History

The story of the past: ancient civilizations, world wars, empires and the ordinary people who lived through them. Get the main events and why they still matter today.

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Editor's Picks

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Howard Zinn

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the

Daniel James Brown

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

Erik Larson

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Kate Moore

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Erik Larson

Latest from History

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Karen Armstrong

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind

Michael Axworthy

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Tom Standage

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

A Million Years In A Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life From the Stone Age

Greg Jenner

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the

David Fromkin

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Howard Zinn

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

William J. Bernstein

A Spy Among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal

Ben Macintyre

A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of

John Preston

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win

Sonia Purnell

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599

James Shapiro

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

Pankaj Mishra

A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion

Fay Bound Alberti

Agent Sonya: The Spy Next Door

Ben Macintyre

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Adam Rutherford

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

Tom Standage

War

History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Howard Zinn

The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President – and

Brad Meltzer

Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

Nathaniel Philbrick

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever

Bill O’Reilly

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Erik Larson

Why Don’t We Learn from History?

B. H. Liddell Hart

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the

David Fromkin

Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

Ian Black

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914

Christopher Clark

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity

Timothy C. Winegard

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan

Bill O’Reilly

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern

Scott Anderson

Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic

Michael Axworthy

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

David I. Kertzer

Hiroshima

John Hersey

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017

Rashid Khalidi

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Steven Pinker

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Adam Tooze

Civilizations

Salt: A World History

Mark Kurlansky

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Tom Standage

The Peloponnesian War

Donald Kagan

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History

Kassia St Clair

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind

Michael Axworthy

Islam: A Short History

Karen Armstrong

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity

Timothy C. Winegard

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name

Brian C. Muraresku

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

Dan Jones

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

Ben Wilson

Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction

Ian Shaw

When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt

Kara Cooney

War: How Conflict Shaped Us

Margaret MacMillan

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Ian Morris

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

Timothy C. Winegard

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of

William Dalrymple

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

David Graeber

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

Niall Ferguson

Geopolitics

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Lawrence Wright

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana

William M. Leogrande

Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West

Andrew Wilson

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914

Christopher Clark

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the

David Fromkin

Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World

Nicholas Griffin

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind

Michael Axworthy

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Christopher Hitchens

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017

Rashid Khalidi

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

Henry Kissinger

Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans

James Stavridis

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a

Jonathan Blitzer

World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of

Henry Kissinger

Killing the Killers: The Secret War Against Terrorists

Bill O’Reilly

Thirteen Days: A Memoir Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert F. Kennedy

The Peloponnesian War

Donald Kagan

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn

Daniel Gordis

Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

Ian Black

Economic History

Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay: The (Dodgy) Business of Popular Music

Simon Napier-Bell

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

William J. Bernstein

One Summer: America, 1927

Bill Bryson

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Adam Tooze

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age

James Suzman

Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World

Aja Raden

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

Matt Ridley

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

Dan Jones

Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey

Reid Mitenbuler

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

Vaclav Smil

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the

Marc Levinson

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity

Timothy C. Winegard

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sven Beckert

Black and British: A Forgotten History

David Olusoga

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

Ron Chernow

Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy

Douglas A. Irwin

Salt: A World History

Mark Kurlansky

Political Science

The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

Steve Richards

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

Jon Meacham

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart

Rebecca Donner

Presidents of War: The epic story, from 1807 to modern times

Michael Beschloss

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

Pankaj Mishra

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

Joya Chatterji

Fascism: A Warning

Madeleine Albright

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age

Yuval Noah Harari

The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

Jon Meacham

When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the

John Ganz

Impeachment: An American History

Jeffrey A. Engel

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

Heather Cox Richardson

World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of

Henry Kissinger

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Joseph J. Ellis

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Masha Gessen

The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust

Tom Segev

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Jared Diamond

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick

Sociology

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Anderson Cooper

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

Tom Standage

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy

William Strauss

A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion

Fay Bound Alberti

Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed

Martin Duberman

The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil

Don Lattin

Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

Mitchell Duneier

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Svetlana Alexievich

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

Ben Wilson

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

Barbara Ehrenreich

Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating

Moira Weigel

The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

Niall Ferguson

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

Joya Chatterji

The Happiness Fantasy

Carl Cederström

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

John McWhorter

Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage

Stephanie Coontz

China In Ten Words: Essays

Yu Hua

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

Melissa Mohr

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Michel Foucault

Anthropology

A Million Years In A Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life From the Stone Age

Greg Jenner

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Adam Rutherford

The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the

Leonard Mlodinow

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

David Graeber

Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time

Gaia Vince

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

Barbara Ehrenreich

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Humankind: A Hopeful History

Rutger Bregman

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat

Bee Wilson

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Ian Morris

The Atlas of Christmas: The Merriest, Tastiest, Quirkiest Holiday Traditions from Around the World

Alex Palmer

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Joseph Henrich

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

David Christian

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization

Graham Hancock

Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age

James Suzman

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

Edward Slingerland

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and

Charles King

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

David Reich

Inequality

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sven Beckert

China In Ten Words: Essays

Yu Hua

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Howard Zinn

Women, Race and Class

Angela Y. Davis

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Akala

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

David Treuer

Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

Mitchell Duneier

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Nikole Hannah-Jones

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

Nancy Isenberg

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age

Walter Scheidel

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

John Green

Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream

David Leonhardt

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

David Graeber

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Ian Morris

Globalization

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

Pankaj Mishra

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

William J. Bernstein

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Tom Standage

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

Why Taiwan Matters: A Short History of a Small Island That Will Dictate

Kerry Brown

From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives

Jeffrey E. Garten

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

Sonia Shah

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

Steven Johnson

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the

Marc Levinson

Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy

Douglas A. Irwin

Open: How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind

Johan Norberg

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

J. Bradford DeLong

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sven Beckert

Ethics

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

Tom Holland

Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and

Richard Preston

American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER

Kai Bird

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

Luke Dittrich

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Ian Morris

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

Sarah Bakewell

History Library

12 Years a Slave

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

A Million Years In A Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life From the Stone Age to the Phone Age

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the Modern Middle East

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

A Spy Among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal

A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

Agent Sonya: The Spy Next Door

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander the Great

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization

America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve Act

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER

Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

Arabs: A 3,000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters from the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

Black and British: A Forgotten History

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

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