History Books

Here are two lists of books that might be categorized as History. The first is a short list of books that I have read in the last few years. The second is a much longer list of books that I have bought, but have not yet read.

Title	Author	Date	Read
Marie Antoinette: The Journey	Antonia Fraser	2001	Yes
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present	Jacques Barzun	2000	Yes
A Terrible Beauty	Peter Watson	2000	Yes
Guns, Germs, and Steel	Jared Diamond	1999	Yes
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution	Simon Schama	1989	Yes

Title	Author	Date	Read
A Thousand Barrels a Second	Peter Tertzakian	2007
Last Harvest	Witold Rybczynski	2007
A Hard Road to Travel	Murphy/Udell/Stevenson/Peterson	2007
The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 BC to the Present	Harry G. Gelber	2007
An Inconvenient Truth	Al Gore	2006
Ideas: A History From Fire to Freud	Peter Watson	2005
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive	Jared Diamond	2005
Mao: The Unknown Story	Jung Chang	2005
Persian Fire	Tom Holland	2005
The State of Africa	Martin Meredith	2005
Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts	Rodger D. Touchie	2005
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World	Jack Weatherford	2004
A Short History of Progress	Ronald Wright	2004	02.27
Dark Age Ahead	Jane Jacobs	2004
Alexander the Great	Paul Cartledge	2004
The World from Islam	George Negus	2004
Empires of the Plain	Lesley Adkins	2003
Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490 - 1700	Diarmaid MacCulloch	2003
Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West	D'Arcy Jenish	2003
Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook	Nicholas Thomas	2003
The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions	Micah Sifry	2003
The Peloponnesian War	Donald Kagan	2003
Black Kettle and Full Moon	Geoffrey Blainey	2003
The Spartans	Paul Cartledge	2002
Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx, and Mujahid	Ralph H. Magnus	2002
The Eternal Frontier	Tim Flannery	2001
Cicero	Anthony Everitt	2001
Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America	Barbara Huck	2000
Indian Fall	D'Arcy Jenish	1999	06.03
The Boxer Rebellion	Diana Preston	1999
The Voyage of the Matthew	Peter Firstbrook	1997
Afghanistan	Louis Dupree	1997
Prophecy of the Swan: The Upper Peace River Fur Trade of 1794 - 1823	David V. Burley	1996
In Palliser's Triangle	Barry Potyondi	1995
Facing the Future	Richard Worzel	1994
The French and Indian War 1754 - 1763	Seymour I. Schwartz	1994
Columbia Journals by David Thompson	Barbara Belyea (Ed.)	1994
Empires of Time	Anthony Aveni	1989
The Campaigns of Alexander	Arrian	1971
The Death and Life of Great American Cities	Jane Jacobs	1961
Selected Lives	Plutarch	75?

It is humbling to realize how many books I have purchased that I have yet to read. The titles in pale yellow refer to books on Canadian history. I have 36 in the above list. Not one of these books would be classified as a text book. The titles in bright yellow refer to books that I would like to read in 2008.

I have read another book by Peter Watson called "A Terrible Beauty" that provided a history of the last 100 years. His latest book, Ideas, covers the entire history of mankind. I think it would be the best single book to read from the above list. However I would like to begin with a smaller book that provides a sense of the future: Jane Jacob's "Dark Age Ahead". I began reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" a couple of years ago. It is time I finished that book. It is also time that I finished reading "Afghanistan" by Louis Dupree. Finally, Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth", deserves to be read. My list for this year is five books, all highlighted in bright yellow, from the above list.

The above two lists were created on January 2, 2008.

Here is a list of History books that I have purchased this year.

Title	Author	Date	Read
Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life	Lyndall Gordon
Daughter of the Desert	Georgina Howell
School on Wheels (used)	Karl Schuessler
Rails Across Canada (used)	Via Rail Canada
Two Divisions to Bluewater (used)	Peter Bowers

Here is a list of History books that I have read this year.

Title	Author	Date	Read
A Short History of Progress	Ronald Wright	2004	Feb 27/08
Indian Fall	D'Arcy Jenish	1999	Jun 03/08
Ahtahkakoop	Deanna Christensen	2000	Jun 28/08
The Curve of Time	M. Wylie Blanchet	1969	Dec 28/08

As of the end of June I have read 3 History books, none of which were among those I identified at the beginning of the year as "wanting to read this year". Two of the books I read are about western Canadian history during the period 1850 - 1900.