TOP 10 HISTORY BOOKS
History repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
History does not repeat but sometimes it rhymes.
History is just one damned thing after another.
Ah yes, history – and three of my favorite quotes about it.
The first is paraphrasing an actual quote by Karl Marx – often overlooked by people, even Marxists, as someone who could be quite the capable prose stylist when not bogged down in denser prose or theory.
The second is often attributed to Mark Twain – someone who is widely acknowledged as a capable prose stylist, except that he doesn’t seem to have actually said it.
The third quip is often quoted from historian Toynbee – correctly but somewhat misleadingly because firstly, it was adapted from a preceding popular saying about life, and secondly, he was using it to criticize historians who simply sought to chronicle history rather than analyze it. Toynbee definitely fell in the latter category – a historian whose central theme was identifying, well, the themes of history, its cycles and patterns, its plot and rhythm (or history rhyming if you will).
History has been a subject that has fascinated me since childhood, when I read it avidly – and still does as I read it now, hence my Top 10 History Books.
“History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effect. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of the present.”
I’m not here to seek to resolve any of these debates, if such a thing is even possible – I’m just here to read books on history and, you know, live in it. To adapt my own quote of living in a mythic world, I live in a historic world. We all do.
That said, what I will do is clarify my tastes in history books. I definitely lean more towards Toynbee’s concept of history as themes or patterns, preferring history books that are more analysis than chronicle.
I also tend to have a preference for military history – put bluntly, the history of wars and empires. Two of my top ten books are general histories of war and warfare – and I’d argue for my top spot as a third such entry, not so much military history of itself but a historical treatise of military strategy as a lens with which to view history in general and military history in particular.
To which I might add a fourth entry – which is also literally the fourth entry in my top ten – as my favorite military history of the Second World War, which I often dub my bible of that war. So that’s four of my top ten books as military history in one way or another.
Following on from the history of wars and empires, it might be cliched but foremost among my subjects of preference is the Roman Empire and indeed six of my top ten books have that as their subject – with five of those looking at the proverbial decline and fall of the empire, being my particular focus within that subject of preference. So that’s six of my top ten books as histories of the Roman Empire, with five of them being histories of its decline and fall in one way or another.
I also can’t invoke capable prose style in my introduction without noting my preference for a good or even literary prose style in my books of history – some historians or historical writers are definitely better than others.
So here are my top ten books of history. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves. Tenth place is my wildcard entry for the best entry from the previous year (2025).
Cover of the 2025 hardcover edition – the edition I own
(10) BARRY STRAUSS –
JEWS VS ROME: TWO CENTURIES OF REBELLION AGAINST THE WORLD’S MIGHTIEST EMPIRE (2025)
No surprise here for my wildcard tenth place entry for best of 2025 – this book has a fascinating subject written in an engaging style.
The Roman Empire has been argued to be the greatest empire in history, not least by me in my Top 10 Empires – a superpower that was almost unchallenged for the two centuries or so of its peak extent. Almost unchallenged, that is, as it faced revolts even at its peak and none more so than those of its Jewish subjects, with not just one but three revolts between 66 AD to 136 AD – two in the province of Judea itself and the third among the wider Jewish Diaspora outside the empire.
“No other people in the empire – and there were many other rebel nations – had such a record”.
The Great Revolt or Jewish War from 66 AD to 74 AD was the big one – at least in the historical record it left behind, primarily by the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, a combatant on the Jewish side before swapping sides to the Romans, although also casting a shadow as far as the Gospels with their foreshadowing of Jerusalem’s doom.
After that came the Diaspora Revolt – or more precisely, Diaspora Revolts – from 116 AD to 117 AD, and then the other big one, the one in which Roman emperor Hadrian literally wiped the province of Judea off the map, the Bar Kokhba Revolt from 132 AD to 136 AD.
