History books?

May 30, 2011 2:07 PM

Looking for history books for the Kindle.

The books should not be too scholarly, but they should be intellectual. Please give me your suggestions. Any era of history is OK. Books can be pure history, art history, political history, biography, etc. Even good fictional history would work.

They are for my 86-year old father. He likes ancient and pre-1900 history (Middle Ages, Renaissance, Classical). He is also a sculptor and enjoys art history. Dad is an old hippie and is liberal. Books by Glen Beck and his ilk would not be welcome.

Books he liked: "Bonhoeffer," "Lost to the West," "Roman Britain," "New York," "Pompeii."

posted by wandering_not_lost to society & culture (20 answers total)

I just got Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America on the Kindle and am really enjoying it.
posted by clerestory at 2:18 PM on May 30, 2011

I don't know how the Kindle handles HTML, but A People's History Of The United States is available for free.
posted by procrastination at 2:21 PM on May 30, 2011

I bought A People's History of the United States on the Amazon Kindle store and it's a great book.
posted by OLechat at 2:52 PM on May 30, 2011

Some histories I read and liked which are available on the Kindle:

Coal: A Human History, by Barbara Freese.

A History of Venice, by John Julius Norwich.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.

The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, by Michael Howard. (I thought War in European History was also great, but it may be a bit dry.)
posted by russilwvong at 3:14 PM on May 30, 2011

The Great War and Modern Memory, about WW1, is a classic.
posted by dfriedman at 3:17 PM on May 30, 2011

I would have him give Ideas by Peter Watson a whirl. I absolutely love the book.
posted by milkrate at 3:57 PM on May 30, 2011

I'm not sure about your dad, but I've enjoyed reading biographies of Tudor England notables by Alison Weir (her nonfiction). For example, The Six Wives of Henry VIII or Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley.

Normally I would also recommend David Starkey's works on Tudor history, but it doesn't appear they're available in Kindle format. Nor, sadly, are all of Weir's.
posted by asciident at 3:59 PM on May 30, 2011

I don't have much in the way of specific suggestions, but Project Gutenburg has a large number of public domain history books available for free, some of which are considered classics, such as Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Poking around in there for a while may yield some worthwhile finds.
posted by TedW at 4:07 PM on May 30, 2011

The Poison King: The life and Times of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy.

Rubicon: The Last Years of The Roman Republic.
posted by smoke at 4:40 PM on May 30, 2011

At the moment I'm reading St. Petersburg: A Cultural History on my Kindle, which so far is pretty good. I also enjoyed Cleopatra: A Life.

If your dad is at all open to reading about the history of science, The Disappearing Spoon is a truly excellent book for nonscientists. It's absolutely full of fascinating historical anecdotes and beautifully told stories.
posted by you're a kitty! at 4:54 PM on May 30, 2011

Why the West Rules for Now by Ian Morris is very much worth a read.
posted by sien at 5:41 PM on May 30, 2011

Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:15 PM on May 30, 2011

I am currently reading Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil War Era by James McPherson on my Kindle. As this is the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, this seems appropriate. I can recommend McPherson's treatment highly.
posted by SPrintF at 7:22 PM on May 30, 2011

(long full title so you can search the store for it:)

Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, Includes Both Volumes (Optimized for Kindle).

Cost all of $.99, is formatted for Kindle pretty well, and while it can get a bit repetitive (it's mostly about the civil war, and in fact essentially ends there - I was disappointed that he didn't go into his presidency), I thought it was a good read. Very long.

General Grant was an incredibly concise and to-the-point writer. In an era where many writers were flowery and wrote in long sentences, Grant's prose style still seems very modern. Apart from a few now-archaic words and usages, he could be a 21st century writer.
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:09 PM on May 30, 2011

Over the Edge of the World is some of the most enjoyable history I've read. It has everything you'd expect from a pirate book (except pirates).

Unbroken is a WWII book (so outside your time periods) . It is an amazing story.

I read a really interesting biography of Benjamin Franklin (I think this link is the one I read). I picked it up in a bookstore and liked the writing. I had no particular interest in the subject until I started reading this book.

I second Guns Germs and Steel. Collapse is also very interesting.

Lastly, this isn't an ebook but it's interesting history. Netflix has the PBS Medici series, which is quite good imho.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 9:57 PM on May 30, 2011

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. Pretty much anything by her is good, but this may be most inline with your father's interests.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 2:22 AM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dunno if he's interested in it, but if the English monarchy excites him at all he should read This Sceptred Isle by Christopher Lee.

A hard slog, but so so worth it.
posted by midnightbarber at 3:56 AM on May 31, 2011

The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn is a really fascinating account of how changing conditions of life in the Middle ages led to outbreaks of millenarianism. Some of the accounts of movements are really interesting and its pretty well read and readable.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 7:16 AM on May 31, 2011

More from Project Gutenberg:

History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
The Life of Joan of Arc, by Anatole France
The Origins of Contemporary France (in several volumes), by Hippolyte Taine
Claimants to Royalty, by John Henry Ingram
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, by A.T. Mahan
Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, by Johan Huizinga
A Vanished Arcadia, by R.B. Cunninghame Graham
France and England in North America (in several volumes), by Francis Parkman
posted by Iridic at 8:53 AM on May 31, 2011

Given your Dad's age, he might like Last Call, which is a fantastic history of Prohibition in the United States. I read a lot of history and non-fiction and I'd put this in my top five favorite books. I learned a lot about an era I didn't know much about.
posted by JohntheContrarian at 6:53 PM on June 2, 2011