Your Next Favorite History Book Is In This Email

(hopefully)

Not all history lovers read the same way. Many different things dictate what you want in a book at any given time—you might want to learn, get lost in a fascinating narrative, or research something new. Reading history has given me a multifaceted reading experience; sometimes I want to read something cool, sometimes I want to be challenged.

Here are three book recommendations that will scratch different reading itches for you. With these, I’m hunting for books that will satisfy your craving for an analytical study, a cool narrative, and a unique historiographical contribution.

Enjoy!

Analytical Readers - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

If you love connecting dots, this book is catnip. Marshall uses maps to explain why nations act the way they do. From Russia’s obsession with warm-water ports to Africa’s fractured borders, he breaks down history, politics, and culture into geographical inevitabilities. It’s a compact, fact-dense read that makes you feel like you’re seeing world events through X-ray vision. You’ll come away with both trivia-worthy tidbits and a framework for understanding the headlines.

Narrative Readers - Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

This is the kind of book that reminds you history isn’t just a sequence of facts, it’s a story, and who tells it changes everything. Ansary traces the sweep of Islamic civilization from the 7th century to modern geopolitics, but instead of slotting it into a Western timeline, he builds an entirely parallel narrative. The result is a rich, human, often funny, and always absorbing read. It’s history as a page-turner, full of battles, betrayals, scholars, and shifting empires.

Academic/Historiographic Readers - Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

This short but dense classic explores how power shapes what gets recorded as “history” in the first place. From the Haitian Revolution to the Alamo, Trouillot shows how narratives are built, and more importantly, how they are erased. If you’ve ever wanted to peek behind the curtain at how historians wrestle with sources, memory, and myth-making, this is your next read. It’s not light, but it changes how you think about every history book on your shelf.

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Why Put History Books Into Categories?

The more I read history and research for Compendium shows, the more I realize history books, like fiction, are written with many different goals and audiences in mind. If you go to a dinner party and say to a friend, “I read history,” it’s as vague as saying, “I read fiction”.

By parsing different books into artificial categories like Narrative, Academic, and Analytical, it hopefully gives you a better idea what you’re signing up for when you grab a new book (and hopefully helps you enjoy the reading experience more because your expectations have been level-set from the start.

I’m also a big advocate for an informed populace. Reading history (in its many forms) gives you a feel for the rhythms of statecraft, but also for humanity. You’ll be less surprised by current events, but also much more able to dissect the rigid talking points espoused by those around you. And, most of all, you’ll become more empathetic to those around you.

So, read the news. Stay informed. But read books too. Because nothing gives you a better sense of humanity than reading about the experiences of other humans that have gone before us.

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If you enjoyed today’s article, like, share, or restack! Your support of this publication is integral to its growth.

I also welcome your thoughts in the comments. If I’ve learned anything about history, it’s that it is a dialogue.

See you soon,

Josh