This book was an eye-opener, revealing the Jewish revolts to be more than the minor road bumps for the Roman Empire I had perceived them to be, albeit major for the Jews. The Romans took the revolts seriously indeed, terminating them with extreme prejudice – not only for the challenge the revolts themselves posed, but even more so for the bigger challenge that loomed behind them, the Parthian Empire, “the sole empire remaining in Rome’s orbit that could challenge its power”.
“The rebels of 66 CE humiliated the Roman legions. They first threatened, then succeeded in contributing to a Roman defeat at the hands of the only rival empire that Rome still feared. They cost the legions a huge expenditure in blood and treasure before finally the rebellions were put down”.
As this book points out, Rome committed an incredibly large proportion of its imperial armed forces to putting down revolts in a small province.
Here the book had further revelations – the Jewish revolts always seemed hopelessly doomed and self-destructive but this book illustrated the strategic and tactical calculations of the rebels that lent the revolts better prospects that one might have thought, albeit even if only from completely hopeless to mostly hopeless.
Only to shift back to completely hopeless again, from failure to play to their strengths and better prospects of guerilla warfare, but even more so from the fundamental disunity of the revolts, as the war against Rome was also a Jewish civil war.
In the end, the Jewish revolts amounted to something akin to a ghost dance – indeed, what I have dubbed half the Bible elsewhere, the great messianic ghost dance – but which contributed to the rise of a ghost dance that actually won, Christianity.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER) – BEST OF 2025
Cover of 2020 ediition – the edition I own
(9) WALTER SCHEIDEL –
ESCAPE FROM ROME: THE FAILURE OF EMPIRE & THE ROAD TO PROSPERITY (2019)
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the fall of Rome.
Playing on Monty Python’s Life of Brian, what has the Roman empire ever done for us? This book gives its answer – fall and go away.
Or perhaps more precisely, fall and never come back – not just the Roman empire but any empire with the same extent of predominance in Europe.
Although at least that did impress me with the unique achievement of the Romans – that no one else, before or since, have ever been able to replicate their empire in Europe (or the Mediterranean). Even for the Romans it arose from applying their distinctive strengths at a unique, and limited, window of opportunity in time and place.
And that’s a good thing. In short, the thesis of this book is that the fall of Rome led to the Great Divergence – that divergence of “political, economic, scientific, and technological breakthroughs that allowed Europe to surge ahead while other parts of the world lagged behind”. Essentially, that’s because of “competitive fragmentation”, both within states and perhaps more fundamentally between them, with “the enduring failure of empire-building” and no single state ever able to rise Rome’s imperial predominance in Europe. The main contrast is with China as polar opposite, with its consistent unitary imperial states, with the other Eurasian civilizations between them geographically also falling between them on this political scale.
Half of my top ten are entries for books about the fall of Rome but this one made me feel good about it!
However, unlike the other entries for the fall of Rome in my top ten, this book intentionally skirts any analysis of the fall itself. Its analysis is much broader – of the factors for the rise of Rome and why no state was able to replicate it, the factors for “competitive fragmentation” arising from the fall of Rome and contrast with China or the rest of Eurasia, and how that competitive fragmentation gave rise to the Great Divergence.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
2018 hardcover edition – the edition I own
(8) KYLE HARPER –
THE FATE OF ROME: CLIMATE, DISEASE & THE END OF AN EMPIRE (2017)
“We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win!”
Or maybe not in the case of the Roman Empire, although it gave a good red-hot go of it with one of humanity’s best pre-modern winning streaks, for a couple of centuries at least.
Although as this book points out, while the Roman Empire’s winning streak was impressive, it is less impressive than it might have otherwise seem given that it coincided perfectly with the optimal environmental circumstances for it – the warm climate period literally named for it as the Roman Warm Period and the absence of high mortality pandemics that were the most lethal invasions of the Roman Empire by far.
While I’m quoting poetry – aptly enough William Carlos Williams’ The Ivy Crown, although it would be more apt as The Laurel Wreath – I’m fond of quoting Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, as that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.
