History of the World

As master of irony Steven Wright says, "It's a small world . . . . I wouldn't wanna paint it."

Bachrach, Deborah, The Inquisition (World History Series). A new comprehensive history.

Bernal, Martin, Black Athena - The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. The book that added to the furor about "Afro-centrism." If, as is put forth by the theory of evolution, man started in Africa, wouldn't it be logical to assume that culture did as well?

Braudel, Fernand, A History of Civilizations. A bestselling classic by a respected historian. "This book focuses on the broad sweep of history rather than on the famous events. It covers historical developments in almost every corner of the globe, from the Muslim world and the Far East to Europe and the Americas."

Brokrick, James & Tylenda, Jos., The Origins of the Jesuits. A new, well-received book on this Catholic sect, which has had so much influence in the world.

Cahill, Thomas, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. This book has made a big splash. "... takes us to the 'island of saints and scholars,' the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury."

Cotterell, Arthur, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Classical Civilizations. A comprehensive history of the classical periods of not only Greece and Rome but also India, Persia and China.

Davidson, Eugene, The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazism. A new release.

Davies, Norman, Europe: A History. "A monumental history of the continent of Europe, East and West, from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, Europe chronicles such momentous events as the rise and fall of Rome, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the effects of two devastating world wars." Popular and controversial.

Davis, Kenneth, Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned. A popular, as opposed to textbook, bestseller. "Ranging from the voyages of Columbus to the Reagan era, the book takes history off its pedestal to reveal the human passions, follies, and ideals that shaped the stories we all learned in school."
----, Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict but Never Learned. "Davis has a genius for bringing history to life, sorting out the players, the politics and the key events..."

Diaz del Castillo, Bernal, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517-1521. The classic by a priest of the conquerors.

Diop, CA, African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality. A classic in the Afro-centrism debate.

Drews, Robert, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. "The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century B.C. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years."

Durant, Will & Ariel, The Lessons of History. A compendium by these renowned historians.
----, Story of Civilization: The Age of Reason Begins. A newly released version of their famous works.

Ebrey, Patricia & Liu, Kwang-Ching, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. "With emphasis placed on major social and cultural developments, ranging from key philosophical and religious ideas, to art forms, to the impact of cultural intrusions, this book covers the full sweep of Chinese history from neolithic times to the 1990s."

Dupuy & Dupuy, The Compact History of the Civil War. A classic. "Two of America's most esteemed military historians present a concise, fascinating one-volume encyclopedia of the Civil War which covers all the important aspects of the War from the brilliant campaigns and strategies to the mistakes that cost the South the war."

Eban, Abba, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. The bestselling classic.

Gager, John, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity.

Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: An Abridged Version (Penguin Classics). A classic, all right! " . . a model of historical exposition ..."

Glassman, Samuel, Epic of Survival: The Story Anti-Semitism. A history going back centuries.

Glubb, John, The Life and Times of Muhammad. A new release of a classic.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. "In a work that is as authoritative as it is explosive, Goldhagen forces us to revisit and reconsider our understanding of the Holocaust and its perpetrators, demanding a fundamental revision in our thinking of the years between 1933-1945." Popular and controversial.

Goldstein, Melvyn, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. "Like a scientist analyzing experimental data, Goldstein walks us through centuries of unending political struggle and battles of conquest. He shows us that Tibet first came under Chinese suzerainty during the Mongolian era and then for almost 300 years during the Manchu era." A new bestseller. Today's historians are much more colorful and less dry than in past eras.

Gurney, OR, The Hittites. A definitive orthodox history of these mysterious people of Asia Minor.

Hall, JW, Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times. A classic textbook.

Hallo, William, The Ancient Near East: A History. A classic textbook.

Herodotus, The Histories, Grene David, tr. The classic work from the "Father of History," who, fortunately, did his best to record ancient history before the 5th century B.C.E.

Hildinger, Erik, Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D. "The Scythians, Huns, and Mongols--some of history's fiercest fighters--get their due in this creative book..." (Military History)

Hitti, Philip, The Arabs: A Short History. "Despite recent events in the Middle East, the history of the Arabs is little known to most Westerners even though Western culture has been deeply influenced by Arabic history." By a foremost authority on Arabic people.

Jean, Georges, Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts.

Josephus, Flavius, The Complete Works of, Wiston, William, tr. A must-have for anyone interested in the ancient world up to the Christian era. Contains the obligatory bogus passage re "Jesus" with a lovely picture of the crucifixion.

Keller, Werner, The Bible as History. "I think you do protest too much!" This international bestseller tries very hard to prove what should be obvious, were it true.

Kitto, HDF, The Greeks. A definitive work.

Leaney, ARC, The Jewish and Christian World, 200 BC to AD 200.

Lefkowitz, Mary, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. A controversial bestseller. "Wellesley classics professor Mary Lefkowitz takes aim at the basic claims of leading proponents of Afro-centrism, in this expansion of her New Republic article exposing flaws in the argument that black Africans were responsible for the great civilizations of Egypt and Greece that brought praise from historians and criticism from Afrocentrists."
----, ed., & Rogers, Guy, ed., Black Athena Revisited. "In this collection of twenty essays, leading scholars in a broad range of disciplines confront the claims made by Martin Bernal in Black Athena."

Leon-Portilla, Miguel, ed., & Klor De Alva, J. Jorge, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. A recent account from the perspective of the conquered.

Littel, Franklin, Hyping the Holocaust; Scholars Answer Goldhagen. An attempt to repudiate the claims by Goldhagen that many common Germans willingly went along with Hitler's plans.

