List: History

My reading list doesn’t reflect this well, but I’m a bit of a history nerd. I hope to expand this list in the future – and I’m always happy for recommendations!

There’s a separate list for less serious historical fiction that may or may not have contributed significant parts of my history knowledge.

Cover of Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel.

Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel

by Frances Gies, Joseph Gies · published 1994 · read 2021-08-01

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Officially my new favourite history book: I'm in love with Frances and Joseph Gies showing off the technology and technological development of the Middle Ages. The book is dense and doesn't coddle the reader, and, as many of their works, is often on recommended reading lists for history courses. In good medievalist tradition, they oppose Gibbon's view of medieval society as “the triumph of barbarism and religion”, and they bring tons of evidence to the table, combing through one thousand years of the Middle Ages. It's fascinating and well-written. I finished this book and immediately wanted to read more of the same (and was very disappointed when I couldn't find anything like it)!

Cover of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline · published 2014 · read 2020-05-16

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This book was a great overview of the wider mediterranean civilisations during the Bronze Age, with a short discussion of the so-called collapse towards the end. I went into it expecting a lot of content about the collapse itself, and the book turned out to be 80% stage-setting. I happen to be into this, so it was a pleasant surprise, but depending on your tastes, this could also be less fun.

Cover of Die Tante Jolesch.

Die Tante Jolesch

by Friedrich Torberg · published 1975 · read 2008-01-01

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Kaffeehauskultur. Tales of the Austrian in-group.

Cover of The Economy of Cities.

The Economy of Cities

by Jane Jacobs · published 1969 · read 2021-07-25

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This classic (pub. 1969) on city development was extremely accessible to read, particularly considering the ugh field that surrounds economics for me. Jacobs' main premise is that cities don't arise as a consequence of agricultural settlements – cities are there first, and develop their hinterland to support themselves.

Cover of Berlins Drittes Geschlecht.

Berlins Drittes Geschlecht

by Magnus Hirschfeld · published 1904 · read 2020-08-12

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Berlin's Third Gender (Berlins drittes Geschlecht) by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld is a description of queer lives in Berlin around 1900 (published 1905). Even though it's naturally sad in some ways, it's also encouraging: Berlin was comparatively liberal at the time, and I enjoyed the descriptions of queer groups, events, relationships, and creative side-stepping of general conventions. The descriptions are very vivid and obviously well-researched, and contain lots of amusing facts about everyday life in different social circles.

Cover of If This Is a Man.

If This Is a Man

by Primo Levi · published 1947 · read 2020-04-15

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

For once, I have nothing to say. This first-hand account of one year spent in Auschwitz is very calm, deliberately matter-of-fact, and inevitably painful to read.

Cover of The Reawakening.

The Reawakening

by Primo Levi · published 1963 · read 2020-04-22

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Primo Levi's way home after the end of WW2, from Auschwitz to Italy. So matter-of-fact that it reads as deadpan when Europe consists only of remains and confusion.

Cover of The Light Ages.

The Light Ages

by Seb Falk · published 2020 · read 2021-08-06

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Seb Falk follows the reconstructed life story of one particular English monk, John Westwyk, to show off how life and particularly science and research worked in the High Middle Ages. This means a lot of tangents, naturally, but it also means a lot of math and astronomy and nitty gritty details. While I didn't manage to appreciate all details about astronomy calculations, those were not hard to skip, and generally the book was very valuable, and approachable through its dedication to actual humans instead of anonymous groups.

Cover of Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men's Dress in the Twentieth Century.

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century

by Shaun Cole · published 2000 · read 2020-02-18

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This book is a treasure! It follows the history of gay men's dress from the days of Oscar Wilde to the 90s, and by necessity along the way explains the cultural changes in and around gay groups. It explains hidden and implicit cultural meanings, is sourced from interviews, magazines, and lots and lots of other books and articles. I can't overstate how in-depth and conscientously the information is presented.

Cover of The Victorian Internet.

The Victorian Internet

by Tom Standage · published 1998 · read 2019-05-24

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

My first non-fiction book in quite some time, The Victorian Internet is a nice introduction into the rise and fall of the electrical telegraph, and all its implications. Tom Standage shows us in an easy, meandering style how the world changed due to the telegraph, and how people changed (and/or didn't). While he's often very direct (or on the nose) about his theories, and some minor facts looked not quite well researched (Karlsruhe was never part of Prussia, thank you very much), I liked both the very human approach to history, and his final – if simplistic – comparison between telegraph an internet evolution.