And rarely have I felt that roar to be so melancholy or overwhelming as in this book, as indeed the fate of the empire. The usual discourse or debate over the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is as to which of those two predominate – that is, internal decline or external fall.
This book falls (heh) on the fall side of the decline vs fall argument but so distinctively as to open up an entirely new third front, a fall to adversaries entirely different and far more destructive than its human ones – the adversaries of natural environment, climate, and pandemic.
“How devastating viruses, pandemics, and other natural catastrophes swept through the far-flung Roman Empire and helped to bring down one of the mightiest civilizations of the ancient world…how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria…from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unravelling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.”
On the role of pandemics, the book is essentially a tale of three plagues, each of which recurred or reverberated for extraordinary lengths of time – the Antonine Plague (hypothesized as smallpox) and which strained the empire’s resilience to breaking point on the eve of the Crisis of the Third Century, the Cyprian Plague (something akin to Ebola) and which fuelled the Crisis, and the Justinian Plague (bubonic plague) which ended the Roman superpower of antiquity (albeit the Eastern Roman Empire endured as a “Byzantine rump state”)..
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover 2007 paperback edition published by Oxford University Press – the edition I own
(7) PETER HEATHER –
THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: A NEW HISTORY OF ROME & THE BARBARIANS (2005)
Once again it’s the titular fall of the Roman Empire, that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.
As I said in the previous entry, the usual discourse or debate over the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is as to which of those two predominate – that is, whether it was more a matter of internal decline or external fall. Proponents of the latter have been dubbed the Movers – tracing “the collapse of the Western Roman Empire to external migration” – to be contrasted with the former as the Shakers, tracing “the collapse to internal developments within the empire”.
Heather falls squarely in the camp of the Movers.
“Heather contends that it was the movements of “barbarians” in the Migration Period which led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. He accepts the traditional view that it was the arrival of the Huns on the Pontic steppe in the late 4th century which set these migrations in motion. Heather’s approach differs from many of his predecessors in the late 20th century, who have tended to downplay the importance migration played in the fall of the Western Roman Empire…According to Heather, the idea that the invading barbarians were peacefully absorbed into Roman civilisation “smells more of wishful thinking than likely reality”.
In a nutshell, Heather’s thesis is that the barbarians did it. Well, perhaps not quite the barbarians the Romans knew them, as his thesis is that the barbarians had changed to match Rome in military capacity.
“Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long… Europe’s barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart…the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome’s European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees… the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.”
With this nutshell comes eye-opening nuggets. There’re those new barbarian coalitions with their capacity to mobilize critical masses of military force that were able to match those of the Romans – and which in a perfect storm of a combination of critical masses outmatched and overwhelmed the empire. It’s always intrigued me how the barbarians, with such tiny populations in proportion to the empire, were seemingly able to punch so far above their weight.
I also gained a new appreciation of the resilience of the western Roman empire, particularly in the ability of the strongmen who actually ruled it in the fourth and fifth centuries to repeatedly stabilize the chaos that invariably ensued from the collapse of the previous strongmen – although it was something of a ratcheting down effect, as each successive stabilization lost that little bit more.
Heather also persuaded me that the eastern empire was not entirely supine sleeping through the fall of the western empire, as it did lend military aid at more points than I had sneered at it for, but I stand by it was not much more – and with poor effect, luck or timing – such that it mostly slept through the fall of the west, particularly under the emperor Theodosius II.
That’s right – the Theodosian dynasty, the dynasty I love to hate, the dynasty in which the only good members (Constantius III and Marcian) married into it.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover – 2010 Yale University Press edition
(6) ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY –
HOW ROME FELL: DEATH OF A SUPERPOWER (2009)
I’ve used the American title for the book because I prefer it as more catchy – and it also prompts to mind one of my personal highlights of the book in its introduction, dismissing the cliché of comparing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the modern United States (a cliché with which Goldsworthy entertainingly relates that he is routinely accosted at dinner parties when he informs someone of his historical speciality).
