Top Recommendations on History

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EASY READS

From the origin of universe and fundamental forces (physics) 13.5bn years ago, to atoms (chemistry) and living organisms 3.8bn years ago (biology), we Homo Sapiens started only 70,000 years ago. Read this beautiful and gripping story of our species.

Be spell-bounded as the greatest teacher on earth, Durant, combines deep cerebral knowledge with a poetry like prose, and tops it with a contagious passion to teach. The ten peaks of human progress would make us think.

Nehru, India’s first PM and an intellectual giant, wrote a series of letters to his daughter from various prisons (where he was kept during the freedom struggle). These were to introduce her to History in a more informal and engaging way than taught in school.

Singapore’s founder and first PM writes a brilliant memoir on how he transformed the small country from a dependent, developing nation to a shining example of the developed world.

In this sweeping book, Wells covers “the whole story of man” from earth’s origin, to evolution, languages, the first civilizations, various religions, to the recent revolutions.

A real expose of how American business interests push its foreign policy in extremely questionable and actually illegal ways. Economic Hit Men were trained economists paid high dollars to sell ‘globalization’ to the Third World, and all contrary voices were silenced.

HEAVIER READS

What caused the world’s deadliest genocides – World War II and Holocaust? Why was Hitler so viciously anti-Jew? Why did Germany accept this ultra-nationalism? And did the Third Reich help Germany?

Why did some past societies like Maya or Easter Island collapse? Diamond suggests 5 factors and then comes to modern collapses like Rwandan genocide or challenges of a developing world. He also gives advice to the world today, faced with all the environmental challenges.

Africa is a troubled continent: corruption, AIDS, war, poverty. Guest provocatively suggests one cannot keep blaming the colonial powers even after so many years of freedom. Instead, he looks at how its own leaders have abused power to impoverish Africa.