Here are 100 books that Incredible History fans have personally recommended if you like
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My love of history began at a young age, when I first read The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, one of the books featured below. Reading that book, I felt a deep appreciation for the past that has lasted ever since. When I visited the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious symbols covering its walls, sparking a fascination with ancient Egypt.
David McCullough is one of my favorite authors of history, and Mornings on Horseback is, in my opinion, one of his best works.
McCullough introduces us to the young Theodore Roosevelt, from early childhood to early adulthood. Born to a Southern mother and a father who would later contribute heavily to the Union cause, he grew up in a mansion in New York City but spent considerable time ranching in the Badlands of North Dakota.
Teddy Roosevelt was a fascinating man with contradictions and character, the perfect subject for a masterful biography.
The National Book Award–winning biography that tells the story of how young Teddy Roosevelt transformed himself from a sickly boy into the vigorous man who would become a war hero and ultimately president of the United States, told by master historian David McCullough.
Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as “a masterpiece” (John A. Gable, Newsday), it is the winner of the Los Angeles Times 1981 Book Prize for Biography and the National Book Award for Biography. Written by David McCullough, the author of Truman, this is the story of a remarkable little…
My love of history began at a young age, when I first read The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, one of the books featured below. Reading that book, I felt a deep appreciation for the past that has lasted ever since. When I visited the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious symbols covering its walls, sparking a fascination with ancient Egypt.
Read this book to get a glorious sweep of human history told like a fireplace story. Beginning with prehistoric man and progressing through to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book is the definitive “narrative of the human race” (as told by Booklist).
Ben Schott from The Observer said it best: “One feels as if Gombrich is guiding one through time with a grandfatherly gleam in his eyes.”
The international bestseller: E. H. Gombrich's sweeping history of the world, for the curious of all ages
"All stories begin with 'Once upon a time.' And that's just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time." So begins A Little History of the World, an engaging and lively book written for readers both young and old. Rather than focusing on dry facts and dates, E. H. Gombrich vividly brings the full span of human experience on Earth to life, from the stone age to the atomic age. He paints a colorful picture of wars and conquests;…
My love of history began at a young age, when I first read The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, one of the books featured below. Reading that book, I felt a deep appreciation for the past that has lasted ever since. When I visited the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious symbols covering its walls, sparking a fascination with ancient Egypt.
If you want to learn the language carved on tombs and inside pyramids all over Egypt, you should start here! This book will take you through a wide variety of Egyptian inscriptions, teaching you something new (the different kinds of signs, word order, and even the numbering system) with each one.
Along the way, there are countless opportunities for practice in the beautifully arranged and formatted book.
An original and accessible approach to learning hieroglyphs, written by an experienced teacher and author.
This is the first guide to reading hieroglyphs that begins with Egyptian monuments themselves. Assuming no knowledge on the part of the reader, it shows how to interpret the information on the inscriptions in a step-by-step journey through the script and language of ancient Egypt.
We enter the world of the ancient Egyptians and explore their views on life and death, Egypt and the outside world, humanity and the divine. The book draws on texts found on some thirty artifacts ranging from coffins to stelae…
My love of history began at a young age, when I first read The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, one of the books featured below. Reading that book, I felt a deep appreciation for the past that has lasted ever since. When I visited the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious symbols covering its walls, sparking a fascination with ancient Egypt.
This book has been my favorite ever since I was a small child—in fact, without the passion for history that this book sparked, I don’t think my book would exist today. Throughout the book, drawings of landscapes, cutaway houses, battle scenes, or people abound.
Poring over those pages, one feels transported to an earlier age—a time when Athenian merchants hawked their goods at the foot of the Acropolis, when intrepid Polynesians sailed far across the crystal-blue Pacific, and when Viking warriors raided villages around Europe.
Tracing the history from the Big Bang to the Twenty-First Century, this comprehensive encyclopedia includes all the major civilizations, rulers and events in world history, and paints a picture of everyday life over thousands of years. Fabulous illustrations, photos, maps and a 12,000 year timechart and over 200 links to recommended websites this a valuable resource tool that is guaranteed to add an extra dimension to school work.
