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Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Roger Crowley · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same author1776
David McCullough · 393 pages
In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based
Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire
Julian Sancton · 384 pages
Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa
Martin Meredith · 592 pages
A history of the tumultuous period leading up to the 1910 founding of the modern state of South Africa explores how the discovery of vast diamond and gold deposits led to a fierce struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the region.
A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia
Thomas Keneally · 454 pages
It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English governm
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Nathaniel Philbrick · 461 pages
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as author Philbrick reveals, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a 55-year epic. The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period
Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs
Buddy Levy · 429 pages
In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures. "I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold." --Hernan CortesIt was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civili
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz · 320 pages
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn · 702 pages
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, *A People's History of the United States* is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.
Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
William Dalrymple · 541 pages
Examines the mid-19th-century Afghan war as a tragic result of neocolonial ambition, cultural collision and hubris, drawing on previously untapped primary sources to explore such topics as the reestablishment of a puppet-leader Shah, the conflict's brutal human toll and the similarities between the war and present-day challenges.
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
Fred Anderson · 880 pages
In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean -- and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role
The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879
Donald R. Morris · 655 pages
It's brilliant book and one of only a few surrounding the rise & fall of Shaka Zulu
Embers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
Fredrik Logevall · 839 pages
A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962
Alistair Horne · 605 pages
Although war was never formally declared, the Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused six French governments to fall, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, brought De Gaulle back to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marke
Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
Nigel Cliff · 547 pages
A new interpretation of Vasco da Gama's revolutionary voyages, which were seen as a turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam, explores the tragic collision of cultures resulting from his journeys to the Indies.
The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery
Martin Dugard · 294 pages
The Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World
Arthur Herman · 648 pages
Recounts how Britain's Royal Navy allowed one nation to rise to a level of power unprecedented in history. From its beginnings under Henry VIII and adventurers like John Hawkins and Francis Drake, the Royal Navy toppled one world economic system, built by Spain and Portugal after Columbus, and ushered in another--the one in which we still live today. Follows its historiy from the defeat of the Spa
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789
Robert Middlekauff · 736 pages
Recounts the events leading up to the Revolution and discusses the major leaders, campaigns, and battles of the war.
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
Stephen R. Platt · 385 pages
The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker · 433 pages
"Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world."--BOOK JACKET.
The Boer War
Thomas Pakenham · 659 pages
Comprehensive history of the Boer War, a war precipitated by greed and marked by blundering and brutalities.
Empire Of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, The Epic Battle For The Americas, And The Catastrophe That Ended The Outlaws' Bloody Reign
Stephan Talty · 344 pages
He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades--and brought it to its knees. Empire of Blue Water is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean.Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legendary. His daring
The Wordy Shipmates
Sarah Vowell · 254 pages
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, their deep-rooted idealism, their political and cultural relevance in today’s world, and their myriad oddities.In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell travels once again through America’s past, this time to seventeenth-century New England. Fro
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
Robert Hughes · 688 pages
Incredibly rich and detailed account of the first white settlers that arrived in Australia, and what they found when they arrived. Riveting.