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HIST 101 Modern Western Civilization
Professor Kirkland
Suggested Readings
Important Note: You are not restricted to the books on this list;
this is only a list of some suggestions to get you started.
Introduction: Students frequently ask for suggestions for readings for the book review; this
list is meant to be an answer to that request. This is not a comprehensive list by any means,
but it includes suggestions for both primary and secondary sources in the various areas
covered by the course. You are not limited to the books on this list; any non-fiction book that
deals with some aspect of Western Civilization from the 30 Years War (1618-48) up through
the present is an appropriate choice. The books on this list are already approved (that is, if
you pick one of these books you do not need approval from the professor for your choice). In
addition, if you choose a book from the list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter
in the main textbook, those books are also “pre-approved”.
If you want to choose a book that is not on this list, it must meet the following
standards:
1. You must get my approval of the book prior to writing the review. You can do that
by e-mail, or simply by bringing the book to class or to me during office hours.
2. It must be non-fiction. A “novel” is a work of fiction, and no novel is appropriate for
this course.
3. The book must be appropriate for adult readers, not something that you already have
read in middle or high school. Specifically, you may not select “The Diary of Anne
Frank”, “Night” by Elie Wiesel, or other books meant for “young adult” readers.
4. This course is primarily, if not exclusively, about European history and its impact on
the rest of the world. Therefore, the books you choose must focus on European lives
and experiences. Specifically, the book may not be about Latin American, American,
Asian, or Middle Eastern History. I will not approve any book that focuses primarily
or exclusively on American experiences, even if they are in Europe.
No book, for example, that is a memoir of an American soldier in WWI or
WWII will be approved. If you are interested in soldiers’ memoirs, they must be
by European authors.
5. If you turn in a review of a book that I did not approve, especially if it violates
these guidelines, you will receive a grade of zero for that assignment.
Early Modern History. Generally speaking, early modern history is the period from
the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) up to the beginning of the French Revolution in
- During this time period, most European countries were monarchies or ruled by aristocratic rulers (Duke, Count, and etcetera), so many of the suggestions here concern themselves with politics or war. But this was also the period of the growth of the enlightenment and even some of
the first reactions against it that led to 19th^ Century Romanticism, so many of the suggestions here concern ideas and their history, as well as some of the ways in which ideas spread.
Ronald Asch, The Thirty Year’s War. Best modern introduction to a complex topic.
Steven Ozment, The Burgermeister’s Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth Century German Town. Note: most of his books are about the Protestant reformation, but he has written several others about family life in early modern Europe; they are all generally good, but not always easy reading for first or second-year college students.
Margaret Jacob is one of the best historians writing about the culture of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. Among her more recent books are The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe, and Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. She has also written several other books about Freemasons and the scientific revolution; all of them are good.
Robert Darnton has written several good books about how books and ideas circulated during the Enlightenment, including The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, and The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of Literature in Eighteenth Century Europe. He has also written some quirky books about cultural history, including George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional guide to the 18th Century and The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French Cultural History.
Paula Findlen has written several books about culture in early modern Italy, including Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy.
Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre. Not many history books have been made into movies, but this one has. It concerns a man who comes back to his village after being gone to fight in wars for several years. He settles back in with his wife and family until another man comes to the village claiming to be the real Martin Guerre. The book is based on the series of lawsuits filed between the two men, and what appears to be the testimony of his wife favoring the imposter over the real thing; it is an interesting insight into ordinary life in early modern times.
Pierre Goubert. The Ancien Regime. Excellent overview of society, economy and culture in France before the Revolution. Also try his Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen.
Albert Sorel. Europe under the Old Regime. Dense but concise analysis of international politics leading up to the Revolution.
Jerome Blum. Lord and Peasant in Russia. Definitive study of Russian society.
Mark Overton. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500-1850.
Merry Wiesner. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe.
Stuart Woolf. The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
John T. Alexander. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend.
Alexis De Tocqueville. The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Classic counterweight to Burke written by one of the fathers of European liberalism; yes, it is the same person who wrote Democracy in America and other classic works.
C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Classic study of the how groups like slaves and free blacks joined the French Revolution in ways which its leaders did not necessarily expect. The birth of Haiti as an independent state was one of the consequences of the French Revolution.
Antonia Fraser. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Best available biography of the doomed queen. If there were such a category as “chick lit history”, this would qualify.
Chantal Thomas. The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. Extensive review of contemporary pamphlets attacking the Queen; helps explain where the popular anger came from. Lots of adult content: the propaganda of this period, especially about women, was pretty raunchy.
Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. A serious analysis of how clothing communicates to the world, and how the “wicked queen” was perceived.
Felix Markham. Napoleon. Best short biography available.
Alan Schom. Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life. Recent, thorough, but very hostile.
Evangeline Bruce. Napoleon and Josephine: The Improbable Marriage. The human side of two famous people.
David Howarth, Waterloo. Good short version of Napoleon’s most famous battle.
The Industrial Revolution. Depending on who you read, it started in the early 1700’s and extended through the 19th^ Century, with a second industrial revolution in the late 1800’s (electricity, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, communications), and even a third one in the late 1900’s (computers and the Internet). There are literally thousands of books written about this topic, including the social changes associated with the economic changes, the impact on urban and rural workers, and the political responses that grew up to it, especially liberalism and socialism in all their varieties. What follows are some selections that touch on many of these topics.
