Books like Empire of Cotton: A Global History

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

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond · Science

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond's attempt to answer a question posed to him by a Papua New Guinean politician named Yali: why did Europeans end up with so much cargo — wealth, technology, power — while other peoples had comparatively little?

A kindred history read.

03

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari · Philosophy

Where Sapiens traced humanity's past and Homo Deus speculated about its future, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century plants itself in the present.

A kindred history read.

04

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann · History

Where 1491 ends, 1493 begins.

Both dig into globalization.

05

Americana

Bhu Srinivasan · History

Americana is Bhu Srinivasan's attempt to tell the history of American capitalism through its defining industries and the entrepreneurs who built them.

Both dig into capitalism.

06

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

James M. McPherson · History

James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, published in 1988, is the standard one-volume history of the Civil War era and won the Pulitzer Prize in the year of its publication.

Both dig into slavery.

07

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Dee Brown · History

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published in 1970, is Dee Brown's account of the systematic dispossession of Native American peoples across the American West between 1860 and 1890.

Both dig into colonialism.

08

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches

S. C. Gwynne · History

Empire of the Summer Moon, published in 2010, follows the rise of the Comanche empire on the southern Great Plains and the long, brutal conflict between the Comanches and the expanding United States.

Both dig into colonialism.

09

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Shoshana Zuboff · History

Shoshana Zuboff spent years researching what she calls surveillance capitalism — a new economic logic in which human experience is turned into raw material for prediction products that are sold to businesses wanting to influence behavior.

Both dig into capitalism.

10

The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James · History

The Black Jacobins is C.L.R.

Both dig into colonialism.

11

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · History

Published in 1848 on the eve of a wave of European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a short political pamphlet that has shaped more history than almost any other document of its length.

Both dig into capitalism.

12

The Price of Time

Edward Chancellor · History

The Price of Time is Edward Chancellor's history of interest rates — what they are, how they have been set, and what happens when they are persistently pushed below their natural level.

Both dig into capitalism.