As to the question in the book’s title, in a nutshell Goldsworthy answers that the Romans did it to themselves. It’s a little like the twist in Fight Club, with the Romans revealed as the protagonist beating himself up, to the bemusement of the barbarian onlookers – and their delight when picking up the pieces.
I think it’s a solid answer. Goldsworthy does not dismiss the various barbarian invasions as the reason for the empire’s demise but that looks to the question of how they did so, given that the empire’s adversaries were not fundamentally different from when the empire successfully resisted them – and in the case of the various German tribes, so surprisingly small compared to the empire.
As Goldsworthy memorably observes, no matter who won their seemingly endless civil wars or wars of imperial succession, the losses were all Roman, weakening the empire as a whole against its external adversaries. Another memorable observation is how the Romans never really left the crisis of the third century, just muted it to fewer civil wars and usurpations.
Also, the Romans ultimately played a losing game enlisting German tribes as allies or foederati in its own territory – in that the territory occupied by the Germans was no longer Roman territory, with the Romans losing any revenue from those territories, or any manpower beyond that provided by the Germans. Thanks a lot, Theodosius – you empire killer.
As for the history itself, Goldsworthy takes the same starting point as that of Gibbon’s famous History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – itself following on from Roman historian Cassius Dio who marked it as their descent from “a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron” – the death of Marcus Aurelius and accession of Commodus in 180 AD.
However, he pulls up stumps well before Gibbon’s finishing point, wrapping up the book aptly enough with the reign of Heraclius and the empire’s territory lost to the Arabs.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(5) JOHN KEEGAN –
A HISTORY OF WARFARE (1993)
The magnum opus of one of the foremost military historians of our time – a global history of war from prehistory to nuclear weapons. (Although one might also argue his magnum opus was his trilogy of The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, and The Price of Admiralty).
After an introductory section “War in Human History”, Keegan organizes his history in broad thematic sections invoking the four classical elements but as the four elements of war, albeit also more or less in chronological sequence – “Stone”, “Flesh”, “Iron” and “Fire”.
Between each section is an “interlude”, not so much in chronological sequence but with a focus on recurring aspects – or problems – throughout the history of warfare, respectively limitations on warmaking, fortification, armies, and logistics and supply. For example, the interlude on ärmies dealt with the basic problem of – and limited number of means for – actually raising armies.
The titles of those elemental sections speak for themselves – with fire obviously corresponding to the defining characteristic of modern warfare increasingly relying on forms of combustion or energy, from gunpower through the internal combustion engine to nuclear weapons.
A personal highlight was the book’s examination of the conquests of the various “horse peoples”, the high point of which were the Mongols, always a subject of fascination for me. Something that has always resonated in my mind ever since is Keegan’s opinion that much of the mobile tactical skill of the horse peoples originated in the same techniques they used on their herds except on their adversaries instead.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Raising the flag over the Reichstag – one of the most iconic images of WW2 (as photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei and in public domain), used for the cover of the first edition of the book and the edition I own (and also for its own article on Wikipedia “Raising a flag over the Reichstag”)
(4) HP WILLMOTT –
THE GREAT CRUSADE: A NEW COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1989)
My bible of the Second World War – the best single “volume history of the Second World War in its coverage of all the major themes and all the fronts”.
And for that matter, one of my favorite volumes of history for any subject – one firmly embedded in my psyche and to which I repeatedly return, particularly on the subject of WW2, with insights or nuggets on almost every page.
For example, comparing the Pacific War to the American Civil War, with the former having uncanny parallels to the latter, even down to the two main American (or Union) offensive directions of each, with Imperial Japan similarly doomed to defeat as the Confederacy and for much the same reasons.
Or the transposition between Germany and the Soviet Union in military proficiency, such that by 1944-1945 the latter arguably equalled or surpassed the former at its peak, while Germany matched many of the same failings for the Soviets back in 1941.
