100 books like Herodotus

Paul Cartledge is one of the best Greek historians alive today. Though profoundly knowledgeable about Greece and its history, he writes in a way that non-specialists can follow and appreciate.

I particularly like this book because, through a series of antitheses (Greek/barbarian, free/enslaved, male/female, myth/history), Cartledge gives the reader a splendid picture of the intellectual background against which Herodotus was writing his history.

I also like that, by comparing several contemporary authors with Herodotus, Cartledge can show (explicitly or implicitly) what is distinctive about Herodotus and his worldview.

Michael Ondaatje’s novel is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is not a study or analysis of Herodotus’ history, and yet Herodotus’ spirit infuses virtually every page. Taking place during World War II, it explores the intertwined lives of four characters, including the unnamed English patient, who has survived the shooting-down of his plane, although he is severely burned.

He has nothing with him but his annotated copy of Herodotus’ Histories. I loved Anthony Minghella’s 1996 film adaptation of the novel, and it is no criticism of the film to say that it treats only one of the many strands one finds in the book. Meditating on space, time, identity, and truth, The English Patient is a book that I think Herodotus would have loved.

For fantasy, adventure, and humanity, I find no book like Homer’s Odyssey. Some prefer the Iliad, but for me, the Odyssey has greater depth, resonance, and experience of life. Most of us know about Odysseus’ wonderful adventures, but the whole second half of the epic is about his attempts to get home and, once home, to reintegrate himself into his family and society, from which he has been absent for twenty years.

I love the way the epic relates stories but also makes you think about what stories mean, why people tell them, and how to tell false ones from true. There are many fine translations of the Odyssey, including Emily Wilson’s recent one; my favorite, however, though a bit dated, remains that of Lattimore.

Contemporary historians usually have a vast amount of material at their disposal and institutional support (libraries, archives, universities) that makes accessing and evaluating this material relatively straightforward. Not so in antiquity. The challenges then were enormous.

I think there is no better introduction to the challenges faced by writers of history in the ancient world than Luke Pitcher’s book. He writes in a lively and accessible style, with lots of examples from the ancient historians themselves but also with many contemporary examples. I like that he encourages the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about various matters.

Rather than lecture, he encourages those interested in ancient historians to become part of a conversation that has been going on since antiquity.

This splendid book, by another teacher of mine, one of the most influential 20th-century historians of the United States, takes up the works of three similarly prominent early 20th-century historians: Charles A. Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Vernon L. Parrington. Their books, too, make rewarding reading, even though time may have left their interpretations in the dust—Beard’s on the Constitution being, writes Hofstadter, an “imposing ruin.” Turner’s on the frontier and Parrington’s on American thought are also mostly ignored by historians today. So why bother with them? Because they can still be read for what they cover—the creation of a constitutional republic, how democracy came into being, and core American convictions. Hofstadter’s easy colloquial style is a delight. It’s critical, albeit sympathetic, American history at its best.

Thucydides is generally seen to be a kind of historian; one of the two inventors of history in fifth-century BCE Greece (together with Herodotus) and, according to many of his modern admirers, someone who had anticipated the modern idea of history as critical and scientific. On the other hand, he never thought of himself as a historian, and many aspects of his work do not fit at all with our expectations. Emily Greenwood does an excellent job of exploring these issues from different perspectives: considering Thucydides in his original context and his relationship to different contemporary traditions of making sense of the world, and thinking about his relevance to the writing of history today.

This book is important, authoritative, and compelling because it demonstrates that a conservative historian can be comfortable with revisionist history. Kagan, a Yale historian noted as a leading academic traditionalist, terms Thucydides “the first revisionist historian” not because he was like today’s leftists but because he took issue with his pioneering predecessor, Herodotus. In his great history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides threw down the gauntlet over which was the “best” and “right” way to do history. He thought its subjects should be politics, warfare, the relation between states, and—a surprise?—men. His views held the field for centuries. The Framers of the Constitution were its legatees. So were we until the late 20th century, when social and cultural subjects gained attention. This wonderful book shows why.

Finished in 1907, this famed book is worth rereading today for awareness that its pervasive pessimism proved totally wrong. Adams declared that western democracy was doomed, that freedom had no chance if forced into war versus dictatorship, that the pace change was overwhelming, that the U.S. educational system could not possibly teach science. A century later, democracy prevailed in both world wars, free nations out-produce dictatorships 10 to 1, and America has won more Nobel prizes in the sciences than the next five nations combined. Pessimism has long been with us – and almost always been wrong.

How do people react when a dictatorship forces them to make choices? To learn more, read this brilliant memoir by a journalist looking back on his life in 1930s Berlin. Happily focused on his legal training and circle of friends, Sebastian Haffner at first showed little interest in politics and rejected the Nazis out of instinct rather than principle. Disgusted but powerless, he was content to keep a low profile under the new regime. To his own lasting shame, however, he one day answered “yes” when an SA stormtrooper demanded to know if he was “Aryan.” But Haffner’s friendships and liaisons with Jews, and his belief in the rule of law, ultimately made him realize that he couldn’t live in Nazi Germany. His final choice? Exile in Britain.   

I was drawn to this book because it’s loaded with atmosphere, and features hill folk like I do, with the difference that McCrumb’s characters inhabit the hills of Tennessee, while mine live in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. I especially like the way she weaves local lore and legends into the story, and how she reveals how the landscape appears to different characters, ranging from a long-ago woman, kidnapped by Indians who escapes and makes her way homeward, to a modern-day non-hillbilly who struggles to re-create her difficult journey. Then, there’s the way McCrumb adds a dash of the supernatural through a character with psychic powers—all of which have been grist to my fictional mill.