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Readers' Most Popular Recent History Books
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."
This famous quotation, from science fiction grand master Robert A. Heinlein, has always carried a certain resonance. Heinlein’s purview as a sci-fi writer would seem to be the future. But Heinlein’s work is steeped in the conviction that the past is where we must look to anticipate the future. He even wrote a famous series of stories called Future History, considered by many to be his greatest work.
History books can be particularly engaging for contemporary readers, especially when said books incorporate new investigative and archival reporting. Consider, for instance, Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl, which not only exhaustively documents the tragedy in the former Soviet Union, but also stitches in new and original reporting on the crisis. In 2019, author Hallie Rubenhold issued a much-needed corrective to the historical record with The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper.
More recently published books on history can also provide new thinking and contemporary perspectives on specific throughlines, as with A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross. Another good example is David Treuer’s counternarrative of Native American history in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present.
We’ve collected below Goodreads readers’ most popular history books published since 2018. These are recent books on history, not necessarily books on recent history—although most of the books here do tend to stay relatively recent. (World War II is an apparently inexhaustible font of inspiration for historians and readers.) The list is based on number of reviews, average reader ratings, and titles most often added to Want to Read shelves.
So dig in, look back, and happy reading! Oh, and if you want a really comprehensive history book, David Christian covers approximately 13.8 billion years in Origin Story: A Big History of Everything.
Your turn! What are some of your favorite recently published histories? Let us know in the comments below.
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Check out more recent articles:
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(last edited Feb 10, 2022 02:19AM)
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Feb 10, 2022 02:18AM
An exciting selection of books. The nearest I have got to reading recent history is Diary of an MP`s Wife.
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I very much enjoyed Midnight In Chernobyl AND Caste. I recommend The Battle of Versailles for anyone interested in fashion. It’s a great read about the history of couture and the advent of celebrity designers. Robin Givhan is an amazing writer!
I enjoyed Midnight in Chernobyl and Empire of Pain.
Juanita wrote: "I very much enjoyed Midnight In Chernobyl AND Caste. I recommend The Battle of Versailles for anyone interested in fashion. It’s a great read about the history of couture and the advent of celebrit..."I don't care about fashion, but that does sound interesting. I always like learning about things!
i should try to read some of these this year. always love a good, interesting history book.
The Five is such a great book. They've also turned it into a podcast! I always recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in history, women's history, Jack the Ripper (but the victims), British history, Victorian history, etc.
Lazy wrote: "An exciting selection of books. The nearest I have got to reading recent history is Diary of an MP`s Wife."That sounds pretty cool! Exactly what I'm interested in. Going to look it up :)
Enjoyed The Only Woman in the Room, which is the story of Hedy Lamar. Her escape from Germany to the U.S. Becoming a famous actress. And the part most people don't know is that Hedy was a scientist and invented a communications innovation that helped changed the course of WW II.
I highly recommend a book about pre-history: The Dawn of Everything: A new history of humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. These authors question most work on prehistory, including the well regarded Sapiens by Harari (which I found terrific). Their perspective is well researched and compelling.
I have been fortunate to have read a bunch of wonderful non-fics in the last six months:Peril is Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s tracking of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election he lost and Biden’s attempt to preserve the soul of the nation. One of the best of the Trump era books.
Accidental Gods, by Anna Della Subin, considers many of the instances in which mere mortals were considered much more, why that occurred, and what happened as a result. Heavenly.
True Raiders, by Brad Ricca, offers a fun look at some larger-than-life personalities on a 1909 expedition to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant. It also points out many of the things that were wrong in the era.
In Being a Human, Charles Foster looks at what life was like in the Paleolithic and Neolithic by living it first hand, and showing how much of our lives today were formed by our lives back then.
The Social Leap, by William von Hippel, takes a very different approach, looking at the physical evolution of pre-human species noting environmental elements that forced the physical changes, while focusing on the social elements that made humans the apex predator on the planet. There is considerable application to human behavior in the 21st century.
Paradise by Lizzie Johnson, is a terrifying tale of the 2018 Camp Fire that ravaged Paradise, California, and much beyond. A you-are-there experience.
Interesting selection. Another book on American imperialism. Sigh. If America is an agent of imperialism we truly are awful at it. We had occupation of and then freed: Philippines, Japan, almost all Pacific Islands, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg,Austria, Italy, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, etc.. Of all these territories which were firmly under our control (and any European power would have kept) the only ones still part of the USA are: Guam, Puerto Rico and VI (plus some small Pacific islands some of which are uninhabited). Of the remaining pieces of our “empire” all of them have been given opportunities to become independent but in referendum after referendum they, by overwhelming majorities, select to remain part of the USA. What about Alaska, Hawaii and the other states outside of the original colonies? All of them ASKED to join the USA and in many instances, such as Texas, Congress turned them down on the first, and in some instances, Texas again, second attempts. Undoubtedly we cheated and bullied the indigenous peoples (of which I’m a card carrying member of one) but that is the nature of mankind. Tribes we conquered were in the business of conquering neighboring tribes for millennia before the evil European showed up. Mine had its arse kicked by northern tribes and then came to the South and beat up on a couple of local tribes to secure territory. Americans did not invent aggressive national policy and we have been pretty true to our stated goal of self-determination by all peoples of the world (after we decimated our indigenous tribes, of course).