Indeed, most of my own views of the Second World War originate in this book. Much of that is due to the style of Willmott, a strangely neglected or overlooked military historian – to quote excerpts from an Amazon review:
“Interesting, insightful, revelatory…Willmott is Willmott: never less than lucid and coherent, even when his work descends into the “mere chronicle” of army, corps and divisional movements that more properly belong to purely military history…magisterial is no more than an appropriate term with which to describe Willmott’s informative – indeed, transformative – and succinctly and clearly expressed synthesis of the knowledge on such a wide subject.”
Above all, my view of the Second World War originates in Willmott’s main theme or thesis of the book, which he was nice enough to state at the outset – debunking the myth of German military excellence. Indeed, he cheekily adapts Oscar Wilde’s famous quote from The Importance of Being Earnest – to lose one world war may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness
This might seem paradoxical given the extent of Germany’s initial victories – and the Allied effort required to reverse those victories and defeat Germany – but almost as paradoxically, Willmott argues this just illustrates his theme, that Germany could succeed to that extent but still lose.
However, the paradox is resolved by Willmott’s argument, which he repeatedly demonstrates throughout the book, that “the German military genius was in fighting not in war, and along with her Japanese ally Germany was the only great power that did not understand the nature of war.”
One might add that this is the converse of the art of war, at least according to Sun Tzu – and of the Allies in general and the United States in particular. As Willmott observes, in terms of actually waging war, Germany was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies, matched only by the similar hopelessness of their ally Japan.
Willmott has yet another striking insight in his speculation about the reason for this – that the very success of Bismarck, the one German leader who had understood war, that is the limits of military and national power, “blinded successive generations of Germans to these realities because they saw only his military victories”.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Oxford University Press, 1st edition (paperback) cover 2008, the edition I own
(3) AZAR GAT –
WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION (2006)
“War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?”
Azar Gat’s history of war in human civilization is nothing short of magisterial – and at least halfway answers that famous song lyric, telling us what war is for.
That is the fundamental question which this book examines – “Why do people go to war?”.
Is it part of human nature or a “late cultural invention” of “civilization”, linked to agriculture, the state or something else? In short, who was right – Hobbes or Rousseau?
Has war declined in modernity? If so, why?
“In this truly global study of war and civilization, Azar Gat sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the ‘riddle of war’ throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century”.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 2 – titled Agriculture, Civilization, and War – is perhaps the most straightforward of the three, although the overarching question of why people go to war is still present throughout, along with the associated question of how they do. Although he gave the game away in Part 1, Gat definitely leans into Hobbes here, with the emergence of strong central states – Hobbes’ Leviathan – being a key reason for less violent societies. Yes – even when those states make a wasteland and call it peace, as with the Roman Empire and their Pax Romana. He indicates as much with the title of his conclusion for this part – War, the Leviathan, and the Pleasures and Miseries of Civilization.
However, Parts 1 and 3 were the most fascinating for me. Part 1 and its sweeping title Warfare in the First Two Million Years indicate that its gamut is the whole of human prehistory – and indeed earlier to hominid or primate prehistory. One myth that Gat dispels in Part 1 is that humans are uniquely prolific for intra-species violence. As Gat demonstrates, they are not – and indeed other animal species match or exceed humans for violence within their own species. Where humans differ is with respect to the targets of their violence. Whereas animals avoid more costly violence against evenly matched males and instead target young or females of their own species (as with the infamous example of male lions killing cubs when they take over a pride), humans are the opposite – targeting other males, often with the express motive of taking women and children as prizes. But you might ask – aren’t human males similarly evenly matched as their animal counterparts? Yes, indeed – which is why humans make it less evenly matched by the preferred strategies of the ambush or raid catching antagonists by surprise, ideally asleep, something which is easier to do for humans than for animals.
Which brings us to the other myth Gat dispels in this part – Rousseau’s “noble savage” or rather the myth of a peaceful ‘savage’, where the true escalation of violence in war arising with ‘civilization’, whether agriculture, the state, or something else. Indeed, Gat demonstrates that humans in their “state of nature” or indeed in societies not predominated by powerful central states experience much more violence, usually by substantial orders of magnitude.
