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r/AskHistorians · 2022

Most-mentioned books in r/AskHistorians during 2022

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/AskHistorians within the published source unit for 2022. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

31
Books ranked
99
Tracked mentions in 2022
Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions
Cover of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus #1

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

Charles Mann tours archaeologists arguing the pre-Columbian Americas were as populous and engineered as anything in Europe.

13 in 2022
Cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel #2

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond

A Pulitzer-winning argument that geography, not race, drove civilizational dominance — and the book historians most love to demolish.

12 in 2022
Cover of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind #3

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

A historian writes one book to cover all of human history, and r/AskHistorians spends years explaining why that was a bad idea.

6 in 2022
Cover of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome #4

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Mary Beard

Mary Beard's one-volume history of Rome that r/AskHistorians cites by name when Reddit needs a classicist to settle arguments about Romulus, Caesar, and what "Roman" even meant.

6 in 2022
Cover of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire #5

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

William Dalrymple

A private trading company raises its own army and conquers most of India, and this is the story of a business doing what most empires couldn't.

5 in 2022
Cover of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire #6

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon

An 18th-century historian spends six volumes arguing that Christianity and barbarians killed Rome, and three centuries of scholars haven't stopped arguing back.

5 in 2022
Cover of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created #7

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann

How the Columbian Exchange remade the world after 1492 — diseases, crops, and ecosystems that crossed oceans and never looked back.

4 in 2022
Cover of One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark #8

One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark

Colin G. Calloway

A history of the American West before Lewis and Clark, told through the peoples who were already there.

4 in 2022
Cover of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest #9

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Matthew Restall

Matthew Restall takes seven stories every American thinks they know about the Spanish Conquest and explains, one chapter at a time, why each one is wrong.

4 in 2022
Cover of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America #10

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Andrés Reséndez

Andres Resendez reconstructs five centuries of Indian enslavement in the Americas — a system that ran parallel to African chattel slavery and outlasted it.

4 in 2022
Cover of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era #11

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

James M. McPherson

James McPherson's one-volume Civil War history that r/AskHistorians recommends by name when someone asks where to start.

3 in 2022
Cover of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 #12

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Tony Judt

A 900-page account of how Europe rebuilt, forgot, and reinvented itself from 1945 to the fall of the Iron Curtain and beyond — drawn from archives on both sides of the divide.

3 in 2022
Cover of Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas #13

Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

Jeffrey Ostler

Jeffrey Ostler traces how Native nations held together from the American Revolution through Bleeding Kansas while U.S. policy ground toward erasure.

3 in 2022
Cover of The Making of the Atomic Bomb #14

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes

Szilard talks Einstein into signing a letter to Roosevelt, and six years later Los Alamos turns the idea into two bombs before anyone can stop it.

3 in 2022
Cover of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution #15

A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution

Toby Green

A ground-up history of West Africa before the Atlantic slave trade, told through politics, commerce, and the cowrie shells that wired it all together.

2 in 2022
Cover of Debt: The First 5,000 Years #16

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber

An anthropologist argues that debt, not barter, built civilization — and that the standard economic origin story has been wrong for 5,000 years.

2 in 2022
Cover of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II #17

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

John W. Dower

MacArthur's occupation government rewrites Japan from the wreckage up, and the Emperor walks away from war-crimes charges intact.

2 in 2022
Cover of Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America #18

Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Daniel K. Richter

Daniel K. Richter's colonial history flips the map, reading European settlement from indigenous vantage points that colonial archives almost never preserved.

2 in 2022
Cover of Salt: A World History #19

Salt: A World History

Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky traces how a mineral humans cannot live without quietly dictated wars, trade routes, taxes, and the rise of civilizations.

2 in 2022
Cover of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln #20

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin reconstructs how Lincoln outmaneuvered three men who each believed they should have been president instead.

2 in 2022
Cover of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy #21

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Adam Tooze

Adam Tooze's account of how Nazi Germany's economic desperation drove the war machine — and why it was always running out of time.

2 in 2022
Cover of A People's History of the United States #22

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn retells American history from the bottom up, centering the enslaved, the colonized, and the labor organizer where textbooks put the president.

1 in 2022
Cover of Berlin: The Downfall 1945 #23

Berlin: The Downfall 1945

Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor's account of the Soviet assault on Berlin in April–May 1945, told through the soldiers and civilians who lived and died in it.

1 in 2022
Cover of Liar's Poker #24

Liar's Poker

Michael Lewis

A bond salesman survives Salomon Brothers' 1980s trading floor by learning to bluff louder than everyone else in the room.

1 in 2022
Cover of Stalingrad #25

Stalingrad

Antony Beevor

A German army of 300,000 surrounds a Soviet city, then gets surrounded itself — Beevor traces how the trap snapped shut.

1 in 2022