Approachably sized history books

[ThornGhost]

Whenever I decide to read a history book I always end up buying some massive tome that is so intimidating in scope and physically unwieldy that I never finish it. I do most of my reading in bed so a 20 pound reference book isn't a great option there.

I prefer physical media for this sort of thing so I'd really like to find some books that are more narrow in scope and shorter so they seem more approachable for bedtime reading. I'm not necessarily looking for "pop" history or something targeted at a younger reading level, just good scholarship that's focused on a specific topic and maybe sits somewhere between the 200-400 page range in length. I'm not too picky about the subject either.

Any suggestions?

 

[Falselogic]

I have several that I can think of, just need to refer to some notes. Do you have any particular times/eras/subjects that you are more interested in?

 

[Violentvixen]

Devil in the White City (slightly over at 447 pages), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Library Book are the first three that pop into my head, all fantastic. I'll look through my Goodreads later and see what else I can recommend, I read a lot of stuff that could work for this.

 

[Daikaiju]

I like The Intellectual Devotional. You just read one page a day per subject, history, literature, philosophy, mathematics and science, religion, fine arts, and music. If you want to stick to history, they have a couple dedicated to American History and Biographies.

 

[ThornGhost]

Do you have any particular times/eras/subjects that you are more interested in?

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

I suppose if I have to pick subjects, I'm chiefly interested in pre-history, classical and religious history. I've also got a budding interest in ancient Chinese history. Any subject that catches my imagination is fine, though. A while back I read Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History" about Joseph Smith and really enjoyed it.

 

[Violentvixen]

Other ones that would work for this:

The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin
The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family by Bettye Kearse (this was the TT book club book a while ago, can't remember if you were in that club or not sorry)
Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1545-1879 (this is <200 pages but pretty interesting)
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History by Jo-Ann Shelton (I remember really liking this in high school but didn't have my own copy. The page count is higher than you noted but I remember a lot of pictures/figures)
Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli by Ted Merwin
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, I didn't like it but a ton of people seem to.

Also going through this I was surprised to notice just how much historical non-fiction by local authors I've read and enjoyed in the last couple years. Could be worth going to your library and seeing if they have books about local history?

 

[ThornGhost]

Oh yeah, I read Sapiens a couple of years ago and it was...fine? Felt like it trended a bit more toward that "pop" history than I'd prefer but I still enjoyed thinking about Denisovans for a while.

Good thought on local history.

 

[Falselogic]

You can't go wrong with any book by Tom Holland. Some that fit into your interests are:
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

Mike Duncan's The Storm Before the Storm is a good primer on the beginning of the fall of Republican Rome. He also has a fantastic biography of the Marquis de Lafayette called Hero of Two Worlds.