Sydney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760- Steven King [no, not that one; he has a “ph” instead of a “v”] and Geoffrey Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution. Roger Lloyd-Jones and M.J. Lewis, Manchester and the Age of the Factory: The Business Structure of Cottonopolis in the Industrial Revolution. Ronald Aminzade, Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study of Mid-Nineteenth Century Toulouse, France. Gary Herrigel, Industrial Constructions: The Sources of German Industrial Power John Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century. Richard Evans, The German Working Class, 1888-1933: The Politics of Everyday Life John Rule, The Laboring Classes of Early Industrial England, 1750- Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
Joan Scott, The Glassworkers of Carmaux Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844 J.D. Bernal, Science and Industry in the 19th^ Century David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change 1750 to the Present Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet. Explains how important the invention of the telegraph was and makes some interesting comparisons to the Internet Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and Madness and Civilization. Only for those who want an intellectual challenge; these two short but brilliant books gave birth to post-modernism in the writing of history and of cultural criticism generally.
19th Century politics and society. Another area with mountains of writing; to give an idea, I have taught a course (HIST 328) on Europe from 1815-1914. The textbook I used has a 37 page bibliography (in rather small print). Again, the suggestions below are obviously a slim selection.
- The great ideas that dominated the 19th^ Century were liberalism, nationalism, socialism, romanticism, and imperialism.
- The great political events were the Congress of Vienna (1815) which tried to restore politics after Napoleon, the revolts against that system (1820’s, 1830, 1848), and the creation of two new countries by unifying smaller states: Italy and Germany.
- From 1870-1914, there was international peace in Europe, a general pattern of growth in economies, personal income, cultural institutions, overseas empires, and science and technology, often referred to by its French name, the “Belle Epoque”. It ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Great War (World War I) in 1914.
Roger Price, The Revolutions of 1848 Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-51.
Lilian Furst, Romanticism Hugh Honour, Romanticism
Massimo Salvadori, Liberalism is a good but old introduction to the subject. John Stuart Mill is the most exemplary liberal philosopher, and one of the earliest to champion women’s’ rights as well. Excellent primary source readings.
D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism, 1870- Andrew Porter, European Imperialism, 1860- Robert Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians. Published over 40 years ago and still a classic. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost
James Joll, The Second International, 1889-1914. Vernon Lidtke, Several books on the history of the German Social Democratic Party Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism Harvey Goldberg, The Life of Jean Jaures. Most famous leader of French socialism. Spencer Di Scala, Dilemmas of Italian Socialism: The Politics of Filippo Turati
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August Classic overview of the first month of the war
Short overviews: John Keegan, The First World War Hew Strachan, The First World War Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War David Stephenson, Cataclysm (Long and definitive) Modris Ekstein, Rites of Spring Great discussion of the role of culture in the outbreak of the war. Battles and Campaigns: Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun, 1916 Leon Wolff, In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914- Dennis Showalter, Tannenberg, Clash of Empires. The opening battle on the Eastern Front. This military historian teaches at Colorado College and is a prolific and thoughtful writer. Any of his books would be approved for this course. Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919. Excellent overview of an often overlooked part of the war. Italian Fascism largely grew out of the WWI experience.
Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act. The first genocide of the 20th^ Century; the destruction of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. It is still against the law in Turkey to suggest publicly that the deaths of over half of the Armenians was the fault of the Turkish government.
Memoirs: Ernst Junger, Storm of Steel Henri Barbusse, Under Fire Robert Graves, Goodbye to all That Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth Stephen O’Shea, Back to the Front. Journalism and history mixed together as a writer walks the line of the trenches in recent times and discusses the history of the Western Front as well.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (first hand account by an American radical journalist). Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization
Margaret McMillan, Paris, 1919 Excellent on the peace process and the treaties that still affect the modern world.
Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism. Develops a common definition of fascism that crosses national borders.
Alexander DeGrand, Italian Fascism Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1915- Adrian Lyttleton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919- RJB Bosworth, Mussolini, and Mussolini’s Italy. Anthony Cardozo, Mussolini: The First Fascist
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy Simon Martin, Football and Fascism: The National Game Under Mussolini Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism
Ian Kershaw. Best Biographer of Hitler, has several books – all good. Tim Kirk, Nazi Germany. Good short introduction Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich At War. The best available, but a little bit longer; this series will be the definitive history of Nazism for a long time to come. Richard Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust and The David Irving Trial Fascinating account of a British libel case a few years ago over Holocaust denial; Evans was an expert witness in the case, and it inspired him to write his history above. This is an excellent book about what constitutes truth in history, and how to distinguish good history from bad. Claudia Koonz, Nazi Culture and Mothers in the Fatherland William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power Classic case study of a small town Andrew Bergerson, Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim Richard Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism Michael Kater, Hitler Youth Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis Z.A.B. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda
Patricia Clavin, The Great Depression Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929- Peter Temin, Lessons from the Great Depression. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals. Interesting comparison of the US New Deal, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. He doesn’t believe they shared ideologies, but he does suggest that there were some similar responses to similar problems. These books make it clear that it was a world depression, not just an American phenomenon. They are also scary reminders of how similar the crisis of the late 1920’s and early 30’s was to the current economic crisis.
World War II and the Holocaust Note: I won’t approve books about American experiences; in particular, nothing by Stephen Ambrose is appropriate for this course.
Origins: P.M.H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe Overviews: John Keegan, The Second World War R.A.C. Parker, The Second World War Niall Ferguson, War of the World Gerhard Weinberg, A World At Arms. Definitive, but not for the casual reader: 1100+ pages!
Memoirs: Willy Peter Reese, A Stranger to Myself Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War. Not a memoir, but a social history of the Red Army.
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th^ Century Europe From the Armenian genocide of WWI era to the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700- Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in 20th^ Century Russia J.M Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, War and Remembrance in the 20th^ Century