As for Part 3 – Modernity: The Dual Face of Janus – Gat demonstrates that modernity has resulted in, well, more peace and less violence or war, even if that does not seem to be the case because of the destructive power of our technology. More intriguingly, Gat dispels (or at least introduces cause for caution with respect to) any monomythic explanations for this – such as “democratic peace theory” or fear of nuclear weapons.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Featured as a meme “the saddest book cover series in history” – the book design of hardcover or leatherbound versions originating from the 1946 edition design by Paul McPharlin with the etchings of Giovanni Piranesi (which included an additional seventh volume of Gibbon’s notes)
(2) EDWARD GIBBON –
THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Once more but this time it’s the classic titular decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Indeed, the title alone is so classic, “many writers have used variations” of it since.
And then you have the subject itself, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.
Even now, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire informs much modern discourse about state failure – from Edward Gibbon onwards, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears”..
Much of that discourse is whether it was decline or fall. For the former, the Romans were consistently their own worst enemies, not just in their relentless civil wars but also in aspects of internal decline that were observed even as early as the second century – at its peak! – by contemporaries such as the historian Cassius Dio, who lamented the decline “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”.
In a nutshell, famously and controversially, Gibbon’s thesis was that Christianity did it – although much of that fame and controversy seems inflated from what Gibbon actually wrote.
But Stark After Dark I hear you say, why do you rank Gibbon so highly, in second place above all your other ranked books of Roman history and in god-tier to boot, when it is so widely considered outdated?
And my answer is that it may be outdated as history but “it remains a foundational, highly readable literary masterpiece”.
Firstly, let’s take that highly readable literary masterpiece part. Prose style always counts for a lot with me and snark doesn’t go astray either. Gibbon has few peers, if any, as prose stylist – “Gibbon’s work has been praised for its style, its piquant epigrams and its effective irony”.
Indeed, I tend to share Churchill’s view of Gibbon’s prose style, on which he modelled much of his own.
“I set out upon … Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. … I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all.
Secondly, let’s take that foundational part. It is, dare I say it, ur-history, from which the historiography of the fall of the western empire almost entirely originated. It often seems ironic that one of the ways in which Gibbon is outdated is that he wrote his history from primary sources in preference to secondary sources, as that seems equally an impressive feat – and one for which he ‘is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians”.
Gibbon’s work is so foundational that, in combination with his prose style, it has been foundational not only in history but also in fantasy and science fiction, borrowing from fantasy. Literally, in the case of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation space opera series, which is essentially a galactic retelling of the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – which, as Asimov quipped in doggerel, was written “with a tiny bit of cribbin’ / from the works of Edward Gibbon”.
And not just space opera but high fantasy – indeed the highest, as Tolkien was also influenced by Gibbon, with Gondor in The Lord of the Rings corresponding to the eastern Roman Empire after the fall of its western half, and Minas Tirith to Constantinople.
Finally, it has been foundational for me, inspiring my fascination with the history of the Roman Empire, particularly its decline and fall – indeed, empires and their decline or fall in general.
“In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the ‘History’ is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive…Whatever its shortcomings the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period”
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Cover 2024 Penguin paperback edition
(1) SUN TZU –
THE ART OF WAR
“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
Wait – what? How does Sun Tzu’s The Art of War score top spot in my Top 10 History Books? It isn’t even a history book! Or is it?
Well, I’d obviously argue it is, at a number of levels – as its content of historical examples from ancient China at a literal level of history, as a historical artefact, as a philosophical artefact of Taoism, as the history of its adaptation and use for strategy, and most fundamentally for my top spot, as the lens by which I view history in general and military history in particular.
