The best history books about how we know the past

I read this book as a college student while on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Athens, Greece. As I sat reading while intermittently gazing at the view of the Acropolis from my hotel balcony, a frappe at my side, the book captivated me.

Written by a world-renowned historian in response to his son’s question, “What is history?”, this book opened vistas of reflection about our connections with past cultures and why we do history.

In a present where we are often being pushed to look forward, to innovate, and move on, The Historian’s Craft helped me to better articulate the value of understanding history. Surrounded by the rich cultural heritage of ancient Greece, this book just made perfect sense.

This fascinating book by the evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould taught me so much about what good non-fiction writing looks like.

Although it is strictly a science book, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle is history, philosophy, and storytelling at its best. It illustrates how complex metaphors work in our conceptualization about the past, time as following a repeating cycle and time as linear, forward moving.

Using the concepts of arrow and cycle, Gould explores the discovery of “deep time” a few hundred years ago. The almost unfathomable age of the earth and the universe was a shock and had monumental consequences for our understanding of human history, just a short bubble of existence.

This book also excels in imploding some of the myths that arise about scientific discoveries and the stories we tell about them.

Lab Girl is not a history book but takes us back to pre-history while it simultaneously brings us close to the natural environment that we humans are a part of, but so often don’t notice.

Hope Jahren is a geobiologist; she studies ancient plant life by taking samples in bogs and glaciers. We get to know her life as a scientist with endless hours in the field and the lab and come to understand the meticulous work involved in understanding ancient environments and how to learn from those in ways that matter today.

Her personal story has given me new occasion to experience wonder at the beauty of nature, and I now notice trees in ways I never did before.

This novel elegantly captures the truth that the past was inhabited mostly by “ordinary” people, many of whom are anything but ordinary.

I feel that history should tell their stories, not just those of emperors, generals, and “great men.” Through the stories of a Greek village in Turkey around 1900, I learned vividly about the interconnected lives of Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and others in the late days of the Ottoman Empire and shattering effects of World War I.

The book narrates the atrocities of trench warfare and the human cost and trauma of war with compassion, humor, and a deep sensibility. The book enhanced the experience of my subsequent visits to Gallipoli and Izmir and furthered my understanding of historical events around the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Getting to know this book’s characters and their stories amplified my connection with the past.

This book was exactly what I was looking for when I wanted a “fresh take” on US history.

Dunbar-Ortiz does a radical job in turning the narrative from the standard Eurocentric view, to presenting the history from an indigenous point of view.

By following the story of the area that became the United States from the point of view of the many different nations and communities that originate here, who inhabited the area prior to its colonization by European powers followed by US policies, and who continue to live here, I learned so much about why things are the way they are now.

This book is a must-read for all citizens who wish to be well-informed and live responsibly.