Looking for history books (not textbooks) for a HS student
June 2, 2022 1:03 PM   Subscribe

One of my sons will be a HS junior next year. He loves history and wants to read more serious books than HS texts. And now it's summer, and he has time to do some non-required reading. There are so many possibilities that it's overwhelming. So...

We're looking for suggestions of books suitable for a smart 16-year-old-- books that are serious but not insanely scholarly or daunting in length, and intriguing without requiring a Ph.D. to grasp. And ideally books that will hook him and have him dig further into a facet of history.

If it helps: He's taken AP Human Geography, AP World History and AP Modern Euro, loved them all but Euro was was his favorite-- but with AP US History looming next year, digging into that subject is good, too. Thanks!
posted by martin q blank to Education (25 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'd recommend Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's a great alternative to standard history textbooks.
posted by hydra77 at 1:16 PM on June 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


This may be a bit dated, but I liked Bruce Catton's Civil War trilogy at that age. It's written in a compelling style, is serious without being overly scholarly, and is a good read for U.S. history. Just a thought. :)
posted by Alensin at 1:17 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


If he’s the kind of kid who can manage the fairly clear, straightforward kind of 19th Century prose, Grant’s memoirs might be a good project. They’re terrific as literature, and combined with a willingness to look everything unfamiliar up on Wikipedia as it comes up, it’ll give him an excellent window into the Civil War.
posted by LizardBreath at 1:25 PM on June 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


Digging into specific topics is my way to go - I personally love the histories of Antarctic and Arctic attempts. I recently surprisingly enjoyed Taymon's 'The Colony...' about Molokai.
posted by cobaltnine at 1:27 PM on June 2, 2022


Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is a one-volume history of the American Civil War. It covers the origins of the Civil War in depth and then the war itself. (This is one volume of the Oxford History of the United States.)
posted by SPrintF at 1:30 PM on June 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


I know that you are probably looking mostly at adult nonfiction, but I really recommend recent YA nonfiction for this. Check out the YALSA nonfiction award for a list of great, accessible, well-researched books on all sorts of topics.
posted by cider at 1:31 PM on June 2, 2022


I absolutely loved The Ghost Map, about how they figured out how cholera spread. It has a lot of detail about London at the time and various factors and was quite fascinating in terms of scientific inquiry and standard of living at the time.
posted by Bottlecap at 1:34 PM on June 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. Plagues, wars, class struggle in 14th century Europe.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Includes a history of physics in the 20th century, world events preceding and during World War Two, and much more beyond the bomb project itself.
posted by JonJacky at 1:52 PM on June 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


Here are links to a bunch of shipwreck narratives that I've appreciated. They're primary sources but well-written: gripping, tragic, and full of historical details. The list omits narratives that are gruesome or racist, and I think it's suitable for an advanced HS student.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:56 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: A few recent purchases that are very readable and cover interesting corners of history:

Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
Hero of two worlds : the Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution / Mike Duncan.
Cat Jarman, River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
Coffeeland : one man's dark empire and the making of our favorite drug / Augustine Sedgewick
posted by Jeanne at 1:57 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


1491 seems like the kind of book that could really get a young person thinking.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:01 PM on June 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


Response by poster: I absolutely loved The Ghost Map

That's on his bedside table right now!

and thanks for the suggestions so far-- he and I will go over them all. Keep 'em coming!
posted by martin q blank at 2:04 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]






Mary Beard, SPQR
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
posted by miles per flower at 2:38 PM on June 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


William Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England has been several-cited on MeFi.
Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate by Mark Kurlansky - not so much.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:50 PM on June 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


Jumped in to recommend "Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Memoirs of U. S. Grant." I would suggest getting the illustrated editions, seeing maps while reading about the Civil War is important.

I was fascinated by Kurlansky's "Salt" and "Cod."

While not strictly historical, all of Mary Roach's works have historic background on their topics.
posted by Marky at 3:13 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert, if I recall, is pretty readable! I was an undergraduate history major and got an MA in Korean history and this was mindblowing in how it connects everything together.
In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:34 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


Here's a previously that may be of some interest, including my standard reply to this question.
posted by bryon at 10:29 PM on June 2, 2022




Here to second Charles Mann's 1491, and the follow-up 1493. Also, though it's very long history, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is amazing and a very compelling read.
posted by SinAesthetic at 12:32 PM on June 3, 2022


I really enjoyed 1066 by Peter Rex. If he likes European history (even if this is decidedly not modern history), he might like it, too.
posted by kristi at 2:30 PM on June 3, 2022


I like "The Timetables of History" for browsing. It provides a slice of human activity by dates. Starting in around 4000BC it says what people were doing in politics, science, art, day-to-day life, etc. at that time.

It's a browsing reference, not a reading reference, but I find it useful to be reminded that in 1865, there were things going on other than the US Civil War. Yeats and Sibelius were born the same year that Lincoln died, which was the same year MIT was founded and the same year that Kekule determined the structure of benzene.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:25 PM on June 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


The Red Flag: A History of Communism
David Priestland

World history from another perspective, starting with the French Revolution and running to the present, more or less.
It is absolutely fascinating to read familiar history through another lens.

The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861
David M. Potter, Don E. Fehrenbacher

The big picture. To me, the causes of the war are much more interesting than the thing itself. Then maybe...

The Road to Disunion Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861
William W. Freehling
the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union
Another way to look at many of the same events.
posted by kingless at 2:29 PM on June 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Sigh. Coming back to this after too long. Summer vacation followed by a case of COVID-19 that took quite a while to resolve, followed by a hectic start to the school year.

And the whole time I've had the auto-notification nag at the top of my inbox, telling me to come back and pick the best answer. Sigh. Way too hard to pick one but I'll do it, grudgingly, while simply saying thank you, thank you, thank you all.

The kiddo's summer reading was The Ghost Map, Devil in the White City, Metropolis and The Jungle, as well as chunks of Zinn's People's History.

We went over this list and the ones he's most looking forward to next are Empire of Cotton, A Distant Mirror, Unworthy Republic, River Kings, Coffeeland, Red Flag and The Impending Crisis.

The Best Answer goes to... Jeanne, by a nose! With beverages all around and especially for kingless, jocelmeow, and spamandkimchi.

And I've given him the link to this post as a resource for anytime he's looking for another book. Thanks again.
posted by martin q blank at 6:20 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


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