Timeline
Historians testing a quantum fax get stuck in 1357 France and must survive siege and swords.
2,109-word summary · 9 min read
Tag: history
98 books with this tag.
Page 4 of 5
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi's black and white memoir of growing up in Tehran during revolution and war, from a bold ten year old to a fourteen year old sent alone to…
2,984-word summary · 13 min read
In the Garden of Beasts
Ambassador Dodd takes his family to 1933 Berlin and watches charm curdle into terror.
1,927-word summary · 9 min read
Shadow of Night
Diana and Matthew flee to Elizabethan London seeking Ashmole 782, magic training with Goody Alsop, and a reckoning with his violent past.
2,363-word summary · 11 min read
Cloud Atlas
Six lives from 1850 to a post-apocalypse nest inside each other, linked by a comet birthmark, as souls drift like clouds across power and kindness.
2,390-word summary · 11 min read
A Promised Land
First-volume memoir from Iowa 2008 through the 2011 bin Laden raid, crisis management and doubt.
2,243-word summary · 10 min read
A People's History of the United States
A bottom-up history of the United States from Columbus to Clinton, told through workers, women, Native nations and Black voices against elite rule.
2,398-word summary · 11 min read
1776
Washington's amateur army from Boston siege to Trenton through mud and doubt.
2,139-word summary · 10 min read
Homo Deus
After ruling the world, humans chase upgrades and delegate feeling to systems that know patterns.
2,013-word summary · 9 min read
The Holy Bible: King James Version
The 1611 King James Bible in a 1,472-page Thomas Nelson edition: from Genesis to Revelation, law, prophets, Gospels, and letters.
2,904-word summary · 13 min read
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, reminds himself in Greek on campaign: mind your thoughts, do your work, accept nature, face death calmly.
2,827-word summary · 13 min read
The Prince
Machiavelli advises Lorenzo on rule through fear and love, fortune, cruelty and mercy.
2,204-word summary · 10 min read
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Washington rowers led by Joe Rantz chase gold in Hitler's Berlin in 1936.
2,439-word summary · 11 min read
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Art Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek about Sosnowiec and Auschwitz, drawing Jews as mice in this tense father and son memoir.
2,223-word summary · 10 min read
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
In 1920s Oklahoma, Osage oil wealth makes tribal members targets for murder, forcing the young FBI under Tom White to expose the conspiracy behind the Reign of…
2,403-word summary · 11 min read
John Adams
McCullough follows Adams from Braintree lawyer to second president.
2,515-word summary · 11 min read
Between the World and Me
Coates writes to his son about the Black body in America, from Howard to the loss of Prince Jones.
2,234-word summary · 10 min read
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bryson asks how we know what we know, from atoms to continents, with humor and awe.
2,134-word summary · 9 min read
The Crucible
Salem witch trials inflame fear as John Proctor faces confession and conscience.
2,572-word summary · 11 min read
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Diamond argues geography and crops explain why some societies expanded faster than others.
3,432-word summary · 15 min read
A Discovery of Witches
Historian Diana Bishop calls up a lost alchemical manuscript in Oxford's Bodleian Library and draws vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, plus every creature…
2,025-word summary · 9 min read
The Devil in the White City
Architect Burnham builds the 1893 Chicago Fair while H.H. Holmes builds his murder hotel nearby.
2,020-word summary · 9 min read
Unbroken
Louis Zamperini survives a Pacific crash, sharks and POW camps after running in the Berlin Olympics.
3,263-word summary · 15 min read
Night
Elie Wiesel's account of Sighet, the cattle cars, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, told in short flat sections by a boy about fifteen. Why the book carries the year…
2,594-word summary · 12 min read