100 books like Becoming Josephine

I love this book. Although it’s a novel, Virginia Hall was a real person. She was recruited by the Allies to be a spy.

The book is written in present tense—which I usually find distracting—but it works in this book. It really lends an air of immediacy to the story. My heart didn’t stop pounding through the entire book. Even though I knew the basics of Virginia Hall’s life, this novel really brings it to life. She was an extraordinary woman.

This is a fascinating historical novel about Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, Patsy Jefferson. Aside from learning much more about history than I ever did in high school or college, I enjoyed reading about the relationship that she had with her father. 

It’s difficult, I think, to have a relationship with a man like Jefferson who was devoted to his ideals and dreams first and to his family second. He had goals that were so immense that there was no competing with them. And yet, Patsy is completely devoted to her father and his goals. It’s a story about loving an imperfect man and making sacrifices.

It gave me a different perspective on a historical figure, but it also made me think about my own relationship with my father because I could relate to coming second or third in the life of a father you love. I know what it’s like… show more.

I’m a sucker for a first-person narrative that pulls you close. And, of course, it’s hard to find a more fascinating protagonist than Cleopatra. But I suppose the real reason this one makes my top five list is that when I read it years ago, it left a mark on my mind—a mark that convinced me maybe I, too, could write historical fiction about badass women in the ancient world.

Written long before the many brilliant feminist retellings of recent years, this is an oldie but a goodie and a book that influenced my own trajectory. 

While this novel moves effortlessly between three narrators, I loved that one of them is plucked straight from the dusty pages of history. While Lucrezia Borgia typically gets plenty of press, her contemporary Giulia Farnese was the beautiful young woman who didn’t have a choice in becoming the mistress of Cardinal Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI. Here we see her learning to wade through Italian politics at the height of Borgia treachery.

I loved this modern retelling of the story of Désirée Clary, which was somewhat rawer and more visceral than the original Désirée. It continued to help shape my own impressions of Napoleon, who does not come off well in this novel.

Pataki’s ability to capture life at court, Désirée’s continued entanglements with both Napoleon and Josephine, as well as her elevation to the Swedish court as princess and then queen (which she was never comfortable with), is brilliantly captured. 

I read this book first as a teenager and it was my original introduction to Napoleon and the French Revolution. The story of young love, betrayal, and the stirring events in France before, during, and after Napoleon becomes Emperor, the novel is told as a diary, which lends the book immediacy and poignancy.

As a Jewish reader, I particularly enjoyed Selinko’s description of how Désirée’s Jewish neighbors marched off to war, having been given citizenship for the first time in millennia.

I’ve read this book countless times, both as a young reader and as an adult, and it continues to be an all-time favorite. It also shaped my own approach to portraying Napoleon. 

A thrilling and fully immersive description of the French Revolution; I loved this book in particular for its moving description of how the Jews of Paris were affected.

I found Madame Tussand’s story to be a wonderful frame for the upheaval in France at the time – especially as a highly layered, wonderful character whose strong personality helped her to survive troubling times.

It’s definitely my favorite Michelle Moran book – and that’s tough, considering how many amazing historical novels she’s written.

No discussion of global history and politics would not be complete without some mention of the French Revolution. Clarke’s book was a wonderful romp into French history, providing an elegant and insightful discussion of what went wrong with the revolution – or why the outcome in la Belle France ended up in the Terror, Republican government and Napoleon Bonaparte, while England became a constitutional monarchy. Clarke offers up considerable food for thought. We would expect nothing less from the same man who wrote 1000 Years of Annoying the French and Talk to the Snail. 

There are a thousand books on the French Revolution, but most of them focus on the foibles of the aristocracy, or the wild rage of the crowds, or the heroism of Napoleon. Popkin’s new history does a masterful job of covering all the key events and personalities in France in the years leading up to the Revolution and in its unfolding over almost two decades. He is particularly good at placing the Revolution in the context of world history (showing its relation to events in the New World, from the American Revolution to the Revolution in Haiti), and in keeping a focus on the role of the French Revolution in the history of liberty. Indeed, through the eyes of the revolutionaries and their followers in this book, you can watch the dawn of liberty arise in the early years of the Revolution, and then fade under the increasingly militarist and… show more.

This is not an easy read, but it is a seminal work by the greatest modern historian of the French Revolution, which made an enormous impression on me when I first read it as a student in the 1980s. It marked a decisive break with what up until then had been the standard view of the Revolution as a class struggle. For Furet, the Revolution’s real importance lay elsewhere, as the first modern experiment with democracy – in his eloquent words, "a beginning and a haunting vision of that beginning."