Nonfiction

• The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson
• Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum
• The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, Roger Chartier
• Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, George Chauncey
• Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia, Kathleen Brown
• Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, Timothy Burke
• History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, Paul Cohen
• The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Kenneth Pomeranz
• Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich, Bill Niven
• A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, Alistair Horne
• A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold-War Era, Matthew Connelly
• Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, Jon Coleman

Thoughts: Horne’s A Savage War of Peace is a huge, challenging book, but it’s deftly written and it reads like a novel. It reminds me a lot of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, actually (admittedly a memoir, not a novel, but with all the pacing, suspense, and drama of a novel). I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed it, because (like Catalonia) it is a tragedy, but as a historical study it’s magnificent. Highly recommended.

Again, I can’t help but notice how male-dominated this list is. These are seminal works in their fields; I wonder how different the reading list would look if professors made a conscious effort to choose seminal works (predominantly) by female historians.

Fiction

Asterisks link to a full review.

• Clash of Eagles*, Alan Smale
• The Emissary, Kristal Shaff
• The Winner’s Curse*, Marie Rutkoski
• The Whitefire Crossing, Courtney Schafer
• The Tainted City, Courtney Schafer
• The Labyrinth of Flame, Courtney Schafer
• Cruel Beauty, Rosamund Hodge
• A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner

Thoughts: The Whitefire Crossing had been on my to-read list for a couple years before I finally read it this fall. I can’t believe I put it off so long—I raced through it, and upon finishing I wanted the second book so badly that I ordered it through my university library the next day; and then I wanted the third book so badly that I bought it the day it was released (December 1st), and finished all six hundred pages of it in two days. I did something very similar with A Conspiracy of Kings, which for some reason I didn’t read at the same time I read the rest of the series a couple years ago. That wrong was righted in the space of about three hours, and I think Conspiracy may now actually be my favorite of the series.

I was also very glad to read a superb stand-alone fantasy, Rosamund Hodge’s Cruel Beauty, which like The Winner’s Curse has Roman overtones and is thus automatic Amanda-bait. A Greco-Roman-inspired retelling of Beauty and the Beast? Yes, please, and thank you. My friend Louise has said that the book reminds her of C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces—by far Lewis’s best work, I think—and I happily agree.