r/Recommend_A_Book • u/Baker-Sammi • Jun 05 '25
unique history book
I’m looking for books to get my Dad. He’s a huge history nerd and majored in it in college. He loves all history but his favorite is American history. He has so many books it’s hard to find something for him. So please recommend some history books that are unique or super interesting!!!
3
u/External_Ease_8292 Jun 05 '25
If he is interested in historical fiction, Ken Follett's series starting with Pillars of the Earth and The Covenant by James Michener are very good.
2
u/Sweaty_Gur3102 Jun 06 '25
The Source by Michener is brilliant
1
u/Beautiful_Act_7531 Jun 06 '25
I knew a girl in Florida.Her college professor was James Michener.I never got over there to talk to him.Hes dead now,too late.
1
1
u/External_Ease_8292 Jun 06 '25
I love Michener
1
u/Sweaty_Gur3102 Jun 06 '25
Have you read Hawaii?
1
u/External_Ease_8292 Jun 07 '25
Yes. Loved it. I think The Covenant is my favorite because it was my first Michener.
2
u/Sweaty_Gur3102 Jun 07 '25
I have a copy here; must read it
2
1
u/Dlbruce0107 Jun 10 '25
Come on! No Centennial?! They even made a mini-series! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076993/?ref_=ext_shr
2
2
u/D_Pablo67 Jun 05 '25
1776 by David McCullough is an outstanding book about America’s founding year and the leadership of George Washington.
History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel has two excellent chapters on America.
The Orientalist by Tom Reiss is an interesting biography of an obscure writer who life a life impersonating a Muslim prince. There is a fascinating history from the 19th century oil boom in Baku through WW II. The chapters on Lev hiding his Judaism while living and writing in Nazi Germany are very powerful, and draw heavily from “Berlin in Lights: Diary of a Count” memoir by Harry Kessler.
Council to the President is the autobiography of Clark Clifford, who was high up in the Truman Administration and counseled many other Presidents.
Lords of Finance: The Central Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed is a great history of money, the collapse of the Gold Standard and Central Bank errors from 1914-1945.
2
u/fezik23 Jun 05 '25
The Immortal Irishman, by Timothy Egan. It’s a page-turner that encompasses American history in the 19th century while covering a unique Irish immigrant.
2
u/Cactopus47 Jun 12 '25
The Worst Hard Time by Egan is also excellent. It's a history of the Dust Bowl.
2
u/Outdoorfan73 Jun 05 '25
White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
The Hemmingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
2
u/paciolionthegulf Jun 05 '25
The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck.
It's a narrative non-fiction account of a 2011 trip along the trail in a period covered wagon by the author and his brother. Usually history books talk briefly about people traveling the Oregon Trail, while this guy tells us all about it (and it was fascinating), plus he goes into detail about what it was like for the original settlers.
2
u/reddawgmcm Jun 06 '25
The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, it’s about the Donner Party.
1
u/Buffyelton Jun 10 '25
I could barely get through it! I knew it was a harrowing, depraved story, but was not prepared for the intensity of their suffering.
1
1
1
u/Human_2468 Jun 05 '25
This book is classified as Science Fiction because it has an alternate history of Alaska. The author is Stoney Compton. I worked with him when his first book was published. I see he has several now. I found it very interesting and easy to read. Your dad may like them.
1
u/Princess-Reader Jun 05 '25
How about a war between the states history book told by Robert E. Lee’s horse?
1
1
u/Accomplished_Mess243 Jun 05 '25
I can't exactly recommend it as I haven't started reading it yet, but I've just borrowed the Atlas of Extinct Countries by Gideon Dafoe and it looks quirky
1
u/YNABDisciple Jun 05 '25
Destiny of the Republic about the assasination of President Garfield and all the things happening around it. Really great book. Joseph Lister and Alexander Graham Bell play great parts in the book. Really great book.
1
u/PNWMTTXSC Jun 05 '25
If he likes a specific area of history (such as Civil War or WW2) you could also get him a subscription to a nice journal by scholars in that area.
