What are the best books on history (financial or otherwise?)

[Guest Schwab711]

I'd second the recommendation for "Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and further recommend reading his other books as well.  "Collapse",  "The World Until Yesterday", and "The Third Chimpanzee" are all excellent.

 

 

I've read most of Jared Diamond's books and they are very, very good. It has been a while since I read any of his books, so I don't recall if this was true with all his books, but I feel depressed after reading his stuff and I am typically a pretty up beat person.

 

I know what you mean.  I'm an optimist to a fault, and I don't end up agreeing with many of his conclusions, yet I like reading things that make me look at things from a different angle.  Also his writing is engaging, his experiences in New Guinea are fascinating, and he's very persuasive in his arguments.  He tells a good story and keeps you reading.

 

I've always heard good things about Diamond's books, but I've read quite a few historians views on his books as hackish and just finding data to validate a theory he came up with.  I haven't read any yet, so just throwing out what I've heard.

 

I second the part where a lot of academics saw the germs books as incomplete/inconclusive. I found it really interesting and I like the theory personally but not everyone is on board or convinced.

 

Also, quote from Good Will Hunting, read "whatever blows your hair back".

 

I haven't seen "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn mentioned yet and I really liked it.

 

Finance Books:

Money Mischief (Friedman)

Beyond the Trade (something like that; yellow cover with red writing)

There's a 'history of money' or something similar book written in 2001/2002 (?) that was really good

 

Physics:

Inflationary Universe (Guth)

The History of Almost Everything (Oerter; standard model)

Genuis

Big Bang (Singh)

Quantum Philosophy (omnes; I think some in this thread will like this a lot more than I did)

About Time

anything about supernova

 

Law (American):

People's History of the Supreme Court (not Zinn)

American Legal History (Hall?)

 

American History topics:

Panic of 1837

Panice of 1873

History/biography of JPM

Obviously Great Depression stuff

old S&P/Moody's manuals (they still make these, I bought one on Amazon from 2013 for ~$20. I liked it a lot. Found APH which looks just like FAST)

Thomas Dorr/Rhode Island Rebellion

John Brown (trial of)

some interesting slave revolts

anything Ben Franklin/Alexander Hamilton

obviously anything Buffett

constitutional convention (I loved the details of it in People's History of US)

laws from pre-revolution and post-independence (and govn't of time) - I like it's really interesting

civil war economy (there's some textbook on just 1845-post-reconstruction US economy but its super expensive; it looks worth it based on preview I saw)

Hunt silver incident

herstatt risk (assumed 0 by major banks because of clearing; this is the huge "black swan" risk in my opinon, freak failure of a CH

Bretton Woods 1944

Fiat currency initiation 1971

Buffett wrote/talked about a number of interesting financial events in history that were extremely interesting but now I can't recall

 

That's all I can think of that hasn't been said

[Jurgis]

OK, meta suggestion that I mentioned in passing above: Economist has pretty good book reviews/suggestions for history, finance, biography books. A bit of European slant both in authors and topics (and release dates), but overall good source of books in the areas people here like.

[kam2308]

Two from William Durant:

 

An 11 book series called The Story of Civilization http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_16?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+story+of+civilization&sprefix=the+story+of+civ%2Cstripbooks%2C276

 

The Lessons of History http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

[rkbabang]

Also for audio.  Anyone who hasn't listened to Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" should give it a shot.  It is like a cross between a podcast and a series of audiobooks on history.  Some of the topics run many hours long.  The most recent few are available for free, the older series are worth paying for.

 

 

[bookie71]

Carl Sandburg's series on Lincoln is great. (I listened to it last summer.)

[Dustin T]

Also for audio.  Anyone who hasn't listened to Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" should give it a shot.  It is like a cross between a podcast and a series of audiobooks on history.  Some of the topics run many hours long.  The most recent few are available for free, the older series are worth paying for.

 

+1 for Dan Carlin and hardcore history, he does a great job of proving that history is full of great stories.

