Every summer, since the mid-1990s, I have selected a topic to read and explore. One year, it was Catherine the Great, then Russian history, and another year, Mao Zedong consumed my attention. This year, I am not sure which direction to head. So, over the past couple of weeks, I have spent time on the Google Machine looking for lists of top recommended books on certain areas of study. With some online assistance from professors and fellow history lovers, I have arrived at a list of books recommended for a well-rounded romp through time.

I print the list, which includes a number of titles I have already enjoyed. I leave them attached as I trust another online reader will find the entire bunch to be of interest and deem it of value. I offer Russian, Chinese, and Indian history reading possibilities. Then, 100 books for lovers of American history.

For all my effort, I am thinking about a book on my shelves not listed below. Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman might be the entry gate for Indian history this summer.

(Sorry for formatting inconsistency below. I really have no idea how to fix it.)

Russian History

These titles frequently appear in university syllabi and historian‑curated lists.

1. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution — Orlando Figes.

2. The Romanovs: 1613–1918 — Simon Sebag Montefiore.

3. Russia Under the Old Regime — Richard Pipes

4. The Soviet Experiment — Ronald Grigor Suny

5. Secondhand Time — Svetlana Alexievich

Chinese History

These works are repeatedly recommended by China specialists and historians.

1. The Search for Modern China — Jonathan Spence

2. China: A History — John Keay

3. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China — Patricia Buckley Ebrey

4. Wild Swans — Jung Chang

5. The Early Chinese Empires (Qin and Han) — Mark Edward Lewis

Indian History

Drawn from expert‑curated South Asian history lists.

1. India: A History — John Keay

2. The Discovery of India — Jawaharlal Nehru

3. From the Ruins of Empire — Pankaj Mishra

4. The Argumentative Indian — Amartya Sen.

5. India After Gandhi — Ramachandra Guha

American History

Indigenous, Contact, and Colonial America

1. 1491 — Charles C. Mann
2. American Colonies — Alan Taylor
3. Facing East from Indian Country — Daniel K. Richter
4. Changes in the Land — William Cronon
5. The Middle Ground — Richard White
6. The Name of War — Jill Lepore
7. The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia — Edmund S. Morgan
8. The Puritan Dilemma — Edmund S. Morgan
9. The Scratch of a Pen — Colin G. Calloway
10. The Many-Headed Hydra — Linebaugh & Rediker

Revolution and the Early Republic

11. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution — Bernard Bailyn
12. The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood
13. The Glorious Cause — Robert Middlekauff
14. Revolutionary Mothers — Carol Berkin
15. Founding Brothers — Joseph Ellis
16. The Hemingses of Monticello — Annette Gordon-Reed
17. Alexander Hamilton — Ron Chernow
18. Empire of Liberty — Gordon S. Wood
19. The Whiskey Rebellion — William Hogeland
20. The Jeffersonian Transformation — Henry Adams

Expansion, Capitalism, and Jacksonian America

21. What Hath God Wrought — Daniel Walker Howe
22. The Market Revolution — Charles Sellers
23. Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville
24. The Rise of American Democracy — Sean Wilentz
25. The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears — Perdue & Green
26. The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears — Susan Sleeper-Smith
27. The Early Republic — Joyce Appleby
28. The Birth of the Republic — Edmund S. Morgan
29. The Rise of American Capitalism — Sven Beckert
30. The Cotton Kingdom — Frederick Law Olmsted

Slavery, Abolition, and Sectional Crisis

31. American Slavery, American Freedom — Edmund S. Morgan
32. The Half Has Never Been Told — Edward Baptist
33. Soul by Soul — Walter Johnson
34. The Slave Ship — Marcus Rediker
35. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass
36. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom — Catherine Clinton
37. The Impending Crisis — David Potter
38. The Political Crisis of the 1850s — Michael Holt
39. The Dred Scott Case — Don Fehrenbacher
40. The Amistad Rebellion — Marcus Rediker

The Civil War

41. Battle Cry of Freedom — James McPherson
42. This Republic of Suffering — Drew Gilpin Faust
43. For Cause and Comrades — James McPherson
44. A People’s Contest — Phillip Paludan
45. Lincoln — David Herbert Donald
46. The Fiery Trial — Eric Foner
47. Grant — Ron Chernow
48. Confederate Reckoning — Stephanie McCurry
49. Race and Reunion — David Blight
50. The Destructive War — Charles Royster

Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and Industrial America

51. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution — Eric Foner
52. A Nation Under Our Feet — Steven Hahn
53. The Republic for Which It Stands — Richard White
54. The Gilded Age — Charles & Mary Beard
55. The Incorporation of America — Alan Trachtenberg
56. The Robber Barons — Matthew Josephson
57. The Great Railroad Revolution — Christian Wolmar
58. The Haymarket Tragedy — Paul Avrich
59. The Rise of Industrial America — Page Smith
60. The Warmth of Other Suns — Isabel Wilkerson

Progressive Era, WWI, and Interwar America

61. The Age of Reform — Richard Hofstadter
62. The Bully Pulpit — Doris Kearns Goodwin
63. Over Here — David M. Kennedy
64. The Great Influenza — John M. Barry
65. The Metaphysical Club — Louis Menand
66. The Great Depression — Robert McElvaine
67. Only Yesterday — Frederick Lewis Allen
68. The Harlem Renaissance Reader — various scholars
69. The Rise and Fall of Prohibition — Daniel Okrent
70. The Worst Hard Time — Timothy Egan

WWII, Cold War, and Postwar America

71. Freedom From Fear — David M. Kennedy
72. The Best and the Brightest — David Halberstam
73. The Cold War — John Lewis Gaddis
74. The Age of Reagan — Sean Wilentz
75. Restless Giant — James Patterson
76. The Fifties — David Halberstam
77. The Origins of the Urban Crisis — Thomas Sugrue
78. The Power Broker — Robert Caro
79. The Feminine Mystique — Betty Friedan
80. Silent Spring — Rachel Carson

Civil Rights, Social Movements, and Contemporary America

81. Parting the Waters — Taylor Branch
82. The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander
83. Coming of Age in Mississippi — Anne Moody
84. The Fire Next Time — James Baldwin
85. The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X & Alex Haley
86. The Age of Fracture — Daniel Rodgers
87. The Unwinding — George Packer
88. The Making of the Atomic Bomb — Richard Rhodes
89. The Death and Life of Great American Cities — Jane Jacobs
90. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement — Aldon Morris

Intellectual, Cultural, and Thematic Studies

91. A Queer History of the United States — Michael Bronski
92. Guns, Germs, and Steel — Jared Diamond
93. A History of the American People — Paul Johnson
94. Don’t Know Much About History — Kenneth Davis
95. The Devil in the White City — Erik Larson
96. The Great Migration Reader — various scholars
97. The Metropolis and Mental Life — Georg Simmel
98. The Warmth of Other Suns — Isabel Wilkerson
99. The Big Sort — Bill Bishop
100. The Shock Doctrine — Naomi Klein