Randy Overbeck's favorite books that made him love history

When I first learned the subject of this hot-selling book, the building of a medieval cathedral, my first thought was blah.

I mean, how interesting could the decades-long construction of a massive church be? Boy, was I wrong. Follett makes the story so compelling, personal, and moving; I couldn’t stop reading. I got so invested in the characters and the tale that I wished there were more, even after 1008 pages. Yeah.

Thankfully, Follett wrote four more books in the Cambridge series, and yes, I’ve read them all. There is a reason why Pillars of the Earth is the bestselling historical novel of all time.

I’ve been a fan of history and especially Revolutionary War history for quite a long time and my interest was peaked by this novel, decades ago.

Burr, published in 1972, turned the conventional myths about our young country on their heads. Vidal chose to tell the story of the Revolutionary War and the birth of our country from the perspective of Aaron Burr. We are all the heroes of our own story, and so is true for Burr.

What results is a very different perspective of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and of important events in our early history like the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress and our earliest attempts at governing ourselves.

Although Burr’s take on his contemporaries did not shake my admiration of them, he certainly portrayed them in a more human than mythical manner, and in the end, made them more real.

I found This Tender Land, a tale of four orphans adrift on the Mississippi River in 1932, to be heartwarming, memorable, and compelling.

This slice of history—the years surrounding the depression, I knew little about—I learned next to nothing of this in school and Kreuger makes the time, settings, and conditions come alive.

This story has echoes of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn but with its own compelling story and time. This novel followed Krueger’s other book, which won the Edgar Award and which I also loved. But I enjoyed this story even more with its complex characters and even more compelling narrative.

This was the first novel I read on my own as an adult.

I had read a great deal in school—all required reading. Shortly after I graduated, I discovered Winds of War on a break from my summer job and started it. It was daunting: 898 pages. Right away, I was captivated.

Wouk made history around the start of World War II come alive with characters and POV’s from both sides of the conflict. He included critical battles and turning points in the war, but what made it different was his ability to create characters I cared about and plunge those characters deep into the conflict.

Wouk was the first author that made me love history, and it’s a love affair I’ve continued in my adult life. 

This is the only non-fiction in my recommendation list, though I’ve read many.

I enjoyed this book because it captures the interesting, complicated, love-hate relationship between Washington and Arnold. Early on, Benedict Arnold was a protégé of George Washington, and Washington helped to ease Arnold’s trajectory to becoming the most successful general of the Revolutionary War.

But I found fascinating Philbrick’s ability to capture how this relationship disintegrated and how Arnold actually turned on Washington and the colonials. I was wowed by Philbrick’s skill at drawing from the historical record to uncover this complicated process that went from what we’d describe today as a “bromance” to one of resentment and hatred.

I discovered a much more nuanced Benedict Arnold than the black traitor painted in our history classes.