I’ve always enjoyed books that introduce me to faraway places, cultural narratives, and the writers behind the stories. After retiring from college teaching, I decided to write one myself. I’m a Mark Twain scholar, so I followed Twain’s lecture tour through Australasia, India, and South Africa. One of my goals was to expose my research methods to my readers, and writing in the first person made that easy. What I hadn’t foreseen was how much the process would force me to confront my own past—exposing the radical differences between Mark Twain and Me.
This is a first book, covering Aiyar’s years in China as a political correspondent for the Indian Express and The Hindu.Because she is Indian, Aiyar’s perspective differs from Americans’ viewpoints, which drew me, as I’ve been to both India and China. Aiyar tracks the impact of rapid growth on her informants’ sense of self and place—and then compares China’s growth to India’s. It’s a fast-paced, lively book featuring lots of interaction between Aiyar and her students, their families, and other informants—a thoughtful portrait of a culture shifting from tradition into an unknowable future, written by a journalist constantly aware of the radical differences between Indian and “new Chinese” values and sensibilities.
India and China share a 3500-km border and have interacted with each other for over 2000 years. It is remarkable then that their people know so little of each other: what they think, how they live, their language, customs and philosophy.Or even their cuisine. Pallavi Aiyar was very much the average Indian in her knowledge of China when she set out for Beijing in 2002. Over the next five years, she became a fascinated observer of a country undergoing relentless change. This book is an intimate look at a society evolving at double-digit pace. In the process, Pallavi Aiyar breaks…
I am a retired professor of kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. I am the former president of the North American Society for Sport History and vice-president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport, as well as a Fulbright Scholar. I have presented my research in more than three dozen countries and have over 250 publications, including 31 books, most of which pertain to sports history and sociology. I draw on my own history for inspiration and believe that sport has inspirational lessons for life.
This book is the classic and foundational book in which the author designates the requisite characteristics of modern sports: secularization, equality, specialization, rationalization, and bureaucracy.
Secularization distanced sport from the association with religious rituals such as the ancient Olympic Games. Distinct rules and regulations relative to participants designated equal opportunities for success. The sport's perceived physical, social, and moral benefits provided a rational reason for their practice. Specialized events required specialized practice, furthering the advent of professionalism.
The greater profusion and practice of sport led to the creation of associations to administer and regulate the activities. Melvin Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-70, later added commercialization and urbanization as a feature of modernity.
Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was one of the first books to recognize the importance of sports as a lens on the fundamental structure of societies. In this reissue, Guttmann emphasizes the many ways that modern sports, dramatically different from the sports of previous eras, have profoundly shaped contemporary life.
I wasn’t really interested in the Olympics until they came knocking at my door. I lived in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics Bid. When a plebiscite was called, the Yes side plastered the city with billboards explaining why everyone should want the Olympics. Simultaneously, a much less resourced but vocal opposition argued that hosting would be an environmental, social, and economic disaster. The two sides were so far apart that my curiosity was piqued. When I began a postdoctoral fellowship in the UK, I realized that they, too, were in the midst of similar debates, as hosts of the 2012 Summer Olympics. From here a research project was born.
If you want a broader overview of where the modern Olympics came from, why they have persisted, and what major issues they continue to face, look no further thanUnderstanding the Olympics by John Horne and Garry Whannel.
This book is now in its third edition, and with each update, Horne and Whannel keep the book on top of the most recent Olympics shenanigans. Although not exclusively critical of the Games, Horne and Whannel provide a thorough overview of the pros and cons of these massive mobile mega-events.
How did the Olympics evolve into a multi-national phenomenon? How can the Olympics help us to understand the relationship between sport and society? What will be the impact and legacy of the Olympics after Tokyo in 2020? Understanding the Olympics answers all these questions by exploring the social, cultural, political, historical, and economic context of the Games.
