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Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art
Carl Hoffman · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorEurope and the People Without History
Eric R. Wolf · 503 pages
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann · 660 pages
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Michela Wrong · 353 pages
Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace l
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day
Peter Zuckerman, Amanda Padoan · 304 pages
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond · 494 pages
An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question.
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes
Scott Wallace · 494 pages
Even today there remain tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. Deliberately hiding from the outside world, they are the unconquered, the last survivors of an ancient culture that predates the arrival of Columbus. Journalist Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon's uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest's secrets
Another Day of Life
Ryszard Kapuscinski · 136 pages
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District
Louise Brown · 328 pages
The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal cultu
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Anne Fadiman · 341 pages
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their
The Conquest of America
Tzvetan Todorov · 274 pages
Description. The Conquest of America is a fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America. The book offers an original interpretation of the Spaniards' conquest, colonization, and destruction of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Silencing the Past
Michel-Rolph Trouillot · 191 pages
In this provocative analysis of historical narrative, Michel-Rolph Trouillot demonstrates how power operates, often invisibly, at all stages in the making of history to silence certain voices. From the West's failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave revolt in history, to the continued debate over denials of the Holocaust, and the meaning of Columbus's arrival in th
By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
Rebecca Nagle · 352 pages
Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire
Julian Sancton · 384 pages
The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
Jennifer Toth · 267 pages
Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This book is about them, the so-called "mole people" living alone and in communities, in the frescoed waiting rooms of long-forgotten subway tunnels and in pick-axed compartments below busway platforms. It is about how and why people move undergraound, who they are, and what they have to say
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
James D. Bradley · 387 pages
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.In 2005, a centu
The Invention of Tradition
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Prys Morgan, David Cannadine, Bernard S. Cohn · 320 pages
The True History of Chocolate
Sophie D. Coe, Michael D. Coe · 280 pages
"The food of the gods": Delicious indulgence or cause of migraines? Aphrodisiac or medicinal tonic? Religious symbol or Mesoamerican currency? This tale of one of the world's favorite foods draws upon botany, archaeology, socioeconomics and culinary history to present for the first time a complete and accurate history of chocolate. The story begins some 3000 years ago in the jungles of lowland Mex
The Underground Girls of Kabul
Jenny Nordberg · 350 pages
An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
Christopher McDougall · 287 pages
Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world's greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we tho
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Ned Blackhawk · 596 pages
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
Jason Stearns · 416 pages