Here are 45 books that Orientalism and Empire fans have personally recommended if you like
Orientalism and Empire.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Born in the twilight of the Soviet era on the periphery of that empire, Yerevan, I have been fascinated by the history of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus for a long time. From the first time I saw a map of the staggering expanse of the Romanov domain in the 19th century, I knew that I wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of how this behemoth was constructed. Over the years, my research has taken me to the archives and libraries throughout Eurasia that keep the dusty secrets of tsars and viceroys. Their stories are at the forefront of my writing and teaching.
This highly readable and concise book underscores the role of the Terek Cossacks in pushing southward the boundaries of Russia into the North Caucasus from the eighteenth century. We get a sense of the economic, geographic, and socio-political factors that shaped life on a frontier where the line between “us” and “them” was not always clear.
I love the fascinating tidbits Barrett sprinkles around important analytical discussions, such as the fact that most Cossacks in the North Caucasus were armed by silversmiths and metalworkers from the very mountain communities they were supposed to be guarding against.
An innovative frontier history of one of the most contested regions of the Russian empire, this fresh approach to Cossack history is based on extensive archival research.. The Russian conquest of the North Caucasus was one of the most difficult imperial expansions in Russian history. This innovative study focuses on the local agents of Russian imperialism, the Terek Cossacks, and the difficulties they faced as state servants and frontier settlers. In the process of negotiating between the demands of the state and the needs of their communities, Terek Cossacks created a unique frontier society, more North Caucasian than Russian, neither…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
Born in the twilight of the Soviet era on the periphery of that empire, Yerevan, I have been fascinated by the history of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus for a long time. From the first time I saw a map of the staggering expanse of the Romanov domain in the 19th century, I knew that I wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of how this behemoth was constructed. Over the years, my research has taken me to the archives and libraries throughout Eurasia that keep the dusty secrets of tsars and viceroys. Their stories are at the forefront of my writing and teaching.
This is the go-to book to understand how the Chechens, Dagestanis, and their neighbors held off the mighty Russian armies for several decades in the 1800s.
Gammer’s military history isn’t always a page-turner, but it is chock-full of clear explanations for the long success of Shamil, the warlord who defied successive Romanovs and united the fragmented peoples of the North Caucasus into a resilient resistance movement that tarnished far and wide the image of tsarist Russia as an imperial juggernaut.
Much has been written about the Muslim Murid movement and its leader Shamil, who resisted the Tsarist Russian expansion into Chechan and Daghestan for more than quarter of a century. This study, based on research in multilingual archives, offers a fresh insight into this controversial subject.
Born in the twilight of the Soviet era on the periphery of that empire, Yerevan, I have been fascinated by the history of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus for a long time. From the first time I saw a map of the staggering expanse of the Romanov domain in the 19th century, I knew that I wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of how this behemoth was constructed. Over the years, my research has taken me to the archives and libraries throughout Eurasia that keep the dusty secrets of tsars and viceroys. Their stories are at the forefront of my writing and teaching.
The Golden Age of Russian literature—think Pushkin, Lermontov, and other famous novelists and poets—was at the vanguard of the Russian elite’s meeting with the Caucasus. In what has become a “classic,” Susan Layton brilliantly shows how Russian writers imagined the Caucasus as an ambiguous place—both dangerous and welcoming—populated by “noble savages,” sympathetic freedom fighters, and brutal marauders.
To many Russian aristocrats ensconced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, this was a canvas on which to implement Russia’s own “civilizing mission” to prove to a skeptical Europe that the tsarist realm belonged in the pantheon of European civilization.
This is the first book to provide a synthesising study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership too receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as such, this study introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. While showing how literature often underwrote imperialism, the book carefully explores…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
Born in the twilight of the Soviet era on the periphery of that empire, Yerevan, I have been fascinated by the history of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus for a long time. From the first time I saw a map of the staggering expanse of the Romanov domain in the 19th century, I knew that I wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of how this behemoth was constructed. Over the years, my research has taken me to the archives and libraries throughout Eurasia that keep the dusty secrets of tsars and viceroys. Their stories are at the forefront of my writing and teaching.
