Here are 100 books that Area 51 fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a professor of Roman history who teaches and writes about the social world of the ancient Romans. I’m drawn to the topic of ancient Rome because it seems simultaneously familiar and alien: the people always “feel real” to me, but the many cultural differences between Rome and modern America prod me to contemplate those aspects and values of my own world that I take for granted. I enjoy the high moral stakes of the political machinations as well as the aesthetic beauty of the artistic creations of Rome. And the shadow of Rome still looms large in American culture, so I find the study of antiquity endlessly instructive.
Perhaps the best place to start for a novice looking to learn about Roman history. I have had students, friends, and family all tell me that this was the book that really got them excited about ancient Rome.
Beard is a very witty, engaging writer who is able to combine major historical moments with obscure but revealing anecdotes to tell a coherent narrative of Roman history. She also demonstrates, such as in her introductory chapter’s discussion of modern references to the ancient conflict between Cicero and Catiline, the continuing relevance of Roman history to our understanding of politics today.
In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but…
I’m a professional history nerd who is perennially interested in both sides of the history coin: What happened? How do we know? I’ve got a PhD in sixteenth-century European history, have written articles that cover things from antiquity to Vikings in America, and have written several history books about Australia and its region. I like history that is robust, so I’m always looking for books that make clever use of sources. And I love stories that disrupt preconceptions, so I enjoy researching and writing and reading histories that make you think.
If the British empire’s first historians had a knack for anything it was omitting to mention what some of what their predecessors did for the sake of empire. Aboriginal Convicts is one of those books that really challenges us to rethink the stories we have received about British colonization. By tracing the lives of Indigenous people in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand who were sentenced to transportation as convicts this groundbreaking book turns the table on the way we see Britain’s empire in the nineteenth century.
When most of us imagine an Australian convict we see an Englishman or an Irish lass transported for stealing a loaf of bread or a scrap of cloth. Contrary to this popular image, however, Australian penal settlements were actually far more ethnically diverse, comprising individuals transported from British colonies throughout the world.
As Kristyn Harman shows in Aboriginal Convicts, there were also a surprising number of indigenous convicts transported from different British settlements, including ninety Aboriginal convicts from all over Australia, thirty-four Khoisan from the Cape Colony (South Africa) and six Maori from New Zealand.
I’m a professional history nerd who is perennially interested in both sides of the history coin: What happened? How do we know? I’ve got a PhD in sixteenth-century European history, have written articles that cover things from antiquity to Vikings in America, and have written several history books about Australia and its region. I like history that is robust, so I’m always looking for books that make clever use of sources. And I love stories that disrupt preconceptions, so I enjoy researching and writing and reading histories that make you think.
A great insight informs every aspect of this excellent book. While few historians today would put the crusades down to mere fanaticism, too many uninformed people still think of the crusades in absurdly simplistic terms of clashing civilizations, cultures, and religions. This book takes aim at that sort of ignorance by telling the history of one of the world’s great historical phenomena in a very accessible way from the perspective with which most readers will be least familiar.
In 1099, when the first Frankish invaders arrived before the walls of Jerusalem, they had carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that endured for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusaders and pilgrims. The story of how this group of warriors, driven by faith, greed, and wanderlust, created new Christian-ruled states in parts of the Middle East is one of the best-known in history. Yet it is offers not even half of the story, for it is based almost exclusively on Western sources and overlooks entirely the perspective of the crusaded. How did medieval Muslims…
I’m a professional history nerd who is perennially interested in both sides of the history coin: What happened? How do we know? I’ve got a PhD in sixteenth-century European history, have written articles that cover things from antiquity to Vikings in America, and have written several history books about Australia and its region. I like history that is robust, so I’m always looking for books that make clever use of sources. And I love stories that disrupt preconceptions, so I enjoy researching and writing and reading histories that make you think.
Brilliantly executed, this stunning book provides a composite firsthand view of history’s darkest turn. Using a suite of interesting travellers in Hitler’s Germany this book perfectly captures the looming ominousness and increasing brutality of this infamous time and place. It also reveals a very human capacity to be misled, prejudiced, or uninterested. This is a book that will open your eyes to the past and make you think hard about the present.