Loftus, John & Aarons, Mark, The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People. A well-written comprehensive bestseller that reads like a thriller. It is impossible to have a real world view without studying political intrigue of this sort.
----, Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets. This very important book was one factor that forced the Catholic hierarchy to start fessing up to its innumerable bad deeds.

Lytton, Bulwer, Last Days of Pompeii. A classic that has been around forever!

McEvedy, Colin, Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. A comprehensive overview.

Macht, Norman & Hull, Mary, The History of Slavery. "Examines the practice of slavery as it existed in early Mediterranean civilizations, during the Middle Ages, in Africa, among Indians in the Americas, and in the United States."

Markale, Jean, The Celts: Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture. A bestseller. "One of the most comprehensive treatments of Celtic civilization ever written. A cornerstone of Western civilization and the major source of its social, political, and literary values, Celtic civilization occupied the whole of Western Europe for more than a millennium."

Meltzer, Milton, Slavery: A World History. An excellent overview.

Miller, J. Maxwell & Hayes, John, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. A comprehensive bestseller.

Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar and Modern History. Find out how the sugar industry has affected world history, including the slave trade.

Monmouth, Geoffrey of & Thorpe, Lewis, tr., The History of the Kings of Britain. Still in print after hundreds of years.

Olmstead, Arthur, History of the Persian Empire. A bestselling textbook.

Olmsted, Frederick & Schlesinger, Arthur, ed., The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States. The account of an eyewitness.

Pausanias, The Description of Greece, T. Taylor, tr., London, 1824.

Plutarch, any work.

Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo. "Marco Polo's Asiatic journeys with his father and uncle provide an exciting adventure spiced with romance, mystery, and enchantment." Hasn't failed to entertainment in several centuries!

Redford, Donald, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. A bestseller. "Covering the time span from the Paleolithic period to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., the eminent Egyptologist Donald Redford explores three thousand years of uninterrupted contact between Egypt and Western Asia across the Sinai land-bridge."

Reader, John, Africa: A Biography of the Continent. "From the formation of the continent to the present, Reader's informative narrative tells the story of the earliest dwellers and the natural obstacles of desert, jungle, and animals they faced, expertly entwining the development of humanity with the ecological and geographical evolution of the continent." A new, comprehensive bestseller.

Riley, Smith, Jonathan, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. This new work is pretty much the definitive one. "The story of the Crusades is told as never before in this engrossing, authoritative and comprehensive history that ranges from the preaching of the First Crusade in 1095 to the legacy of the crusading ideals and imagery that continue today."

Roberts, J.M., History of the World. A bestselling textbook that covers the whole enchilada.

Rouse, Irving, The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. Or "Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Colombus Day." The Tainos, a peaceful people, were tortured, murdered and decimated by disease by the gold-hungry Spaniards.

Schele, Linda & Freidel, David, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. "For centuries, the true history of the Maya--one of the most mysterious cultures of the ancient world--has eluded archeologists. Now, thanks to a recent breakthrough in the decoding of Maya hieroglyphics, A Forest of Kings is able to provide the first full history of this ancient culture."

Sharer, Robert, The Ancient Maya. A bestselling overview.

Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich. Bestselling memoirs of Hitler's architect.

Suetonius Tranquillus, Lives of the Caesars. A new release of an ancient classic.

Sullivan, William, The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy, and the War Against Time. A new bestseller. "Step by step, Sullivan pieces together the hidden esoteric tradition of the Andes to uncover the tragic secret of the Incas, a tribe who believed that, if events in the heavens could influence those on earth, perhaps the reverse could be true."

Sun-Tzu, The Complete Art of War (History and Warfare). A new, comprehensive edition of this 2,000-year-old classic, which has been studied by some of the best military and business minds in history.

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome. The classic from the ancient historian.
The Histories. Ditto.

Tanaka, Yuki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. A new bestseller. The Nazis weren't the only ones committing atrocities, nor were Jews the only victims. "... reveals for the first time Japanese atrocities during World War II, including cannibalism; the slaughter and starvation of POWs; and the rape, enforced prostitution, and murder of noncombatants."

Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870. "In the first major history of the Atlantic slave trade, not just slavery in America, Hugh Thomas penetrates myths that have obscured this topic for so long. Slavery was, for centuries, the biggest business of all--an international growth industry that for its day dwarfed even the oil and defense industries in America."

Thomas, Nicholas, In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories. A recent bestseller about the people of the Pacific and their interactions with European explorers and other emigrants/invaders.

Time Frame, Time-Life, Alexandria, VA. These excellent, beautifully illustrated books are out of print. If you want Amazon to try to find them, use the search box below.

Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History/Abridgement of Volumes I-VI. Any student of history knows of Toynbee and his monumental works.

Treadgold, Warren, A History of the Byzantine State and Society. a comprehensive, bestselling textbook.

Warry, John, Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors and Warfare in the Ancient Civilisations of Greece and Rome. A recent bestseller.

Waters, Frank, Book of the Hopi. A popular bestseller for decades.

Weatherford, Jack, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. "In a fascinating new look at the Indians of North and South America, Indian Givers proves these people were instrumental in shaping world culture--from the monetary system to our diets to political organizations and our beliefs."

Williamson, Edwin, The Penguin History of Latin America. A bestseller.

Zeldin, Theodore, An Intimate History of Humanity. A bestseller. "In this tour de force of the historian's art, Zeldin weaves the story of human history by focusing on feelings and showing how people and their intimate relationships have changed through the ages."

Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States. An updated version of a must-read classic. Zinn is considered one of the best and most brilliant historians for his ability to portray history without significant biases.