If you liked
Books like Urbain Grandier
Loved Urbain Grandier by Alexandre Dumas? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from history, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
The best history writing tells a story. This list spans 1962–2011 and includes 3 marked as essential reading in history.
10 books · ranked
-
1
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Why some societies came to dominate others, argued from geography rather than race; sweeping and influential.
-
2
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Great Migration of Black Americans told through three unforgettable lives; monumental narrative history.
-
3
Sapiens
A sweeping history of humanity from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa to the present, arguing that what made humans uniquely powerful was the ability to create and believe in shared fictions — nations, religions, money — that allowed large-scale social cooperation impossible for other species. One of the bestselling non-fiction books of the 21st century.
-
4
The Devil in the White City
A world's fair and a serial killer in 1890s Chicago, braided together; history that reads like a thriller.
-
5
Team of Rivals
How Lincoln governed by appointing his opponents; a masterful study of political leadership.
-
6
1776
The year America's revolution nearly failed; intimate, propulsive popular history.
-
7
Stalingrad
The brutal turning-point battle of the Second World War; definitive, vivid military history.
-
8
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
De dochter van een Griekse dokter wordt tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog gescheiden van haar geliefde, een kapitein in het Italiaanse leger.
-
9
A People's History of the United States
American history told from the bottom up; a deliberately partisan and hugely influential counter-narrative.
-
10
The Guns of August
How Europe stumbled into the First World War over a few weeks; narrative history at its most gripping.