This fascinating and shocking history of the rise of the Nazis draws together a multitude of expatriate voices - even Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett - into a powerful narrative charting this extraordinary phenomenon.
Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler—one so palpable that the reader will…
I love the psychology behind a good con. Con artists are the ultimate anti-heroes - masterful manipulators and highly observant, but unscrupulous at heart. And after reading a GQ article on “real-life superheroes” – people who dress up in homemade costumes and patrol their neighborhoods – I became fascinated by that psychology, too. Las Vegas is the capital of con and Cons—a unique city bursting with swindlers and cosplayers decked out in full regalia. What better place to set a crime novel? And thus—voila—Con Me Once was born.
The tagline says it all – “Whoever says crime doesn’t pay isn’t doing it right.” Pubbed in 2015, this book is often compared to Ocean’s Eleven as it contains the same main elements: the con artist and his experienced crew, the girl, Vegas. What’s opposite is the focus – this book emphasizes plot over character. While I love this book’s complex con-within-a-con, Billy Cunningham is not particularly likable as a main character. If you enjoy Vegas’s dark side, this book and its two sequels, Bad Action and Super Con, are for you.
Whoever says crime doesn't pay isn't doing it right.
There are hundreds of casinos in Las Vegas, and Billy Cunningham knows how to rip off every one. His scams are a thing of beauty-so perfectly orchestrated that onlookers believe he and his crew are winning fair and square. In a town where bosses will kill to protect their profits, Billy can't afford to make mistakes, but even the best-laid plans can go wrong...
Desperate to keep his team out of jail, Billy agrees to help stop a legendary family of thieves from taking down a casino. But he has no…
With a graduate degree in Writing Popular Fiction (seriously, someone gave me a degree for writing an urban fantasy book), I know that genres are nothing more than marketing terms that tell bookstores which shelves to put the books on. As an author, combining genres and subverting their topes allows me to stretch their potential and tell fresh stories that might not find an easy home on a single shelf, so it’s also important for me to read and support those making the same attempts. Stories that adhere to strict reader expectations will always find a home, but I’ve always had way more fun exploring the other possibilities.
It might look like another romance novel slipped into this list by mistake, but Andrews elevates a typical paranormal romance plot by placing it in an extraordinary open-world urban fantasy setting and emphasizing the main character’s relationship with her family over her love life. Nevada and her loved ones would rather live quiet lives than welcome society’s scrutiny by exposing abilities that are extraordinary even in a world socially ruled by magical dynasties. This book proves explosive magical fights can occur in a world where the response is live-streaming and not an immediate cover-up attempt.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews launches a brand-new Hidden Legacy series, in which one woman must place her trust in a seductive, dangerous man who sets off an even more dangerous desire ...Nevada Baylor is faced with the most challenging case of her detective career-a suicide mission to bring in a suspect in a volatile situation. Nevada isn't sure she has the chops. Her quarry is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, who can set anyone and anything on fire. Then she's kidnapped by Connor "Mad" Rogan-a darkly tempting billionaire with equally devastating powers. Torn…
My father wanted to be an astrophysicist, and as a kid I caught his passion for the future from the many science fiction books he’d left throughout our house. As an adult, the advances in technology have brought the future envisioned in those books closer than ever. My passion for what awaits us led me to write The Price of Safety, which contains innovations that are right around the corner—and have already started to come true (which is freaky), between Elon Musk’s cranial implants to DNA tracking. The world we live in is becoming more like the world in my books. I hope we’re ready!
To me, Crichton’s strength was taking scientific knowledge/achievements and crafting stories that showed how they could impact us.
Yes, he took those to extremes (DNA sequencing to create dinosaurs, robots that revolt against their human masters, and so), but that’s the job of a writer. Prey is not his best-known work but is mesmerizing in terms of the type of future that could exist. His story uses a mix of swarm technology, biology, and AI to craft a cautionary tale, with a main character who has to fight to save his loved one.