[rogermunibond]

For the Carlin fans, any suggestions on where to start?

 

I also like the history podcast Backstory, it's produced by UVA historians and has over 60+ hour long episodes on all manner of American history.

 

Lastly, for books, I'd also recommend the John McPhee book about shad, The Founding Fish as well as the tetrology on North American geology he wrote called Annals of the Former World

[KinAlberta]

Here's one. Not a book but a fairly long article...  it provides and alternate view of America's economic history and east Asia today...  Considering Japan's problems since it was written and China's success since - this old article is really worth the quick read.

 

How the World Works

 

Americans persist in thinking that Adam Smith's rules for free trade are the only legitimate ones. But today's fastest-growing economies are using a very different set of rules. Once, we knew them—knew them so well that we played by them, and won. Now we seem to have forgotten

 

by James Fallows  Dec 1993

 

"...

Friedrich List! For at least five years I'd been scanning used-book stores in Japan and America looking for just these books, having had no luck in English-language libraries. I'd scoured stores in Taiwan that specialized in pirated reprints of English-language books for about a tenth their original cost. I'd called the legendary Strand bookstore, in Manhattan, from my home in Kuala Lumpur, begging them to send me a note about the success of their search (it failed) rather than make me wait on hold. In all that time these were the first books by or about List I'd actually laid eyes on."

...

 

"WHY Friedrich List? The more I had heard about List in the preceding five years, from economists in Seoul and Osaka and Tokyo, the more I had wondered why I had virtually never heard of him while studying economics in England and the United States. By the time I saw his books in the shop beneath the cherry trees, I had come to think of him as the dog that didn't bark. He illustrated the strange self-selectivity of Anglo-American thinking about economics."

...

"To make this more specific: Today's Anglo-American world view rests on the shoulders of three men. One is Isaac Newton, the father of modern science. One is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of liberal political theory. (If we want to keep this purely Anglo-American, John Locke can serve in his place.) And one is Adam Smith, the father of laissez-faire economics."...

 

"America's economic history follows the same pattern. While American industry was developing, the country had no time for laissez-faire. After it had grown strong, the United States began preaching laissez-faire to the rest of the world—and began to kid itself about its own history, believing its slogans about laissez-faire as the secret of its success."

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/how-the-world-works/305854/

 

[rkbabang]

For the Carlin fans, any suggestions on where to start?

 

I really love all of his WWI/II stuff and all of his Roman Empire series as well.  I'd recommend starting with the "Blueprint for Armageddon" series (I-V) since it is still free on his site.  I'd download all his free series before he starts charging for them.  He only keeps his latest few free, so if he comes out with a new one, one of the series that is now free will be moved to pay only.  I've listened to all of them, I think my favorite series was probably "Death Throes of the Republic".

 

[meiroy]

 

Could someone recommend a data based book which focuses about the possible reasons for the rise of Nazi Germany? Thanks.

 

[Vizi1]

Specifically as it relates to financial history I highly recommend the following

 

The Panic of 1907

http://www.amazon.ca/Panic-1907-Lessons-Learned-Markets-ebook/dp/B001JPH9DQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430883399&sr=8-1&keywords=panic+of+1907

 

and

 

The Great Depression A Diary - recommended by Prem a few years ago

http://www.amazon.ca/Great-Depression-Diary-Benjamin-Roth/dp/1586489011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430883414&sr=8-1&keywords=depression+diary

[Lance]

Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

William Manchester's The Last Lion.

 

Thanks,

Lance

[james22]

VDH's rebuttal of Guns, Germs, and Steel: Carnage and Culture

 

http://www.amazon.com/Carnage-Culture-Landmark-Battles-Western/dp/0385720386

[Pelagic]

For a look at our history as a species I'd recommend Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/0062316095

 

I've also always enjoyed Winston Churchill's writings on history, particularly A History of the English Speaking Peoples

 

http://www.amazon.com/History-English-Speaking-Peoples-Bloomsbury-Revelations/dp/1474216315