Don't Know Much About History

Missing John's history recommendations? Here's a list to tide you over.

The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series By Barbara W. Tuchman Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780345386236
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks - March 8th, 1994

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
 
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time


The Secret History of Wonder Woman By Jill Lepore Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9780804173407
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage - July 7th, 2015

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Within the origin of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes hides a fascinating family story—and a crucial history of feminism in the twentieth-century.


NAMED ONE OF THE “100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR” BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

From the widely celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Last Call—this “rigorously historical” (The Washington Post) and timely account of how the rise of eugenics helped America keep out “inferiors” in the 1920s i


With the Old Breed By E.B. Sledge Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780891419068
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Presidio Press - May 1st, 2007

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed. He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom Hanks


Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) By James M. McPherson Cover Image
$24.95
ISBN: 9780195168952
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - December 11th, 2003

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War.


Paul Revere's Ride By David Hackett Fischer Cover Image
$21.95
ISBN: 9780195098310
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - April 19th, 1995

Paul Revere's midnight ride looms as an almost mythical event in American history--yet it has been largely ignored by scholars and left to patriotic writers and debunkers.


SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome By Mary Beard Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9781631492228
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Liveright - September 6th, 2016

New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction)
Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature


Staff Pick Badge
One Summer: America, 1927 By Bill Bryson Cover Image
$19.00
ISBN: 9780767919418
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Anchor - June 3rd, 2014

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book
A GoodReads Reader's Choice


The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age By Leo Damrosch Cover Image
$21.00
ISBN: 9780300251784
Availability: Backordered
Published: Yale University Press - January 14th, 2020

The story of the group of extraordinary eighteenth-century writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern

Named one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review  • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 •  A Kirkus Best Book of 2019
 
“Damrosc


The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap By Stephanie Coontz Cover Image
$22.99
ISBN: 9780465098835
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Basic Books - March 29th, 2016

The definitive edition of the classic, myth-shattering history of the American familyLeave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today.