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r/history · 2019

Most-mentioned books in r/history during 2019

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/history within the published source unit for 2019. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

21
Books ranked
39
Tracked mentions in 2019
Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions
Cover of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy #1

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.

5 in 2019
Cover of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus #2

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.

4 in 2019
Cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel #3

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.

4 in 2019
Cover of A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century #4

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Barbara W. Tuchman

A single French nobleman's life threads through the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the collapse of medieval order in 14th-century Europe.

3 in 2019
Cover of A Peace to End All Peace #5

A Peace to End All Peace

David Fromkin

The Ottoman Empire collapses after World War One, and Britain and France carve up the pieces into the borders the modern Middle East still lives inside.

3 in 2019
Cover of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome #6

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.

3 in 2019
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.

2 in 2019
Cover of King Leopold's Ghost #8

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild

Adam Hochschild reconstructs how King Leopold II of Belgium privately owned the Congo and killed millions, and how a handful of activists eventually exposed him.

2 in 2019
Cover of A History of the Arab Peoples #9

A History of the Arab Peoples

Albert Hourani

Albert Hourani traces Arab civilization from the Prophet's era to the 1980s, asking how a shared language and faith became — and stayed — a civilization.

1 in 2019
Cover of A People's History of the United States #10

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 2019
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.

1 in 2019
Cover of Carthage Must Be Destroyed #12

Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Richard Miles

A historian reconstructs Carthage from the wreckage Rome left behind, tracing a civilization known almost entirely through its enemies' accounts.

1 in 2019
Cover of Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America #13

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.

1 in 2019
Cover of History of the Peloponnesian War #14

History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides writes the Sicilian Expedition as a slow-motion catastrophe and spends the first pages explaining exactly why you should trust him over every other historian.

1 in 2019
Cover of Salt: A World History #15

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.

1 in 2019
Cover of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest #16

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.

1 in 2019
Cover of The Face of Battle #17

The Face of Battle

John Keegan

John Keegan dismantles the mythology of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme by asking what it was actually like to stand in the line.

1 in 2019
Cover of The Guns of August #18

The Guns of August

Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara Tuchman's account of August 1914 — the month European armies marched into a war none of them planned to survive.

1 in 2019
Cover of The Histories #19

The Histories

Herodotus

Herodotus reports on the Persian Wars, Egyptian pharaohs, and a thief who escaped a king's treasury by decapitating the corpse of his brother.

1 in 2019
Cover of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire #20

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.

1 in 2019
Cover of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich #21

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

William L. Shirer

William Shirer's 1200-page eyewitness account of Nazi Germany, written by the CBS correspondent who watched it happen from inside Berlin.

1 in 2019