How the other half lives

For the longest time my reading tastes tended toward fiction, but in the last little while, something’s changed. Biography and history are what quenches my thirst now. I’ve been reading Åsne Seierstad’s A Hundred & One Days: A Baghdad Journal about her time in Iraq, and it’s fascinating. (I’m only a hundred pages in, teetering on the cusp of the war.) During bathroom breaks I’ve also been reading the Federalist Papers on my iPhone, a few pages at a time.

I’m itching to read more of this kind of thing, about other areas of the world, about other people’s lives — Paul Rusesabagina’s book An Ordinary Man about Hotel Rwanda, or David McCullough’s 1776, to name just a couple. History is incredibly awesome.

Which isn’t to say that I’ve completely lost my taste for fiction. I’ve been reading some Ray Bradbury short stories, for example. And I picked up a nice Modern Library edition of Dante’s Inferno today (Anthony Esolen’s translation, with the original Italian on the left side of the page). (Yes, yes, I know that Dante is poetry, not fiction, but since it didn’t actually happen, I’m counting it that way.)

But those notwithstanding, history is what’s drawing me in at the moment, with biography and travel being branches off that tree. Any good recommendations along those lines? (And it doesn’t matter where or when the book is about; I’m open to anything.)

One of my favorite biographies ever is Lance Armstrong’s “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.” There are so many lovely, beautiful, moving passages (about bike riding! I know!).

I loved both 1776 and An Ordinary Man! I should read my David McCullough’s again. He has a way of making history sound like fiction.

And you really mentioned bathroom breaks on your blog? Ewww…

I love David McCullough, and 1776 especially. I’ve also really gotten into WWI-era material in the last few years and Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth is fantastic.

The “Horrible Histories.” Definitely. They’re for kids, but they’re awesome. I’d start with “The Vile Victorians,” by Terry Deary. it was the first one I ever read, and it’s still my favorite.

Haha, and then there are a bunch of history books that I’ve started or read pieces of and that I’d like to read in full someday (I’d put 1776 on the list but it’d just be redundant):
–Simon Winchester’s “The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford Dictionary”
–James Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything your American History Textbook Got Wrong”
–Edward Shorter’s “A History of Psychiatry: from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac”
–Janik and Toulmin’s “Wittgenstein’s Vienna.”

I’ve heard good things about Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower,” too, and I have a copy, but I have yet to read it.

And I’ve seen other books by McCullough that I’d like to read: “Brave Companions,” “Mornings on Horseback,” and “John Adams,” to name a few.

Robert Kennedy and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote a memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis called “Thirteen Days,” that I’ve also been wanting to read.

I wish I knew some good books about the McCarthy era.

I think it’d be cool to read some Herodotus or something too, a few classical historians.

As you can see, my list of history books to read is longer than the books I’ve actually read and can freeheartedly recommend. But perhaps when I get back from Sweden in a year and a half you can recommend a few of these to ME :)

Keep in mind that books on current politics, issues, or figures are just as interesting and important as those on historical events and figures. Anyhow, here’s some super fascinating recent (and not so recent) reads I recommend:

- Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography
- The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Changing the World by John Perkins
- Status Anxiety by Alain De Botton
- Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet by Charlotte Gordon
- South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage by Ernest Shackleton
- The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London by Daniel Hahn
- The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
- A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 Frederic Morton

Have you read Persepolis (1 & 2)? You should even if you saw the movie–they stand on their own. Also recently discovered podcasts from classes at Berkeley and looooove their history classes.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=18

One of my favorite biographies is The Peabody Sisters of Salem by Louise Hall Thorpe. The lives of the three sisters encompass most of the progress made in literature, politics, education and philosophy in nineteenth century Massachusetts — one being the wife of Horace Mann, one marrying Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the other being a publisher, educator, and friend of Emerson, Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. And the HBLL just happens to have a copy. :)

I love The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. I’ve only just started it, but it is ancient history that reads like a modern novel. Brilliant!

Thanks for all the suggestions, everybody! Awesome. :)