26 books on the list
Sort by
Latest Recommendations First
Layout
This book takes a critical approach to the dominant explanation for the transformation from post-Roman to 'Anglo-Saxon' society in Britain from the fifth to the eighth century: that change resulted from north-west European immigration into Britain. After testing this paradigm, the author explores the increasing amount of evidence for the gradual ev...
Tom Holland
May 18, 2021Why did killing a fox mean liberty? What did parish revels have to do with the Peterloo Massacre? What did animal cruelty have to do with the English constitution? What did the Factory Acts mean for modern football?In This Sporting Life, Robert Colls explains sport as one of England's great civil cultures. The lived experiences of people from all w...
Tom Holland
Feb 28, 2021Standing at the very foundation of monotheism, and so of Western culture, Moses is a figure not of history, but of memory. As such, he is the quintessential subject for the innovative historiography Jan Assmann both defines and practices in this work, the study of historical memory--a study, in this case, of the ways in which factual and fictional ...
Tom Holland
Feb 20, 2021
Escape from Rome
The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World, 94)
The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern worldThe fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe'...
Tom Holland
Feb 10, 2021Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilizations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, American culture was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end?In History Has Begun,...
Tom Holland
Jan 08, 2021A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries.This is a world erupting with new money and ne...
Tom Holland
Jan 08, 2021Also recommended by
John SipherThis magisterial history—sure to become the definitive work on the subject—recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secu...
Tom Holland
Dec 17, 2020In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story—and the story of what happened afterwards—has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens...
Tom Holland
Dec 06, 2020In The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley explores the place of the wolf in Scotland - past, present and future - and challenges many of the myths that have been regarded for centuries as biological fact. Bringing to bear a lifetime's immersion in his native landscape and more than twenty years as a professional nature writer, Crumley questions much of the wri...
Tom Holland
Nov 24, 2020
The Beginnings of Rome
Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000-264 BC) (The Routledge History of the Ancient World)
Using the results of archaeological techniques, and examining methodological debates, Tim Cornell provides a lucid and authoritative account of the rise of Rome. The beginnings of Rome, once thought to be lost in the mists of legend, are now being revealed by an ever-increasing body of archaeological evidence, much of it unearthed during the past t...
Tom Holland
Oct 17, 2020Romulus founded Rome -- but why does the myth give him a twin brother Remus, who is killed at the moment of the foundation? This mysterious legend has been oddly neglected. Roman historians ignore it as irrelevant to real history; students of myth concentrate on the more glamorous mythology of Greece, and treat Roman stories as of little interest. ...
Tom Holland
Oct 17, 2020Our Place by
Angels with Dirty Faces by Jonathan Wilson
Winter King by Thomas Penn
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
The Missing Lynx by Ross Barnett
The Fortunes of Francis Barber by Michael Bundock
Green Smoke by Rosemary Manning
The Hindus by Wendy Doniger
Digging Up Britain by Mike Pitts
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain by M. C. Bishop
The Northumbrians by Dan Jackson
The Greek Experience of India by Richard Stoneman
The Moon by Oliver Morton
The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs by Adrian J Desmond