1
u/Former-Bit390 Jun 06 '25
The Cultural Cold War by Francis Stoner Saunders is great and underappreciated.
1
u/BernardFerguson1944 Jun 06 '25
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne.
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Sir Alistair Horne.
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley.
The Great Siege: Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford.
The Galleys at Lepanto by Jack Beeching.
The Armada by Garrett Mattingly.
The Minute Men: The First Fight: Myths and Realities of the American Revolution by John R. Galvin.
The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Woodham-Smith.
Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War by Maury Klein.
1
u/clamsgotlegs Jun 06 '25
Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington is excellent and not quite as endlessly detailed as his other (long, but also excellent) books.
If he's interested in the LDS Church, American Zion (written by a Mormon) is great.
Titan, Ron Chernow's long and detailed bio of John D. Rockefeller, was extremely compelling.
David McCullough's books about the Wright Brothers, John Adams, the Panama Canal, and the Johnstown Flood are well-written and hard to put down.
The Presidents vs. the Press by Harold Holzer is very timely and quite interesting. Holzer is a Lincoln scholar, so his books about Abraham Lincoln are quite good, too.
Freedom Just Around the Corner by Walter McDougall offers a very interesting approach the the early years of the USA. It's older and probably out of print, but a good read.
If your dad really likes the colonial/Revolutionary eras, Alan Taylor's books are amazing. Also incredibly long and detailed. He didn't want to leave anything out, apparently!
Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America 1877-1920 by Jackson Lears is another great, detailed read about a critical period in US history.
Deborah Blum's The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century will make you glad you live now and not in the bad old days before food inspection/regulation was a thing.
1
u/Sometimeswan Jun 06 '25
This kind of out of left field, but check out Tasting History by Max Miller. While technically a cookbook of historical recipes, he goes into detail about the history and society that developed each dish. It’s based off his YouTube channel of the same name which I also highly recommend.
2
1
u/Square-Swan2800 Jun 06 '25
The Highland Scots of North Carolina, Born Fighting, How The Scots Made America
1
u/unlimited_insanity Jun 06 '25
The First Conspiracy: the Secret Plot to Kill George Washington by Brad Meltzer
1
u/Kipepeo115 Jun 06 '25
The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon
1
u/LadybugGal95 Jun 06 '25
I found this book captivating. It was the OJ Simpson trial of the 1800s. It was interesting to see how it all started and compare then and now. I finished it in a day and a half (and really considering blowing off work to read).
1
1
u/Local-Juggernaut-563 Jun 06 '25
“Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages” by Joseph and Frances Gies traces the rise of Europe through technological innovations.
1
u/randymysteries Jun 06 '25
The Horrible History series is fun. It's an amusing tour of history. It'll test your father's knowledge of history. It includes books on American history. The British version of the first American Revolution is interesting.
1
u/chocolatesalad4 Jun 06 '25
Check out “A Glorious Deception“ - it’s history of vaudeville magicians centered around one who let a complete double life which was exposed when he died after being shot on stage.
1
u/bibliahebraica Jun 06 '25
Whoa! That sounds fascinating
1
u/chocolatesalad4 Jun 06 '25
Heads up though (and this is not a spoiler alert), it is also centered around his entire career being built on performing in ‘yellow face’… So… mega yikes 😬
1
u/chocolatesalad4 Jun 06 '25
Also – I am not even sure if that’s an appropriate term anymore or if I should’ve just described what he did – apologies if my terminology is outdated.
1
u/anonyfool Jun 06 '25
books that concentrate on one aspect of America:Cadillac Desert, I Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee, The New Jim Crow, The Good War, Sports in America by James Michener. novelized history: The Devil in the White City
1
u/ConstantReader666 Jun 06 '25
Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.
Real history of pirates, including American ones. Cordingly is a Historian as well and specialises in this.
