Books like Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

01

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

A kindred history read.

02

The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War

Graham Robb · History

Graham Robb's premise is audacious: France was not discovered until relatively recently, and even then, most of what was discovered was quickly erased.

Both dig into france.

03

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow · Biography

Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton — immigrant, orphan, Revolutionary War aide-de-camp, first Secretary of the Treasury, founder of the American financial system, and victim of Aaron Burr's bullet — is the most comprehensive single-volume account of Hamilton's life and the book that most directly sparked the Hamilton revival in popular culture, including Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical.

A kindred history read.

04

American Prometheus

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin · Biography

Kai Bird and Martin J.

A kindred history read.

05

Common Sense

Thomas Paine · History

Common Sense, published in January 1776, is a forty-seven-page pamphlet that argued for American independence from Britain with a directness and reach that no previous colonial publication had achieved.

Both dig into revolution.

06

Delirious New York

Rem Koolhaas · History

Rem Koolhaas published Delirious New York in 1978 with the subtitle "a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan," and that framing is essential to understanding what the book is and isn't.

Both dig into modernity.

07

The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James · History

The Black Jacobins is C.L.R.

Both dig into revolution.

08

The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon · History

The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961 shortly before Fanon's death from leukemia, is a political and psychiatric analysis of colonialism and the conditions required for genuine decolonization.

Both dig into violence.

09

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry · Memoir

Helter Skelter is the account of the Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969 written by Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles deputy district attorney who prosecuted Charles Manson, with journalist Curt Gentry.

Both dig into violence.

10

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

Both dig into revolution.

11

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

Both dig into violence.

12

Lenin

Victor Sebestyen · Biography

Victor Sebestyen's Lenin is a biography that aims to restore the man behind the mythology — both the Soviet mythology that made him a saint and the anti-communist one that made him a simple monster.

Both dig into revolution.