Reading Suggestions
In my weekly posts, I quite often give a shoutout to people who are doing amazing work, or talk about books and ideas which have shaped how I think.
On this page I am keeping a list of books I’ve recommended in past posts, with links back to why they are interesting. I’ve sorted them alphabetically (by author) under what I hope are useful headings.
This isn’t a list of every book I’ve ever mentioned on Coffee with Clio and does not include articles and book chapters. If you are looking for detailed reading on a specific topic, please just drop me an email and I’ll be happy to make suggestions. Here, I’ve focussed on things I think make a good, interesting standalone read, packed full of great ideas, telling fascinating stories or showcasing primary sources in accessible ways.
So, why not start putting together your own reading list of guaranteed great books?
Big Ideas
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1983). One of those books that lots of historians cite but we should all read. You can find me reacting to it here.
Graeber, David, and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Allen Lane, 2021). A mind-bindingly wonderful book, as I explain here.
Specific Regions
Geary, Patrick J., The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2002). A really brilliant explosion of a lot of things many of us were brought up just thinking were true. You can find me reacting to it here.
Particular Subjects
Graeber, David, Debt: the first 5,000 years (Melville House, 2011). A tremendous, wide-ranging book that I talk about, in passing, here. I’ve also got some posts coming up about why I don’t completely agree with it, which I’ll link when they’re public. It’s still a great read!
Lambourn, Elizabeth A., Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World, Asian Connections (Cambridge University Press, 2018), doi:10.1017/9781316795453. I can’t actually remember which post I mentioned this in, but it is amazing.
Good translations/compilations of historical sources
Hart, George L., and Hank Heifetz, eds., The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, the Purananuru (Columbia University Press, 1999). Translations of Tamil poems from the early first millennium CE in southern peninsular South Asia, which I have talked about here, here, here and here.
Talbot, Alice-Mary Maffry, ed., Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, Byzantine Saints’ Lives in Translation, 1 (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996) <https://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/books/holy-women-of-byzantium-ten-saintsa-lives-in> [accessed 25 August 2018]. A great compilation of the lives of female saints, one of which I discuss here.
Great Historical Fiction
Griffith, Nicola, Hild (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA) and Blackfriars Books (UK), 2013). An incredibly detailed, rich and distinctive imaging of early medieval Britain, which I talk about here.