Cover of Die Revolution Von 1918/19.

Die Revolution Von 1918/19

by Volker Ullrich · published 2009 · read 2017-11-16

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

So viel au :( aber ein guter Überblick.

Cover of Flight to Arras.

Flight to Arras

by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · published 1942 · read 2021-03-10

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Published in 1942, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry talks about his life, experience, thoughts and feelings about being a pilot in WWII, while on the defensive and with little hope of surviving. The novella follows one flight, and comments on both the flight itself (mechanically, strategically) and the war in general.

Cover of Die Weimarer Republik.

Die Weimarer Republik

by Gunther Mai · published 2009 · read 2018-02-10

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Liest sich gut und informativ, einem wird nur halt immer wieder zwischendurch dabei schlecht. Liegt aber am Inhalt, nicht am Stil.

Cover of Against the Grain.

Against the Grain

by James C. Scott · published 2017 · read 2020-10-18

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Impressive and intriguing: Against the Grain tells the story of early state-building as a story of agriculture – that's not new. What's new is that James Scott has spent years aggregating the current insights of history and archaeology to paint the same idea from a new angle: What if early states did not naturally arise with the cultivation of grain – what if they required a food staple as grain (divisible, countable, and with a strict yearly cycle) to establish a bureaucracy?

Cover of Between Copernicus and Galileo.

Between Copernicus and Galileo

by James M. Lattis · published 1994 · read 2022-01-11

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

I wanted to learn more about Christoph Clavius, the Jesuit who contributed significantly to the Gregorian calendar reform, which is a standing interest of mine. It turns out that this book intentionally avoids that topic, to talk more about cosmology and how the intellectual state of the art was just before Galileo happened to it.

Cover of Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew.

Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

by Michael D. Leinbach · published 2018 · read 2018-10-04

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Bringing Columbia Home is the story of the aftermath of the break-up of the Columbia shuttle, told by Michael D. Leinbach who was a launch manager at NASA and bore responsibility during the collection of Columbia and the ensuing review. I didn't really like the book – the author gave me the feeling that the book was more written for the people involved in the clean-up missions, both volunteers and professionals, than for an interested outsider like me. Some chapters feel more like a long list of names and their roles, to include everybody who did important work at the time, which was certainly important to those people, but at the same time a bit tedious. A bit of stylistic editing would have helped a lot here. I also felt that quite some things I'd be interested in (e.g. the concrete organizational consequences to change NASA feedback culture) were glossed over way too much.

Cover of God's Philosophers.

God’s Philosophers

by James Hannam · published 2009 · read 2021-10-14

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

This book came recommended by Seb Falk in the bibliography of The Light Ages, and it's also on the reading list of /r/askHistorians, which I trust a lot. I found this book harder to like – who writes sentences like “when the barbarian tribes took over or destroyed the Roman infrastructure” in this century? It was long-winded and seemed to alternate between being jovial and trying for jokes, and going for a more professorial style. Not only the style was uneven: I also felt like the assumed prior knowledge fluctuated a lot, and was sometimes left out entirely, and then filled in with excrutiating care at other times.

Cover of The Book Nobody Read.

The Book Nobody Read

by Owen Gingerich · published 2004 · read 2021-11-09

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tenured professors are just built different or something. The object of the book is Copernicus' "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres", which Prof. Gingerich set out to see all extant versions of (first and second editions, that is), and to compile a list of them including who they belonged to over the ages, and of their respective annotations.

Cover of Das Dritte Reich: Geschichte einer Diktatur.

Das Dritte Reich: Geschichte einer Diktatur

by Ulrich Herbert · read 2018-02-10

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sehr trocken geschrieben. Der Band zur 1918er-Revolution aus derselben Reihe ist da ungleich besser.

Cover of Die Habsburger ohne Reich.

Die Habsburger ohne Reich

by Dieter Kindermann · published 2010 · read 2020-07-18

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (did not finish)

This book was honestly, truly, terrible. I picked it up because as a history nerd, "where did this family end up" is always an interesting prompt. I had not thought that a single book could contain this amount of disjointed anecdotes, self-important injections, and – most damningly – humble and meek servility towards a dead monarchy. If I have to read books by monarchists, I'd prefer them to be stylish and clever instead of sleazy and obnoxious.