I saw Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters and have since devoured the novel, which led me to The Ground Breaking by Scott Ellsworth, an incredible story about Tulsa massacre and the subsequent political cover up. I’m looking for something along these lines – retelling of historical stories that feel less like textbooks and really focus on strong storytelling. Would love to hear your favorites!
by ilovesharks__
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Blackhawk Down. Fairly recent, but i think it still qualifies as “history”
Tinderbox by Robert W Fieseler for me. About an arson of a gay club that killed a lot of people and how it spurred on the gay liberation movement
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins
The Counter-Revolution of 1776 by Gerald Horne
Just admit it. You like Oklahoma.
Pretty much all of Erik Larson’s oeuvre fits this descriptions and he is master of the narrative nonfiction historical epic events. Best Know for Devil In the White City, about the first really prominent serial killer connected to the Chicago Colombian World Exposition and In the Garden of Beasts, about the American ambassador to Germany, who he and his family experienced the rise of the Nazis and fascism and tried to warn the US government, but to no avail as they were dismissive of him- but also many other fascinating titles and events.
You may like The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown. It’s about the (infamously failed) Donner Party frontier journey in the mid 1800s but it’s told with a lot of empathy and character building, not just straight fact recital or any shock value.
Simon Seebag Montefiore has a couple of good books. *Court of the Red Tsar* or *Jerusalem* are good options
The Dinosaur Hunters – Deborah Cadbury. This is a story about trying to figure out what fossils were. But it is also the story of a messy scientific rivalry, religion versus science, the unsung people (often female or lower class) behind the great men of science.
Imperial Life in the Emerald City – Rajiv Chandrasekaran. This is about the first six months of occupation in the Green Zone in Baghdad. You have to read it to believe it.
Treason by the Book – Jonathan Spence – Chinese history is such a huge subject it can be difficult to get a toehold. But this book takes a relatively small event and uses it to give us a good picture of 17th century China.
The Surgeon of Crowthorne – Simon Winchester – Gives a really good account of the huge efforts which were made to create something that we take for granted now. In this case the dictionary. This is more of a feel good kind of book. Well somebody does cut their penis off. But apart from that it largely a feel good kind of story that might be a good palette cleanser between traumatic books.
The Company, a novel of the CIA – Robert Littell. This is a novel. But maybe you have to make a book about the CIA during the Cold War a novel because….reasons. I think you might enjoy it.