100 Books Like A Little History of the World

David McCullough is one of my favorite authors of history, and Mornings on Horseback is, in my opinion, one of his best works.

McCullough introduces us to the young Theodore Roosevelt, from early childhood to early adulthood. Born to a Southern mother and a father who would later contribute heavily to the Union cause, he grew up in a mansion in New York City but spent considerable time ranching in the Badlands of North Dakota.

Teddy Roosevelt was a fascinating man with contradictions and character, the perfect subject for a masterful biography.

Coates’s semi-autobiographical examination of life for black men in American society, and more broadly in American history, is an education. Like Zinn, Coates calls America on the hypocrisy inherent in its highest ideals and its most cherished conceits.

As Coates himself later said about Zinn, "He knocked me on my ass." The two - while not always on the same page in their critical examinations of the American experiment, are clearly kindred spirits. They both want America to do better and clearly believe it can do better if it is honest about itself - but will it be? This is the question left ominously dangling by both Zinn and Coates.

What Zinn achieved in highlighting leftist history and labor history, Kirchick achieves in highlighting gay history and its proximity to the corridors of political power in Washington.

The struggles of gay Americans to gain recognition by the U.S. government as equal to their fellow citizens and commensurate with their talents is a fascinating story, and Kirchick more than does it justice.

Like Zinn’s People’s History, this book carefully reexamines the conventional understanding of our nation’s history as a whole. It is both ambitious and particular.

Essentially a conservative response to Zinn’s wildly successful book.

Paul Johnson, who started out on the political left in England and shifted to the right with works such as Modern Times, writes in a style that is superior in its command of the material than Zinn but also a bit cranky at times or just simply odd.

His loathing of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson is palpable, just as his veneration of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge is puzzling. Yet his passages on jazz, the eclectic architecture of Southern California, or the origins of the Coca-Cola x Pepsi rivalry are unforgettable.

Johnson’s book could be viewed as a necessary corrective to Zinn - or simply as a contrarian companion volume. I actually use both when teaching U.S. history.

Ricks unpacks the educational origins of the "Founding Generation’s" ideological orientation in this highly readable volume.

The classical underpinnings of American representative democracy and its notions of public virtue in ancient Greece and Rome are examined very carefully. He makes a compelling case for classical rather than English or Enlightenment political influence as the determining factor in our political development. He also implies an unfavorable comparison with the present and the lack of virtue he sees as evident in our public life. The book is a tonic for our political times.

One irritating element, however, is Ricks’s insistence on including the college class of each of the Founding Generation’s members beside their name, which, of course, excludes George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Not to mention Abraham Lincoln in the following century. This gives the book an elitist tint that no doubt would have alienated Zinn.

If you want to learn the language carved on tombs and inside pyramids all over Egypt, you should start here! This book will take you through a wide variety of Egyptian inscriptions, teaching you something new (the different kinds of signs, word order, and even the numbering system) with each one.

Along the way, there are countless opportunities for practice in the beautifully arranged and formatted book.

This book has been my favorite ever since I was a small child—in fact, without the passion for history that this book sparked, I don’t think my book would exist today. Throughout the book, drawings of landscapes, cutaway houses, battle scenes, or people abound.

Poring over those pages, one feels transported to an earlier age—a time when Athenian merchants hawked their goods at the foot of the Acropolis, when intrepid Polynesians sailed far across the crystal-blue Pacific, and when Viking warriors raided villages around Europe.

Simply put, the book is a time machine.

If The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History is a time machine, then this book does not just bring you to the past; it allows you to interact with it. Arranged in alternating couplets are modern photographs of what a place looks like today, followed by highly realistic three-dimensional illustrations of what the spot must have looked like at its prime (on the next page).

Given this royal treatment includes sites ranging from Egypt’s pyramids, Greece’s Olympic Games, Pompeii moments before its destruction, the Great Wall of China defending an attack, and even a Western frontier town.

Troll told me that he read this book in preparation for his own deployment to Afghanistan. Winston Churchill said about campaigns in Afghanistan, “Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question, and politically it is a blunder.”

It doesn’t feel like much has changed. 

Leave it to Churchill to sum up the events of 1941 that determined the ultimate outcome of the war. In his words, the theme of this volume of his epic account of the war is “How the British fought on with Hardship their Garment until Soviet Russia and the United States were drawn into the Great Conflict.” Much of this consists of letters, reports, speeches, and other original documents from that period, woven together by its skillful narrator. Little wonder that Churchill was later awarded the Noble Prize in Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”