This thoroughly revised and updated edition discusses recent attempts at future proofing by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the face of growing global anti-Olympic activism, the changing geo-political context within which the Olympics take place, and the Olympic histories of the next…
I immersed myself in sports when I was young. Watched every game. Knew every statistic and piece of trivia. Lived and died with my favorite teams’ fortunes. But as I aged and became a writer, the outcomes of the games mattered less and less to me. The sports themselves mattered less and less. What mattered were the stories that I could uncover and tell—stories that, by the nature of sports and competition, branched into all the themes and fields of the human condition.
Maraniss is best known for his terrific biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Vince Lombardi; some consider that last one, When Pride Still Mattered, the best sports book ever written.
But Rome 1960, his narrative of the 1960 Summer Olympics, is my favorite. The reason is timing. I read it in 2008 while I was working on my second book. Each morning, I’d consume Maraniss’ smooth prose, which was fortified by the depth of his research.
Each afternoon and evening, inspired, I’d write some of my book, trying my damnedest to equal him, always falling short, of course, but thrilled in the attempt.
An account of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome reveals the competition's unexpected influence on the modern world, in a narrative synopsis that pays tribute to such athletes as Cassius Clay and Wilma Rudolph while evaluating the roles of Cold War propaganda, civil rights, and politics. 250,000 first printing.
I wasn’t really interested in the Olympics until they came knocking at my door. I lived in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics Bid. When a plebiscite was called, the Yes side plastered the city with billboards explaining why everyone should want the Olympics. Simultaneously, a much less resourced but vocal opposition argued that hosting would be an environmental, social, and economic disaster. The two sides were so far apart that my curiosity was piqued. When I began a postdoctoral fellowship in the UK, I realized that they, too, were in the midst of similar debates, as hosts of the 2012 Summer Olympics. From here a research project was born.
John R. Short is another scholar who has been blowing the whistle on the hidden costs of Olympic Games, especially for host cities, for many years.
In this recent release, written for a popular audience, he provides some history of the Games, but, more importantly, a step-by-step breakdown of why the Olympics costs cities much more than the IOC or bidding committees would like you to believe.
He also includes a thorough list of ‘further reading’ resources (and my book plus almost all of the authors on this list are on it!).
Hosting the Olympic Games reveals the true costs involved for the cities that hold these large-scale sporting events. It uncovers the financing of the Games, reviewing existing studies to evaluate the costs and benefits, and draws on case study experiences of the Summer and Winter Games from the past forty years to assess the short- and long-term urban legacies for host cities.
Written in an easily accessible style and format, it provides an in-depth critical analysis into the franchise model of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and offers an alternative vision for future Games. This book is an important contribution…
I'm a Canadian author and figure skating historian. I have written about the sport's fascinating past for over a decade. My innate curiosity about skating history dates back to the days of BETA tapes and card catalogs. Long before YouTube and social media, the only insights we often had about skater's stories were small nuggets of information passed on in television broadcasts and magazines. Figure skating biographies are a rare treat, allowing us to really get to know the people behind the skating performances we love. I'm absolutely delighted to share with you a skating biography of my own - the true story of The Father of Figure Skating - Jackson Haines.
I don't see how anyone couldn't love Adam Rippon. Not only is he a gorgeous skater... he has an absolutely killer sense of humour!
What is particularly refreshing about this particularly autobiography is that Adam doesn't take himself too seriously. He's not afraid to be matter-of-fact and have a laugh about some of the setbacks he faced during his skating career. If you're looking for a refreshing and fun skating memoir, this one is completely out of the box.
Former Olympic figure skater and self-professed America's Sweetheart Adam Rippon shares his underdog journey from beautiful mess to outrageous success in this hilarious, big-hearted memoir that the Washington Post calls "comedic gold."
Your mom probably told you it's what on the inside that counts. Well, then she was never a competitive figure skater. Olympic medalist Adam Rippon has been making it pretty for the judges even when, just below the surface, everything was an absolute mess. From traveling to practices on the Greyhound bus next to ex convicts to being so poor he could only afford to eat the free…
