Books about the past: family histories, local and regional history, business history, war and the stories of particular communities, often written by people with a personal tie to the events.
These are smaller, more personal histories than you usually see on a bestseller list, which is exactly what makes some of them worth reading.
This shelf holds 24 books. Publication years run from 2019 to 2026. 4 of them have an audiobook edition. The most-rated on Amazon are I Kept Walking, Before It’s Too Late, 1964, The Greatest Year in the History of Japan. The list below is sorted by how many ratings each book has on Amazon, so the most-read titles come first.
The Unlikely Journey of a Persian Woman with Polio
Parivash Minou Michlin · Audiobook
A spirited little girl is diagnosed with polio, which in 1940s Iran all but condemns her to a life in the shadows. In a conservative Jewish society where girls are raised to find a suitable husband, Minou--despite her good looks and education--is viewed as…
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Eric Rozenberg · 2022
Imagine having to leave the only home you’ve ever known because of rising prejudice against your ethnicity. Eric Rozenberg grew up in Belgium, surrounded by rising anti-Semitism. In 2013, fearing for the safety of their children, he and his wife, Elsa, chose…
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Roy Tomizawa · 2019
Japan was a physical and psychological wasteland at the end of World War II. With over 3 million dead, 39 percent of city populations homeless, 40 percent of all urban areas flattened, 80 percent of all ships destroyed, and 33 percent of all industrial…
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Dan Henry
Imagine: you’re blindsided on a dark highway by a half-mile-wide tornado. Or worse: you’re aboard a commercial jetliner brought to the ground by a powerful thunderstorm, the deadliest plane crash in Texas history. In Menacing Skies: Texas Weather and Stories…
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Harvy Berman · 2019
The Berman family is among the handful of Jews who, through courage, friendship, and luck, survived the systematic, brutal Nazi extermination of the shtetl in Kaluszyn, Poland during World War II. This is their harrowing story, told in the original words of…
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Jason Cochran
Here Lies America is a fast-paced, hilarious travel narrative in which Jason Cochran visits the major American tourism attractions that exist because something really horrible happened there. He romps through disaster zones, battlefields, terrorist attack…
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A Personal Guide to the History and Future of Competitive Gaming
Baro Hyun · 2020
While multimillion-dollar prizes are common in esports today, did you know that esports began humbly in a small Asian country without a significant gaming industry at the time? And would you believe that after two decades of embracing esports, Koreans enjoy…
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Paul Parker · 2025
Being raised by a dying grandmother, Paul Parker lived in the shadow of impending death for years. At 10 years old, he was selected by his school officials to write a letter to the Mayor of Atlanta expressing condolences for the serial killer deaths of…
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Our Two Wild and World-Changing Weeks behind the Iron Curtain
Kelly Kimball · 2023 · Audiobook
Kelly Kimball, Trish Whitcomb, Andrew Frank, and Barry Fadem met as political consultants, each passionate about the power and potential of democracy throughout the world. A trip to Eastern Europe in 1990 was supposed to be a chance to experience the culture…
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Stephen Watts · 2022
What started as a project to archive a family’s genealogy files became an insightful window into the life of Charles Watts, one of the millions of Dickens-era working-class English emigrants who risked everything for the possibility of better opportunities in…
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Ed Mitzen · 2023
America operates on an unspoken caste system. If you’re not convinced of that fact, just watch the news on any given day. There’s no question about it, white people have a clear advantage. Ed Mitzen knows, as a successful white man, he benefited enormously…
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From Stasis to Stars
Arjun Khemani · 2025
Welcome to the Anthropocene. Most of human history has been unremarkable and static. But Western civilization is different, sustaining rapid progress for generations. And we’re just getting started. Lords of the Cosmos views the story of humanity through the…
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Kevin Osterman · Audiobook
Kevin Osterman takes us through a fascinating journey from delinquency, his time as a Marine scout in Vietnam to learning leadership and ultimately becoming a peacemaker. Becoming Kevin - From Warrior to Peacemaker is a chronology that highlights specific…
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What We Know Now
Asle Toje · 2019
Almost a decade after Steven Pinker published his seminal book The Better Angels of Our Nature and popularised interest in the idea that humanity is becoming more peaceful, the debate is as heated as ever. Attempting to summarise current conclusions on what…
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The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market
Meb Faber · 2026
"Never bet against America." - Warren Buffett Nobel Prize recipients. Venture capital investments. R&D and energy production. From humble beginnings, the United States has become the world leader in nearly every economic endeavor. Understanding the history…
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An Intimate Portrait
Michael Hittman · 2026
This comprehensive history of the Brooklyn Paramount, erected in 1928 and the world's first motion picture theatre built expressly for the talkies, debunks the myths of this celebrated landmark. Closed since 1962 and recently restored by LiveNation, this…
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And the True Story of 9/11
Zagloul Kadah · 2026
No rational mind would argue that the 9/11 attacks were a simple operation. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed al-Qaeda had high-tech cave complexes sophisticated enough to pull off such an attack. However, no such high-tech equipment was ever…
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How Inequality Built Civilization, Until We Made Climbing Illegal
Anthony Cornyn · 2026
Inequality made civilization possible. Modern debate treats the gap between rich and poor as a problem to eliminate. We assume that more equality means a better society. History suggests something more complex. From the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the…
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A Stolen Child’s Search for Her Irish Mother
Megan & Marie McKercher · 2022
Out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a mortal sin in 1950s Ireland, where unwed pregnant girls were confined to notorious mother-baby homes. There, nuns forced the girls to work fourteen-hour days and denied them medication to ease the pain of childbirth. When the…
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Nick Donofrio · 2022
Guiseppe D’Onofrio emigrated to America in 1904, becoming a hatmaker in Beacon, New York’s Italian ghetto. His third son, Nicholas Joseph Donofrio, served as an aircraft mechanic in World War II, returning home to become a guard at a hospital for the…
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Jarik Conrad · 2022
Humans can be incredibly kind, but our evolutionary wiring can also lead to astonishing cruelty. With In Search of Humanity, Dr. Conrad exposes a sordid history of mind-numbing social and economic inequality, of government promises made but not kept, and of…
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Michael Franzese · 2022
It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity., Niccolò Machiavelli, The PrinceGreed. Lies. Corruption. These are the foundational elements of the American Mafia story. Here…
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Baz Edmeades · 2021
Ecological competition began as slow arms races. Predators evolved to hunt. Prey evolved to defend themselves. Each improvement was small, barely shifting the odds of survival. Nature remained in equilibrium. Until the dawn of humanity. When our ancestors…
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Saifedean Ammous · 2021 · Audiobook
In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist Saifedean Ammous applies his unique analytical lens to the fiat monetary system, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology just as he did for bitcoin in his global bestseller The Bitcoin Standard. …
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