Those who can read and don’t have no advantage over those who can’t.

– Mark Twain

Many over the years have asked for a list of recommended books. Below is a list of my own recommendations for serious readers. Those with an asterisk are by authors you would do well to comprehend if you are considering a serious study of history. It is a partial list and in no particular order (I will attempt to organize them at some point).

Here is an interesting list, not mine, of the top books that teens should read. And another rating TOP TEN of all time according to writers (though these lists are heavily weighted in favor of American authors). Some other notable lists:

• Online collection of the Library of Liberty.
• 21 Western Novels that all Men Should Read

To Begin:

• The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

Many over the years have asked for a list of recommended books. Below is a list of my own recommendations for serious readers. Those with an asterisk are books you should devele into, agains and again, if you are considering a serious study of history. This is a partial list and in no particular order (I will attempt to organize it better at some point).

To begin:

• The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
• anything by Shakespeare !

FOR THE TIMES

• The Future of Industrial Man by Peter Drucker / What is a free society?
• The New Society by Peter Drucker /  “[T]hough a totalitarian government may not be able to control the souls of its citizens, it can control all their actions; and how long will a faith persist if it cannot come to life in works?”
• Landmarks of Tomorrow by Peter Drucker / Roles such as husband, father, citizen, member of a profession, and church member should not be subordinated to roles assigned by organizations

HISTORY:

• Reflections Upon the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke *
• The Face of Battle by John Keegan. The first military historian to consider the perspective of the average foot-soldier in battle.
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.* I Niall Ferguson’s comment in re: “The ­greatest work of historical writing, and a master class in irony. It will take a Gibbon to do justice to the decline and fall of the American Empire, when it finally comes.”
• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Especially relevant for those who don’t yet understand where Marxism leads.
• The Germans by Gordon Craig. Written before the reunification, but still an eloquent exploration of German-ness.
• Citizens and The American Future by Simon Schama *
• Twelve Who Ruled by R.R. Palmer.  Especially relevant for contemporary times, when so many utopian ideologues profess to know what’s good for us (and are more than willing to silence and even exterminate those who disagree with them!).
• Rites of Spring by Modris Ekstein
• Postwar by Tony Judt
• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West.
• Train of Powder by Rebecca West. Musing upon the Trials at Nuremberg.
• The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel *
• The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson
• Stasiland by Anna Funder
• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West
• The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson *
• Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. WWI as it was actually fought.
• The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell. This book set the standard for assessing the cultural implications of war, and shaped the way the war has been interpreted (at least by the British and Americans) ever since.
• Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
• We Were Soldiers Once and Young by Col. H. Moore. One of the best combat narratives of the Vietnam War.
• The Federalist Papers
• The Peopling of British North America by Bernard Baiyln
• The Killer Angles by M. Sharar. THE narrative history of the Battle of Gettysburg.
• Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson
• The Soul of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson. Explains how democratic societies fight and how military leadership ends war.
• A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
• A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes *
• A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel
• The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark One of the better more recent histories of World War One.
• Shooting at the Moon by Roger Warner. A fascinating glimpse into US covert ops in Laos.
• The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
• First In: An Insiders Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan by Gary Shroen.  This is an amazing account of the first boots on the ground following 9/11.
• The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine. An amazing reconstruction of the tragedy of the Russian Revolution. Well worth the time!
• Babi Yar by A.Kuznetsov. A devastating read about Ukraine/Holcaust.
• Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz. A jarring memoir of the Holcaust which also deals with the pains of coming home to a society, in this case Hungarian, that didn’t want to know.
• Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor

ANCIENT:

• The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan *
• Annals and Histories by Tacitus *
• The Histories by Polybius *
• The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides *
• The Histories of Herodotus. Tom Holland has produced an accessible new translation.
• I Claudius by Robert Graves. A beautiful historical novel.

FICTION:

• The Recognitions by William Gaddis. The writing is stunning.
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. An amazing mystery set in a 14th-century monastery. It helps to know something about the Spiritual Franciscans and the Dominicans.
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. One of the best American novels, or novels about being American, or …  it’s just amazing!
• Buddenbrooks and Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann
• Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamasov by Feodor Dostoevsky
• Demons by Dostoevsky. What happens when all is permitted.
• A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Especially good for those who wish to limit free speech or think they want revolution in this country!
• And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokov
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. A great American novel.
• Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer. Every STA student should read this!
• The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
• The Serpent by Neil Gunn. Gets at the perennial tensions between fathers and sons, and lots more.
• Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
• Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
• The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh.  This is one of the best novels about WWII, and the protagonists never leave Britain.
• Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• UBIK by Phillip K. Dick. PKD was one of the most intuitive sci-fi writers of the 60s and 70s who saw where we were really headed: techno-corporatocracy.
• What Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Woodehouse
• The Leopard by G. Lampadusa
• The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
• Warlock by Oakley Hall. One of the best Westerns I’ve ever read. A deep rumination on the role of violence in American society. Also…
• Butcher’s Crossing by John William. A different kind of Western. “You ain’t learned, then,” McDonald said. “You ain’t learned yet. . . .”

SCI-FI

• The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn by the Strugatskys
• A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller

AND if your liked Carr and wish to pursue more reading on historiography:
Historical Consciousness by John Lukacs *

OTHER NON-FICTION

• Collected Essays by George Orwell
• The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
• On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
• The Cuckoo Egg by Clifford Stoll. This is the book that really explained the internet to me (back in the Dark Ages of the 1990s).
• Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux
• Infidel by Ayaan Hersi Ali
• ‘Twilight of Authority’ by Robert Nisbet
• Thinking in Time by Neustadt and May. This book is particularly for anyone entering public service, especially as a politician or part of the decision-making bureaucracy of government office.

FOR LIFE-LONG LEARNING:

• The New York Review of Books (leans liberal)
• The Claremont Review of Books (leans conservative)
• New Criterion
• Lapham’s Quarterly

AND if your liked Carr and wish to pursue more reading on historiography:

• Historical Consciousness by John Lukacs *

OTHER LISTS

• Online Library of Liberty
• Twenty-One Westerns Every Man Should Read
• Commandant’s Reading List, USMC
• Libraries of Famous Men

The Libraries of Famous Men

esp recommended min 38-1:00 and after 148:00