This short and beautifully written book follows the fascinating life of a junior officer in the tsarist army in the Caucasus, Semën Atarshchikov, son of a Chechen father and Kumyk mother.
The reader is taken on a winding journey as the protagonist switches sides between the mountaineers and Russians several times. The crux of the argument is that a person with real connections to both Russian and Muslim communities could align with one side against the other temporarily, but overcoming the divisions permanently was difficult. In this case, it proved impossible: Atarshchikov became not a privileged intermediary but a victim of colonial violence.
Russia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia's long conquest (1500-1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man's life story, Semen Atarshchikov (1807-1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the…
Aged seventeen, I set off for Istanbul on what turned into several decades of travels across the Muslim world. From the last nomad tents of Iran to the Sufi shrines of Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Syria and Yemen, I’ve met all kinds of fascinating and complex people. Although I write about the past, those living experiences always shape my approach to writing. As a biographer, I write about individuals who are intriguing but complicated—like all of us, only more so. And as a historian drawn to encounters between cultures, I write about how different parts of the world understand (and misunderstand) each other.
I am fascinated by extraordinary lives, especially lives that cross borders and cultures. I also enjoy biographies set against major historical events, all the more so when an individual life is used to show an apparently familiar era of history in a new light. Tom Reiss’s book manages all this superbly.
This book reconstructs the life of Lev Nussimbaum, who was born in Kiev in what is now Ukraine but was then imperial Russia. But he spent a good part of his life in Baku when that cosmopolitan Russian imperial port was the center of the world’s first great oil boom. Having traveled myself in the Caucasus region, as well as other former parts of the Russian Empire (and Soviet Union), I found Reiss’s account of that collapsing imperial culture quite fascinating. But it is the story of Lev—or, as he twice reinvented himself, Essad Bey and Kurban…
A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.
I am a historian of the early Middle Ages, focusing mainly on the intellectual and cultural history of the post-Roman Barbarian kingdoms of the West. I have always been fascinated by cultural encounters and clashes of civilizations, and it did not take long before the passage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, which witnessed the transformation of the Roman World, the rise of Christianity, and the emergence of the Barbarian kingdoms, grabbed my attention and became my main focus of academic interest. I have published and edited several books and numerous papers, most of which challenge perceived notions of early medieval culture and society in one way or another.
This book trace the development of national identities in the early Middle Ages and beyond. In his careful reading of classical historians, their early medieval counterparts, and their modern interpreters, Geary challenges the traditional understanding of early medieval identity formation and its relations to the origins of modern European nations.
Geary demonstrates that the early Middle Ages were marked by a fluid and dynamic sense of identity and that rulers and policymakers deployed a plethora of strategies to create a sense of shared identity among their people. I particularly like Geary’s inference that the modern idea of the nation-state is, in fact, a nineteenth-century invention and any attempt to trace it back to the early Middle Ages is plain historical nonsense.
Modern-day Europeans by the millions proudly trace back their national identities to the Celts, Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, or Serbs--or some combination of the various peoples who inhabited, traversed, or pillaged their continent more than a thousand years ago. According to Patrick Geary, this is historical nonsense. The idea that national character is fixed for all time in a simpler, distant past is groundless, he argues in this unflinching reconsideration of European nationhood. Few of the peoples that many Europeans honor as sharing their sense of "nation" had comparably homogeneous identities; even the Huns, he points out, were firmly united…
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I have always been fascinated by the human ability to overcome and persevere. How can individuals who seem so ordinary, so small surmount incredible odds? From where do they derive the physical strength and mental fortitude? I think that is what drew me to become a historian of the Soviet Union. I have devoted myself to studying the letters, diaries, and other writings by ordinary individuals who lived through extraordinary times and recorded that ordeal in intimate detail. One of my missions is to share these writings, never intended for publication, with the public.
