.

I read Sapians earlier this year and found it very interesting. I avoided his second book as I assumed it was just a bunch of predictions, but based on your comments I'll have to add it to my list.

 

[G.ZZZ]

I do a fair bit of history reading, to the extent that I would say that until recently history nonfiction had completely dominated my reading list. For reasons that I don't quite understand, one book that I always come back to is The Search for Modern China by Johnathan Spence.

It's almost a textbook so I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I find it very natural and easy to read while being informative. There are certainly less dry accounts of Chinese history but I like Spence's balance.

I should probably read this too, seems perfectly in linea with my tastes

 

[mid83]

I really enjoyed 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.

I read this one early last year. It has an interesting premise but it was a bit of a drag for me to finish, which has kept me from reading his newer books. I do appreciate the suggestion though. I do wish I had enjoyed the book more as I was very excited to read it.

That said, whatever category you could place these grand sweeping overviews of history seem interesting overall and I'd like to read more. For am looking at reading Why Nations Fail as it seems to provide an opposing idea regarding why certain nations are far better off than others.

 

[Large Professor]

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
by Daniel Yergin

It basically explains modern history through oil.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169354.The_Prize

 

[Venture]

I love this topic. These are some of my favorites.

http://www.tobylester.com/the-fourth-part-of-the-world/

This is the story of one of the greatest maps ever made—the giant, groundbreaking, and mind-bending Waldseemüller map of 1507, bought in 2003 by the Library of Congress for $10 million. The map is most famous for having given America its name, which alone would make it a historical treasure. But it charts something much larger and more complex than just the contours of New World discovery. It offers a kaleidoscopic vision of worlds upon worlds: a constantly shifting mosaic of geography and history, people and places, stories and ideas, truth and fiction. That’s the vision captured in this book, which tells the stories of not only of Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, the forgotten makers of the map, but also a host of other actors in the larger drama that this map puts on stage: classical geographers and explorers, Mongol khans, Prester John, Marco Polo and the first Christian missionaries to Asia, medieval monks, early Italian and Portuguese explorers and slave traders, Petrarch and Boccaccio, imperially minded popes, Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, even Nicholas Copernicus.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Making-of-the-Atomic-Bomb/Richard-Rhodes/9781451677614

This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence.

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Mismeasure-of-Man/

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.
When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.

And pretty much anything else by Stephen Jay Gould. His collections of essays are terrific reads.

 

[Prinz Eugn]

I really liked Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie, I thought it was just going to be about the ship but ended up being a neat crash course of the run-up to WWI. It had a lot of focus on individuals which made it pretty engaging, while also having a grand narrative, and being 100% things that actually happened.

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner gets my vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Ashes_(book)

This is a good one. How the CIA managed to burn down half the world.

 

[emag]

SPQR and Siege of Mecca were already recommended in the first two posts. I'd +1 both.

I recently picked up The Myth of Continents, but haven't read enough of it yet to recommend.

 

[Jintor]

SPQR by Mary Beard is good fun if you want to learn about ancient Rome

Rubicon tho

 

[CebollaDeAbbott]

I just finished The Trigger by Tim Butcher.

An excellent book examining Gavrilo Princip, who he was, what led him to assassinate Ferdinand.

Although the focus is on Princip, it also serves as an excellent guide for Bosnian history and culture of the 20th century. I highly recommend.

 

[kswiston]

Here are some good books about history outside of Europe.

 

[CHC]

The Emperor of All Maladies is a good read.

It's a "biography" of cancer, which is something that everyone should have a basic understanding of as we overcome other ways that people typically die. Mukarjee is a good writer who uses compelling analogies and makes it a really interesting topic.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Here are some good books about history outside of Europe.

Oh, I should check out that first one.

 

[Ratrat]

The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Easily the most facinating history book Ive read.

 

[Holiday]

Don't know if these are exactly what you are looking for, but these are a couple books that may seem relevant to your interests.

Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the Modern World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century

C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History

 

[nilstrung]

I recently read

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy D. Snyder

It's really good, is a fast reading and very informative.

 

[kswiston]

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson does a good job at providing a historical overview of the financial revolution that was occuring around the same time as the scientific revolution.

 

[TheLetdown]

American history through the eyes of the marginalized and oppressed.

 

[JoJoShabadoo]

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is a well written account of the Spanish Civil War. It's not the most informative one, but it's a good place to start.

A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck is another good one. It's based on his travels through parts of Eastern Europe during Soviet times.

Both are relatively brief and easy yet informative reads.

 

[mid83]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Keep them coming!

 

[Neverthelesser]

That said, whatever category you could place these grand sweeping overviews of history seem interesting overall and I'd like to read more. For am looking at reading Why Nations Fail as it seems to provide an opposing idea regarding why certain nations are far better off than others.

This is what I'm currently reading. Acemoglu and Robinson have a very appealing theory on prosperity, stating that it emerges from solid, inclusive government and economic institutions and not culture, ignorance, religion, or even Jared Diamond's geography theories. So far it's really good!

I like it more than Guns, Germs, and Steel, but so far it suffers from a couple problems. One is that it doesn't provide a hypothesis to the "chicken-and-egg" problem with economic and political institutions: do you first need a good government for good economic institutions to occur, vice versa, or both? Second, the book was written by an economist and a political scientist, and it's obvious that they'll view history and national development through the lens of statecraft and political economy; they can prove that their institutions matter, but can't measure exactly how much of an effect they'll have on a given society.

It's definitely worth a read, but keep an open mind, since their proposals can be very convincing.

 

[Llyranor]

SPQR by Mary Beard is good fun if you want to learn about ancient Rome

Been thinking of picking up SPQR, but it seems to only go to about 212 AD. What other book would be recommend to cover the last few centuries of the Western Roman Empire?

Also, does it go into details re: wars (Punic Wars, civil wars)?

 

[Cocaloch]

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson does a good job at providing a historical overview of the financial revolution that was occuring around the same time as the scientific revolution.

Gross. Niall Ferguson is a not particularly well respected asshole who also manages to take a weird sadistic glee in his imperial apologisms.

To actually contribute to the thread, if you're interested in Anthropogenic climate change then you should read E.A. Wrigley's Energy and the English Industrial Revolution.