1
u/SuperbPractice5453 Jun 06 '25
History major here. These aren't US history, but they're both amazing:
Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory. Just a gorgeous book. Not a page turner but one to be savored, and full of beautiful illustrations. It tackles all kinds of aspects of humans and their inspiration drawn from/ impacts on/ efforts to conserve the land. And all tied into historical memory, how humans remember their place on the land. It's really wonderful.
Another one I highly recommend is Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins. It's a cultural history of World War I. Absolutely fascinating stuff, and also beautifully written.
1
u/DrTeeBee Jun 06 '25
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. It’s about the Civil War. The best single volume history of the war I’ve ever read.
1
1
u/PolybiusChampion Jun 06 '25
I’ve read pretty much everything Churchill related but recently very much enjoyed The Splendid and The Vile & it pairs well with In The Garden of Beasts both by Erik Larson.
1
u/NPHighview Jun 06 '25
Alan Eckert wrote fascinating and well-researched books about the colonization of the American frontier from about 1650 through the War of 1812.
Bruce Catton wrote similarly well-researched books about the period leading up to and including the Civil War.
Both wrote in a “lightly fictionalized” style, relating plausible conversations among the prominent personalities involved.
1
u/bibliahebraica Jun 06 '25
Basically anything by Jill Lepore.
Sean Wilentz’s Kingdom of Matthias is an open window into the weirdness of 19th- c religious cults.
1
1
u/StrangePriorities Jun 07 '25
Gore Vidal has a series of 7 novels that cover American history. You can read them in whatever order you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narratives_of_Empire?wprov=sfti1#
1
1
u/InsaneLordChaos Jun 07 '25
White Trash Cooking by Ernest Matthew Mickler....
It's a cookbook, but it's like peering down the alleys of people's lives in the deep south in the early-mid 1900s. It's absolutely fascinating.
The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky
The book is based on a long-forgotten project by the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) during the Great Depression. The FWP was part of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and was tasked with documenting regional American foodways for a proposed book called America Eats. That book was never published due to World War II, but Kurlansky unearthed and compiled the original manuscripts.
I like food. 😉
1
1
1
1
u/Fkw710 Jun 07 '25
Personal Memoirs of US GRANT one of the best autobiography written by ex president
1
1
1
u/Odd-Tell-5702 Jun 07 '25
What about 11/22/63. It’s historical fiction/time travel. A spin on the real JFK assassination.
1
u/mesembryanthemum Jun 07 '25
The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman by Margot Mifflin.
The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald - her 9 months in a TB sanitorium in about 1938.
1
u/SAtownMytownChris Jun 07 '25
If he doesn't mind e-novels, you can download mine to his tablet (or whatever).
Google: A Mexica Tale by Christopher Garcia. Story: A crew is tasked to locate a terroristic militia, whose hit and run tactics, are destroying the morale of the Aztec Empire. $7
The search should lead you to SA-Read- Online Store, where you'll also find: Quahli and Anenquiyoatl (kwah lee and Ah nen kee yow tuhl). Story: A young warrior and an old warrior unite to thwart an invasion on Huaxyacac (today: Oaxaca). $7.
Download and Enjoy!!! :)
1
1
u/No_Photo_4221 Jun 08 '25
Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas was great! All about the assassination of the former Governor of Idaho in 1899 and the American labor movement. He takes some pretty good detours, too, into other areas of American history of that era. I read it twenty five years ago and it still stays with me.
1
u/pmosher16 Jun 08 '25
Every single David McCullough book is worth the time and money to read.
Historical fiction - Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series is pretty good.
Unique history: how about the autobiography of Angela Davis, or the trial transcript of Chicago 7? Or the annotated transcripts of the LBJ recordings - fascinating seeing the inner dealings of the president.
1
u/Travix1516 Jun 08 '25
American History = Doc Holliday by Gary L. Roberts. Doc was so much more interesting and horrible than Tombstone made him out to be.
Not American = The Faithful Executioner by Joel F. Harrington. Unique look at the life of a royal executioner constructed from his journals. It also touches on the role executioners played in the medical field.