Crichton uses biology as part of his support for how his future could take place, with implications that I think few consider as we develop more sophisticated technology. A scary future indeed.
In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles—micro-robots—has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.
Every attempt to destroy it has failed.
And we are the prey.
As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton'smost compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute…
I’m the co-author of The Divorce Seekers, an intimate glimpse into life on Nevada’s most exclusive divorce ranch, the Flying M E. From 1947-1949, my late husband, William L. “Bill” McGee, was the dude wrangler on the Flying M E, twenty miles south of Reno. We spent four years gathering photos (many from former guests on the ranch or their offspring) and conducting interviews. My book is the only book on the subject written from the perspective of a former divorce ranch wrangler. I’ve become passionate about this subject and, thanks to my work on this book, am now regarded as an “expert” on the Nevada divorce ranch era.
Besides having the pleasure of being interviewed by the delightful Ms. Barber, she has written an excellent book covering Reno’s history and its current challenge of re-inventing itself now that the town is no longer a destination for easy divorce and gambling.
When Pittsburgh socialite Laura Corey rolled into Reno, Nevada, in 1905 for a six-month stay, her goal was a divorce from the president of U.S. Steel. Her visit also provided a provocative glimpse into the city's future.With its rugged landscape and rough-edged culture, Reno had little to offer early twentieth-century visitors besides the gambling and prostitution that had remained unregulated since Nevada's silver-mining heyday. But the possibility of easy divorce attracted national media attention, East Coast notables, and Hollywood stars, and soon the 'Reno Cure' was all the rage. Almost overnight, Reno was on the map.Alicia Barber traces the transformation…
I'm an enrolled member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians. I grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. In 2010, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 Disorder but I now believe that I’ve struggled with the disorder since childhood. I'm a novelist, poet, short fiction writer, and filmmaker. I've won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction.
This is the memoir of a world-famous Olympic athlete who also lived a secret life as an elite sex worker in Las Vegas. Hamilton is brutally honest about one of the most distressing and dangerous symptoms of bipolar disorder: hypersexuality. After her secret was made public Hamilton could have retreated into shamed silence but she instead chose to reveal all that she'd learned about the link between her bipolar mania and sexual impulsivity. This is a courageous book.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The former middle distance Olympic runner and high-end escort speaks out for the first time about her battle with mental illness, and how mania controlled and compelled her in competition, but also in life. This is a heartbreakingly honest yet hopeful memoir reminiscent of Manic, Electroboy, and An Unquiet Mind. During the 1990s, three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton was the darling of American track and field. An outstanding runner, a major sports apparel spokesperson, and a happily married wife, she was the model for an active, healthy, and wholesome life. But her perfect facade masked a…
I’m deeply passionate about helping others find ways to work through their emotions. After surviving a mass shooting in 2015 the first place I turned to was the library. I quickly found myself frustrated and lacking when I couldn’t find books to help me understand what I was going through and what to expect next. It was terribly discouraging as I found it difficult to express myself to my loved ones. When I started to find books like the ones on this list, it opened a world to me that I had to be a part of – books that help people process difficult emotions.
I won’t lie, this is a difficult one for me to get through having survived a mass shooting myself. As an anthology, it serves as a powerful testimony to the survivors of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which took the lives of 60. What I think is unique about this anthology is that several artists and authors collaborated on pieces that share social perceptions on a myriad of issues surrounding mass shootings in the U.S. Where We Live serves as a near time capsule dedicated to the effects of the deadliest single incident mass shooting.
On October 1, 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada
suffered the worst mass shooting in modern American history, resulting in 58
deaths and over 500 injured. It broke my heart. Las Vegas is my home. I felt
like something needed to be done to help in a unique way." - JH
WILLIAMS III, Artist & Curating
Editor
This "unique way"
was the genesis of the WHERE WE LIVE anthology-a riveting collection of
both fictional stories and actual eye-witness accounts told by an all-star
line-up of the top talent working in comics today. All the creators have
graciously volunteered their time and talent…
