List suggested by #twitterstorians, collated by Laura Sangha
Question: what 3 things would you recommend as summer reading for students starting a history degree in September?
The most popular (BY FAR – most other items mentioned just once, unless ***starred)
***Carlo Ginzburg; The Cheese and the Worms (English trans. 1980) £20; The Night Battles (1966) £20
***Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (1983); Trickster Travels (2007) £11; Fiction in the Archives (1990) £15 used
***Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (1984) £18
*Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (English trans. 1978) £20
The historian’s craft
***Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (English trans.1953) £10
Carolyn Steedman, Dust (2001) £10
G.R. Elton, The Practice of History (1969) £4 used
GW Bernard, Studying at University (2003) £18
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (6th ed. 2015) £18
***John Arnold, History: A very short introduction (2000) £6
Peter Claus and John Marriot, History: An introduction to theory, method and practice (2nd ed. 2017) £24
Keith Jenkins, Re-Thinking History (3rd ed. 2003) £10
*R.J. Evans, In defence of history (New ed. 2001) £10
R. J. Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler (2002) £13
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929) £3
Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011) £15
*Anthony Grafton, The Footnote (1999) £19
Deborah E. Lipstadt, History on Trial (2006) £9
John Arnold, What is medieval history? (2007) £16
Marcus Bull, Thinking Medieval (2005) £22
*E.H. Carr, What is history? (1961) [controversial choice – some explicitly said NOT this]
Keith Jenkins, On ‘What is History?’ From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (1995) £24
Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice (2nd ed. 2006) £18
John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History (2004) £8
Keith Thomas, ‘Dairy’, London Review of Books, 32:11 (2010) [description of his research/writing method, freely available online].
Books, essay collections, essays List suggested by #twitterstorians, collated by Laura Sangha
Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe 1450-1789 (2nd ed. 2013) £25
W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (1955) £10
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New ed. 2003) £16
Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New ed. 2011) £11
Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette (1996) £22
Simon Winder, Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe (2013) £10
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin Classic 2002) £17
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (1994) £18
Robert Paxton, Vichy’s France: Old Guard and New Order (2015) £20
Carol Dyhouse, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women (2nd ed. 2014) £9
David Kynaston, Austerity Britain: Tales of a New Jerusalem, Books 1-3, £13-20
H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World (1935) £7
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) £8
Rodger, The Command of the Ocean (2006) £20
Timothy Garton Ash, The File (2015) £11
Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) £8
Chinua Achebe, ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’ – essay freely available online
Binyavanga Wainaina, ‘How to write about Africa’ – essay freely available online
C.V. Wedgewood, A King Condemned: The Trial and Execution of Charles I (2011) £10
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (2011) £15
Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the 19th Century (1983) £11
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 (1991) £14
William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (1997) £19
Steven Bednarski, A Poisoned Past: The Life and Times of Margarita De Portu, a 14th-century Poisoner (2014) £17
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (2nd ed. 2002) £28
Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers: The True History of the Meeting of the British First Fleet and the Aboriginal Australians 1788 (2006) £15
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) £7
Justin Marozzi, The Man who invented History: Travels with Herodotus (2009) £11
Carl Watkins, The Undiscovered Country: Journeys Among the Dead (2015) £11
Jane Ziegelman, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement (2011) £12 List suggested by #twitterstorians, collated by Laura Sangha
James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (1999) £13
Alison Light, Common People: The History of an English Family (2015) £10
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (New ed. 1965) £11
Edward T Linethal and Tom Engelhardt, History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (1996) £16
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution; Age of Capital; Age of Empire
Keith Wrightson, Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, his City, and the Plague (2011), £20
Fiction/poetry
Connie Willis, Doomsday Book; To Say Nothing of the Dog; Blackout/All Clear
Rumi, Selected Poems
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall; A Place of Greater Safety
Graham Swift, Waterland
Hella Haasse, In a Dark Wood Wandering
Umberto Eco, In the Name of the Rose
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampeduas, The Leopard
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
AHA presidential addresses:
Joyce Appleby, ‘The Power of History’, The American Historical Review, 103.1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 1-17, freely available online.
See also those by Carl Becker, Lynn Hunt
Perhaps not as freely available
Eileen Power, Medieval People
Howard Zinn, A Popular History of the US
Lizabeth Cohen, Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots; Embellishing a Life of Labor
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (1971) Used copies from 1p
Richard White, Remembering Ahanagran (1998) Used copies from £5
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve & Serpent (1988) used copies from 30p List suggested by #twitterstorians, collated by Laura Sangha
Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (eds), Research Methods for History (2011) used from £17
Sam Wineburg, Historically Thinking & Other Unnatural Acts (2001) Used from £27
*Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: New History of the Renaissance (1996) used copies starting at £5
Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (New ed. 1990) Used from £14
Judith Bennett, History Matters (2007) Used from £20
J W Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1989) Used from 50p
Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times (2005) [memoir] Used copies available c. £15
Bits and bobs
A newspaper, cover to cover and regularly
Historians’ obituaries
The Bible
The Communist Manifesto
Podcasts: In Our Time; History Extra
#twitterstorians
Blogs (especially the many-headed monster, obvs)
Primary sources: modernised edition of Gawain, or a translation of a chronicle by someone like Matthew Paris or Froissart. Ballads. Woodcuts.