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Jeff Vanke's avatar

I'm still making my way through the four volumes of The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ancient to 2016, and highly recommend (published 2011-2021).

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Jane's avatar

Two books I'm in the middle of, will finish eventually if the kids permit me, and would recommend to anyone who hasn't read them yet:

1. Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.

2. Stephen Harrigan, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas.

As someone who didn't discover John Steinbeck till recently, I'd recommend his novels to anyone interested in not-so-ancient history. There are details about what life was like for the down-and-out characters that are not impossible but harder to glean from conventional historiography.

Finally, I picked up Camilla Townsend's Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs after reading about it in one of Razib's monthly reading roundups and would echo his recommendation to those of you who haven't dipped into it yet. Townsend makes the unconventional decision to paint short fictional portraits of documented historical episodes at the beginning of each chapter, and they come about as close as one can get to having a Steinbeckian picture of the details of ancient Aztecs' lives. I don't mind the fictionalizing as much as I ordinarily would, because Townsend is so up front about why she does it, and 90% of the book is meticulously documented historiography taken from a broad range of more conventional sources.

Happy reading, everyone. Eager to see what books other nerds here will point me to.

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