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1998's Top 10 in History Books Top 10 lists abound at the end of the year. They provide a very good starting point for what to read next when looking for something current. From the History Editors at Amazon.com comes this Top 10 History Books of 1998. |
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| 1. Zarafa, by Michael Allin | Buy book from Amazon |
| The gift of a giraffe from the viceroy of Egypt to King Charles X of France caused quite a stir in 1826. This singular event is the device the author uses to examine the intriguing nineteenth century and the colonized world which offered such exotic tidbits worthy of further exploration. | |
| 2. The Victors, by Stephen E. Ambrose | Buy book from Amazon |
| World War II has captured our collective imagination and curiosity with a renewed interest in what WWII was really like - in the trenches, the ordinary guys in the front lines. The stories collected in The Victors brings this fascinating period into a perspective both clear and accessible half a century later. | |
| 3. Ecology of Fear, by Mike Davis | Buy book from Amazon |
| Wildife corridors, wetlands, floodplains, land ethics. View-lot suburbs, marinas, industrial districts, housing tracts, monolithic public works. "Ecology" vs. "Development" Beyond the rhetoric, is there a common ground between the sacred trust of our land inheritance and the hard-won perks of a rising and prosperous middle class? If you think the suburbs of Southern California are different than those of Seattle or St. Louis or Princeton, Mike Davis may cause you to reflect. | |
| 4. Plato to NATO, by David Gress | Buy book from Amazon |
| A panoramic view of Western Europe as it emerges not so much as a geographic entity, but as the union - and conflict - of ideas distilled through the percolation through its far-flung colonial settlements and home-grown cultural traditions. | |
| 5. The Children, by David Halberstam | Buy book from Amazon |
| January 19th, President Clinton presented to the nation Mrs. Rosa Parks. Frail and of lovely visage, this petite woman may have surprised a few Americans who thought of her as a mythical name, certainly not still with us. Through his coverage of the civil rights movement in Nashville, David Halberstam was witness to the freedom rides and lunch counter sit ins that characterized those early years. His book revisits those times. | |
| 6. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, by David S. Landes | Buy book from Amazon |
| Louis Rukheyser has hosted "Wall Street Week" for three decades. It isn't surprising to his regular viewers that his New-Year show included three top economists. While Professor Landes was not present, his "landmark study" of the distribution of wealth may be of great interest in this new "Belle Epoch" at the end of the 20th century. You may be interested to see words such as work, thrift, patience, and tenacity high on the list of what will bridge the growing gap between the rich and poor. | |
| 7. A Thread of Years, by John Lukas | Buy book from Amazon |
| 1969 continues to ring in the ears of the young and old. Thirty years later, it is still a pivotal year and whether the pendulum took a rollicking swing up or rang the begining of its inevitable decline depends on your point of view. John Lukas offers 69 "vignettes", one for each year of the twentieth century, but only up until 1969 - that in his view point to the "decline of a particular civilization" and the "decline of the ideal of the gentleman". | |
| 8. The Time of Our Time, by Norman Mailer | Buy book from Amazon |
| Never compromise may be high up in the values held by literary titans. These selected works spanning half a century of opinionated fact and fiction weighs in at nearly four pounds and certainly does not compromise in volume. There's so much to include in such an ambitious 50-year retrospective and for those readers who like to get a feel for the entire breadth of an artist, this compendium touches all the bases. | |
| 9. Fortune Is a River, by Roger D. Masters | Buy book from Amazon |
| Bringing together Renaissance movers and shapers into a singular event from which so much could have happened - and didn't - becomes a worthy device to introduce modern readers to the many facets of Cesare Borgia, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. Written in a narrative style, the folly, vision, and power of these men are brought to life. | |
| 10. Explaining Hitler, by Ron Rosenbaum | Buy book from Amazon |
| Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of modern psychology and psychiatry has been to provide a means for both individuals and society to examine its deepest inner workings and to there confront the germs of evil and destruction within the individual and the collective. Whatever the origin for the evil within Hitler, it did exist and the need to know "why" persists. Rosenbaum sets to the task of sifting through this "why" methodically and with spirit. | |