So firstly, its literal level of history – its content of specific historical examples to illustrate its strategic principles, albeit examples which are now obscure to all but those with specialist knowledge of ancient China. I mean, we’re talking ancient China before even the definitive Qin or Han dynasties, from which China and its dominant ethnicity derive their name. I had originally thought that its history was from the Warring States period but apparently the book itself was written in the preceding Spring and Autumn period of equally warring states.
Its nature as a historical artefact is self-evident – an ancient Chinese military treatise that tells us much about the 5th century BC Chinese military from the period it was written. Less self-evident might be its nature as a philosophical artefact of Taoism.
The history of its adaptation and use in East Asian military strategy is well documented. What is perhaps more striking is how it is only recently that it was adapted and used within Western military strategy or theory – essentially from the Cold War in Asia generally and the Vietnam War in particular, prompted by the Asian combatants in those wars seemingly using it successfully against their opponents or Western militaries.
In fairness, one might also say finally using it successfully against Western militaries. I remember a quip among my friends about the irony of The Art of War as a book of military strategy from China with its recurring history of military defeat, similarly to Machiavelli’s The Prince as a book of political strategy originating from Italy with its recurring history of political instability or chaos. The Book of Lists even includes China in its Most Defeated Nations in Modern History.
Finally and most fundamentally, then there’s its use as a lens with which to view history – essentially seeing history through the lens of strategy – although for me that relies on my somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of The Art of War’s definitive principle of winning without fighting.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m on board with the conventional interpretations of it:
“Sun portrays war as a costly, destructive last resort; prolonged warfare erodes the state faster than the enemy ever could. Sun uses diplomacy and economic principles in explaining how to keep war brief, contained, controlled, and as cheap as possible by minimizing financial exposure. Sun also stresses the importance of intelligence operatives and espionage to both the war effort and the prevention of war.”
My idiosyncratic interpretation has something of its tongue in its cheek, but as usual I’m joking and I’m serious. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is the cult classic of military strategy. And yet Sun Tzu often comes across as a pinko pacifist pussy, quoting poetry to hide that when he’s not being obvious, he’s being obtuse. I mean, come on – “The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course” and “The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon”. What?!
Of course, part of this is because The Art of War is thoroughly imbued with Taoist philosophy, including my personal favorite principle of ‘wu wei’ or the art of doing nothing effectively. Nowhere is this more evident than in its defining principle that the true art of war lies in winning without fighting. Well obviously, but how? It brings to mind Bart Simpson’s response when his karate teacher gives him a copy for his first lesson – “Um, I already know how not to hit a guy”.
In fairness, Sun Tzu does explain how to win without fighting, when you cut away all the poetry. However, as usual, history shows it much more bluntly, as proved by the United States of America. Of course, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that this superpower excelled at the art of war, at least until recently – as opposed to, say, Germany, which despite (or perhaps because of) its reputed military professionalism, proved that it was very good at fighting but not very good at war.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
HISTORY: TOP 10 BOOKS
(TIER LIST)
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(1) SUN TZU – THE ART OF WAR
(2) EDWARD GIBBON – THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(3) AZAR GAT – WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION
(4) H.P. WILLMOTT – THE GREAT CRUSADE: A NEW COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
(5) JOHN KEEGAN – A HISTORY OF WARFARE
If Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Edward Gibbon’s Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire are my Old Testament of history books, then War in Human Civilization, The Great Crusade, and A History of Warfare are my New Testament.
No, wait – if The Art of War is my Old Testament of history books, then The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire is my New Testament, and War in Human Civilization, The Great Crusade, and A History of Warfare are my books of apocalypse for military history…
Although I like to quip that The Great Crusade is my bible of World War Two history so…
Oh well, one of the above – or all of the above.
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(6) ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY – HOW ROME FELL
(7) PETER HEATHER – THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(8) KYLE HARPER – THE FATE OF ROME
(9) WALTER SCHEIDEL – ESCAPE FROM ROME
X-TIER (WILD TIER) – BEST OF 2025
(10) BARRY STRAUSS – JEWS VS ROME
