Books like The Triumph of Liberty — picked by fans

This is an incredibly interesting, well-written, and informative book that lays out the case for the amazing success of liberal democracies based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, universal humanism, and individualism.

I consider this book an essential reading for everyone who has been brainwashed by the current pessimistic and catastrophizing ideologies attacking this most successful of all human civilization.

Pinker is an outstanding writer, and the empirical evidence he marshals for the success and values of the Enlightenment in promoting human flourishing is utterly persuasive.

This 1974 book, by the founder of one of the world’s great picture libraries, was a real eye-opener to me when I first read it. We are all nostalgic and look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, and so do I. But then we forget about the hunger and the crime, tuberculosis, smallpox and heaps of trash on the streets, the child labor, and the despair of the aged. This richly illustrated book, with its multitude of stories, set me straight. For instance, did you know that New York had 150,000 horses in 1900, each producing around 20 pounds of manure a day? The past stank. It makes you deeply grateful for science, technology, and economic growth.

The first of Moberg’s 4-volume saga of Swedish immigrants, this book is so thoroughly researched that he invented a term, calling them “documentary novels.” The family in the story are farmers from a poor, remote parish in Sweden whose lives are constricted by both the church and the state. This reflects the painful realities of Europe in 1850, where almost everyone was poor, rural, oppressed, and completely unprepared for the journey ahead of them. Whether you read Moberg’s Emigrant Novels for the intense personal drama or for more understanding of why people leave their homelands, you will find these stories deeply emotional and insightful.

The great fact of economic history is that we all used to be poor, and now most of us are not. 200 years ago, almost 90 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, today around 9 percent does. This is the story of that remarkable transformation and what made it possible. Of course, there are many good books on this, and I have greatly enjoyed for example Joel Mokyr, Deirdre McCloskey, and David Landes, but this is a powerful, short book by a great historian, that manages to weave together economic, political, technological and intellectual factors into a very compelling narrative of progress and its preconditions over the past one thousand years.

Peter Gibbon has, at an emotional level, a magnificent capacity to admire heroes. He provides snippets of many heroes’ lives and he savors their accomplishments. One of the most effective aspects of his book is his rejection of the modern anti-hero mentality that disparages heroes. “Biography today is rarely about greatness,” he writes. “At best, it displays a dispassionate balance. More often, it focuses on failure…and weakness and unveils the intimate life—slighting artistic accomplishment, scientific discovery, and political achievement. At worst, contemporary biographers self-righteously excoriate any hint of impurity, prejudice, sexism, or hypocrisy.” 

Unfortunately, a la many authors on the topic, he offers no rigorous definition of “hero” or “heroism.” He says: The definition of hero remains subjective. What is extraordinary can be debated. Courage is in the eye of the beholder. Greatness of soul is elusive.” Nevertheless, there is great value in his spirited accounts of numerous heroes.

We need more characters like Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, the daughter of a sheep farmer who joins a mercenary company to avoid an unwanted marriage. Moon, who served as a Marine in Vietnam, gives us a perfect hero’s tale. Paksenarrion (“Paks” for short) doesn’t set out to garner fame and glory, but she works hard at what she does, and her moral compass is firmly attuned to a sense of justice and truth. Paks captures everything we want in a hero, and Moon’s understanding of infantry, siege, and melee tactics filters through in subtle yet powerful ways, from details like foot soreness on the march to how most sieges end with rebellion within the gates. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter literally has it all. Go read it today. 

This book does several things. First, it offers fascinating bios of eight heroes from history and mythology. Two legendary Homeric characters—Achilles and Odysseus—are joined by six giant figures from history: Alcibiades, Cato, El Cid, Wallenstein, Francis Drake, and Garibaldi. Morally, these men are often a mix of good and bad—but their stories are always robustly colorful. Hughes-Hallett draws a fascinating distinction between Achilles and Odysseus—one hero chose death and glory, the other lied, cheated, and stole to retain life. 

Hughes-Hallett points out the dangers of hero worshiping giants whose prowess might outstrip their character; the dangers of seeking guidance from “great men” that we would be better off providing ourselves.

When I first encountered this book in the late 1980s, it was titled Jackaroo--named for the Robin Hood-like folk hero in the non-magical secondary world called the Kingdom. However, the star of the story is Gwyn, so the renaming makes sense. The book is riveting in its action moments, but somehow I'm even more drawn to the scenes of daily toil. I have absolutely no idea how Voigt can make scrubbing the floor seem so important! (This is the real floor-scrubbing book of this list.) The Tale of Gwyn evokes a medieval European past that feels more real than the best-researched historical novel. Hopefully the series rebrand draws the wide readership it deserves--it is both exciting and thoughtful, bleak and hopeful, and I return to it again and again. 

No list would be complete without the writer who changed my life. It was Jason’s blog (now turned into this book) that opened a whole new world of feminist history to me. 

The book is a collection of true stories of women from history who were probably a little too wild, too sketchy, or too murderous to make the Disney Princess cut. Each story is illustrated gorgeously and researched meticulously. It’s perfect for adults and also a great gift for any teenagers who you’d like to get more into history (because what teen doesn’t love the story of teen hell-raisers from the past?). 

Kristen Britain’s Green Rider is an adventure that takes place in a carefully crafted medieval world.

What’s notable is the way Britain integrates medieval culture and tradition into the story. From the honor code of the Green Riders to the standard of loyalty and virtue, the novel is steeped in values commonly held in the medieval era. This adds authenticity to the story.

The series also introduces ‘fantasy flair’ in the Eletians, a group of people I could closely associate with the Elves in my own book.