I was consumed by this harrowing account of Kaliningrad, a city caught between Hitler and Stalin, and how the people there fought, collaborated with, and suffered from both armies.
Without reviving the tired “who was worse” debates about Hitler and Stalin, this book shows readers the unique horrors that each regime visited upon the local population during the war and for decades afterward, as Stalin tried to denazify its German residents. Huge questions of purity, morality, and humanness undergird this searing story about surviving two of the most violent regimes in history.
German Blood, Slavic Soil reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe's two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes.
Drawing on sources and perspectives from both sides, Nicole Eaton explores not only what Germans and Soviets thought about each other, but also how the war brought them together. She details an intricate timeline, first describing how Koenigsberg, a seven-hundred-year-old German port city on the Baltic Sea and lifelong home of Immanuel Kant,…
I go by the title AmericanStudier in my public scholarship and take that name very seriously. I believe nothing is more important for our future than better remembering our past and that pushing the nation toward its most inspiring ideals requires grappling with our hardest and most painful histories. On my AmericanStudies blog, in my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, and in all my other scholarly, public, and social media content, I am committed to sharing our histories and stories, figures and works, voices, and writing in all forms and for all audiences. I hope you’ll join me in this work by reading and sharing these great books!
There have been Asian Americans for as long as there’s been an America, and indeed in places like California Asian communities were there before the United States was.
That’s just one of the countless surprising and crucial lessons that I first learned from Takaki’s sweeping and magisterial history of the U.S., and every time I dip back into this book, I learn something new about where we’ve been, who we are, and what we can be if we better remember all of our communities and stories.
I am inspired every day by what Takaki accomplished and shared and what his book helps us understand.
Ronald Takaki's "brilliant revisionist history of America" (Publishers Weekly) is a landmark work of American history retells American history from the bottom up, through the lives of many minorities - Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and others - who helped create this country's mighty economy and rich mosaic culture. A Different Mirror brilliantly illuminates our country's defining strengths as it reveals America as a nation peopled by the world.
As an undergraduate History student, I was told by one of my professors that I thought too much like an anthropologist; as a postgraduate Anthropology student, I was told by another professor that I wrote too much like a historian! At that point, I finally gave up and turned to journalism and fiction writing…though my love for history figures largely in much of what I continue to write and read today.
Thomas King is one of the great voices of our generation, and without a doubt, the thing I loved most about this book was his voice: witty, wry, self-deprecating, caustic, clever, outraged, and honest.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the facts, characters, stories, and narratives of a difficult history, as well as reckoning with past and present injustice.
In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian-White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada-U.S. border, King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
In the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights and antiwar movements, the women's and environmental movements, and the counterculture, I became an activist and political organizer. Eventually, I called myself a revolutionary and helped found a militant underground organization. Out of anger and youthful naiveté, and being in too much of a hurry to think clearly, I made some superficial choices and did some things I now regret. Ever since, I have been hypersensitive to the nuances and contradictions in what motivates people to become radicals and to flirt with—or embrace—violence as a legitimate action.
A badly disciplined, poorly educated gang of young Nepalis, part of a separatist guerrilla insurgency, reminded me of my militant leftist former comrades.
If the Nepali boys' self-image borrowed from action-hero films, ours took inspiration from political tracts (and movies), perhaps more literate but no less cartoonish. (A real insurgency in Nepal, in the 1980s, failed. Ours, in the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s, failed too.)
The guerrillas provide one of the novel's interconnected story lines and sympathetic sets of characters. The place is a dreamily lush Himalayan locale. But the "inheritance," the legacy of colonialism—class division, poverty, alienation—renders it grim and all of its inhabitants' dreams perpetually frustrated.
The Inheritance of Loss is Kiran Desai's extraordinary Man Booker Prize winning novel.
High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.
The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals. The cook's heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home.
