r/history · 2020

Most-mentioned books in r/history during 2020

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/history within the published source unit for 2020. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

29

Books ranked

42

Tracked mentions in 2020

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Cover of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

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.

Cover of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

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.

Cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel

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.

Cover of King Leopold's Ghost

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.

Cover of The Guns of August

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.

Cover of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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.

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

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.

Cover of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

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.

Cover of A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

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.

Cover of A Peace to End All Peace

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.

Cover of A People's History of the United States

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.

Cover of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

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.

Cover of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Dee Brown

A 1970 history book retells the settling of the American West from the perspective of the nations it was taken from.

Cover of Carthage Must Be Destroyed

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.

Cover of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

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.

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

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.

Cover of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

A Montana anthropologist spent years in Mongolia to argue that Genghis Khan built the scaffold of the modern world — and historians have been arguing about it ever since.

Cover of History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

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

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.

Cover of Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

Tom Holland

Tom Holland narrates the fall of the Roman Republic as a political thriller, from Sulla's march on Rome to the Ides of March.

Cover of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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.

Cover of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Cover of The Complete Roman Army

The Complete Roman Army

Adrian Goldsworthy

Adrian Goldsworthy's field-by-field account of how Rome built, equipped, and sustained the army that held an empire together for five centuries.