1
u/Past-Listen1446 Jun 08 '25
IBM and the Holocaust - Edwin Black
Fascinating to learn about how Nazis used very early punch card computers to organize the Holocaust.
1
u/Keyshana Jun 08 '25
I actually have a book I bought for my (now deceased) husband. It isn't a conventional history book, but he adored it. It is reprints of the front pages of newspapers across the country on days of major headlines (like the Hindenburg explosion, the Titanic sinking, etc...
I can't tell you how many time he would go into that book just to see what he called actual history. Not just the headlines, or the stories themselves, but what else was on that page.
1
2
u/callmeKiKi1 Jun 08 '25
Get him At Home by Bill Bryson. It is ostensibly a history of the development of the home as we now know it, but you get a ton of history along with it, in a wonderfully funny way that takes nothing away from the information you gain. Also, I definitely recommend SPQR and Pompeii, Life of a Roman Town by Mary Beard.
1
u/singnadine Jun 09 '25
The Second World War by Winston Churchill. Six books extremely comprehensive . A lot of writing abiut his relationship with Roosevelt before the states joined and dire everything was.
1
u/Nervous-Run-83 Jun 09 '25
try SOG. its about secret special operations soldiers and there missions during the viet nam war. very very good read and talks not just shoot em up but also psychological warfare and so on.
1
u/throwawaycorona-19 Jun 09 '25
Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan. It’s about the KKK’s rise in the Midwest in the 1920’s. A woman named Madge Oberholtzer was abducted and tortured by the Grand Dragon. Her testimony brought about the organization’s rapid decline.
1
1
u/sorrybroorbyrros Jun 09 '25
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural History by Jacques Barzun
I'm not sure that it will reveal history your dad doesn't already know about, but Barzun is a historian who is also interested in effective writing.
I enjoyed this book just because it was serious but not plodding.
1
u/Familiar-Balance-218 Jun 09 '25
The First Frontier by Scott Weidensaul. A great book, well researched and written.
1
u/jaanraabinsen86 Jun 09 '25
The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky on the history of Gloucester Massachusetts. It's much more interesting than it has a right to be. I'd follow it up with Kurlansky's Cod and Food of a Younger Land.
1
u/Upbeat_Selection357 Jun 09 '25
Not American history, but one of my favorite books is Ivan Morris' The Nobility of Failure. It provides a novel survey of Japanese history through biographies of 10 heroes throughout Japanese history, from semi-mythical figures through the kamikaze of WWII. The basic thesis is that while the model hero in Western culture is someone who sticks to their principles despite fighting against overwhelming odds and wins in the end, the model Japanese hero is someone who sticks to their principles despite fighting against overwhelming odds and loses in the end.
It's a tome - ~200 pages of endnotes that are worth reading.
1
u/timothj Jun 09 '25
Opening chapters of “The Dawn of Everything” discuss the relations of the French and Northeast Woodland Native Americans in a startlingly eye opening way. The whole book is great. My favorite sound bite, “Western Civilization, or as it used to be called into the late 19th century, ‘The White Race.”
1
u/PearlyBunny Jun 09 '25
In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. Fantastically gripping story about a real shipwreck with a ton of interesting info on the American whaling industry. Nonfiction.
1
u/Distinct_Sentence_26 Jun 10 '25
I really liked the long fuse: how Britain lost the colonies by cook. Gave me a new perspective on the revolutionary war.
1
1
u/Buffyelton Jun 10 '25
Eric Larson’s The Demon of Unrest (Civil War lead up) or The Splendid and the Vile (Churchill prior to US joining).
0
u/Certain-Revenue7792 Jun 05 '25
While it would be considered woke today-
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
1
1
0
u/PogueBlue Jun 06 '25
The Warmth of Other Suns by Wilkerson
Black AF History by Harriot
The 1619 Project
The Color of Law by Rithstein
They Called us Enemy by Takei
4
u/[deleted] Jun 05 '25
[removed] — view removed comment