Best summer books of 2024: History
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century by Barbara Emerson (Hurst)
From Poland and the Black Sea to Persia and central Asia, the British and Russian empires were often at odds in the 19th century. Yet with the exception of the 1853-56 Crimean war, they generally kept their differences under control. Emerson’s account is thoroughly researched and enlivened by surprising and amusing anecdotes.
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray/Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
The British empire’s opium trade, based on mass cultivation of poppy crops in India and sales of the drug in China, has attracted much interest in recent decades from academic historians. Ghosh, a prizewinning Indian novelist and author of non-fiction books, retells the story with skill and controlled passion.
How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History by Josephine Quinn (Bloomsbury/Random House)
From the Renaissance to the late 20th century, the history of ancient civilisations was taught in western countries mainly as the history of classical Greece and Rome. Quinn, a University of Oxford scholar, paints on a much broader canvas in a book full of insights based on modern scientific discoveries.
Trailblazer: The First Feminist to Change Our World by Jane Robinson (Doubleday)
Born illegitimate in 1827, Barbara Bodichon was a radical campaigner for women’s rights who arranged the first mass petition for British female suffrage and co-founded Girton College, Cambridge. Robinson provides a lively, sympathetic biography of a woman who truly was the trailblazer of her book’s title.
The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World by Eugene Rogan (Allen Lane)
After Muslim rioters in Mount Lebanon and Damascus killed thousands of their Christian neighbours in July 1860, the Ottoman authorities responded with a far-sighted display of statesmanship that calmed tensions and restored order. Still, as Rogan’s exemplary study makes clear, the episode foreshadowed even worse violence around the Ottoman Empire in its final years.
Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair by Maurice Samuels (Yale)
The Dreyfus affair, which convulsed the Third Republic in the 1890s, was a defining episode in the history both of modern France and of international antisemitism. Samuels departs from many previous scholars with his sharply rendered focus on the life of Alfred Dreyfus himself and the model of French Jewish identity that he embodied.
Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic by Tabitha Stanmore (Bodley Head)
In her comprehensive, entertaining and always scholarly guide to popular magic in late medieval and early modern Europe, Stanmore illuminates a world in which folk practices were built into the fabric of everyday life. The University of Exeter historian’s book is packed with colourful stories and well-judged analysis.
The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century by Benn Steil (Avid Reader Press)
Steil enjoyed much success with a pair of impressive books on the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods conference. Here he focuses on the career of Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-president during his third term. The portrait Steil paints is far from flattering, but his book makes for a rewarding read.
Tell us what you think
Will you be taking any of these books on your summer holiday this year? Which ones? And what titles have we missed? Let us know in the comments below
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay (Bodley Head)
Published in Dutch in 2020 and now available in an excellent English translation, Revolusi is a masterful account of Indonesia’s 1945-49 war of independence against the Netherlands. Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian, makes ample use of oral testimony in recreating a war that inspired independence struggles elsewhere in the world.
Lost Fatherland: Europeans between Empire and Nation-States, 1867-1939 by Iryna Vushko (Yale)
Vushko, a Princeton University scholar, presents Europe’s late 19th and early 20th century political history in an engaging new light. She recounts the careers of 21 statesmen — not all of whom will be familiar to English-speaking readers — who grew up in the final decades of the Habsburg empire and experienced the turmoil of the post-1918 era.
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