Aight, bedtime's a-coming. We shall have a nightcap and a ramble.

The other day I said this:

https://mastodon.social/@GeePawHill/110410264628807902

Of course, someone asked me immediately for recommendations. *What* narrative history should they read?

The answer in general: anything that looks interesting and isn't about our stupid geekery trade.

One answer in specific:

<hits his neat rye, puffs hard on the cigarette, looks off in the distance>

Here's ten titles, authors, and one-liners. No links, you're a grownup.

Three points before I start:

1) There are a million million books of narrative history. These are some favorites of mine, maybe they'll help. But just follow your nose. Go where the krill are.

2) Americans are woefully undereducated about the world, and this list clearly favors both a Western and an American outlook. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

3) Many of these folks can be reached today, here, the hellsite, their websites. If you read their stuff, and you like it, TELL THEM.

_The Destiny of the Republic_, by Candice Millard.

I offer this one, a telling of events hardly anyone, American or not, is familiar with, the story of James Garfield's assassination, cuz I'm a pusher, and my first free taste is my *best* taste.

Millard is a stunning writer, a serious researcher, and this story isn't just this-then-that, it's got connections to a half-dozen larger themes, and it's so well-written you have to force yourself to pause and think about it.

_The Birth of the Modern_, by Paul Johnson.

The subtitle here is bizarre: "World Society, 1815-1830.

Wait, what? *Fifteen* years of world -- mostly western -- history? Kids, it's 1500 pages.

This one's hard to find, and to make matters worse, Paul Johnson was kinda a conservative dick, but boy oh boy, this one will give you five TIL's a day, and they're borne out by the actual further reading..

Johnson at his best had a gift for the telling detail.

_A Team of Rivals_, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In our gortesquely polarized world, it's difficult to imagine, but Lincoln's cabinet was composed almost entirely of people, from both parties, who had opposed him, because he thought they were smartest and capable people he knew.

Goodwiin won too many prizes for this work to even mention, and they're well-deserved.

The story of a time when a President chose advisors on their merit instead of their allegiance is amazing, and ultimately touching.

_The Eighth Day of Creation_, by Horace Feeland Judson.

If you're more science-y by nature, this one's for you. It tells, in great detail, the story of the development first of the DNA insight, and then of the DNA code insight.

(And yes, it deals with Rosalind Franklin, perhaps not to my modern satisfaction, but fairly enough.)

It's a remarkable tale.

_The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire_, by William Dalrymple.

Most tellings of the Raj are either hate-hate-hate or love-love-love. Getting serious narrative history of the British in India is not that easy.

Dalrymple's take is not a hater's take, but, as the subtitle indicates, it's not a pretty picture, either.

_Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877_, by Eric Foner.

Widely regarded as *the* magisterial account of the years post-US-civil-war.

Foner tells a story that involves decency, kindness, and morally-driven action, opposing a complex political and social world that sought to, and eventually did, wish to eliminate it.

It'll make you tearful, and it'll make you angry, and if it radicalizes you, welllllllllll, good.

_The Ruin of the Roman Empire_, James J O'Donnell.

This one's erudite, and you might need to read up on your "end of Western Rome" before you dive in.

But.

This story is amazing, and it has so many great details, and it doesn't debunk every damned thing, but it debunks a lot of silly bullshit, about who was barbarian and who was not, what was crazed sacking and what was just bidness, and the vast social system by which we decide who is good and who is bad.

Three thumbs up, way up.

_The Fists of Righteous Harmony: A History of the Boxer Uprising in China in the Year 1900_, by Henry Keown-Boyd.

This is a good book to help Westerners position themselves w.r.t. creepy racist anti-Chinese tropes.

It's also a good story, and there are decent men & women on all sides, even if, sorry, my side was the wrong side.