Books like The Prize

01

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sven Beckert · History

Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton argues that cotton was not just the raw material of the Industrial Revolution but the commodity through which modern capitalism was invented.

A kindred history read.

02

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein · History

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, published in 2007, argues that free-market economic policies — privatization, deregulation, cuts to social spending — have historically been implemented not through democratic persuasion but by exploiting crises and disasters that leave populations too disoriented and traumatized to resist.

A kindred history read.

03

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Robert A. Caro · Biography

Robert A.

A kindred history read.

04

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.

05

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith · Economics

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is Adam Smith's comprehensive account of how modern commercial economies work and what policies promote prosperity.

A kindred history read.

06

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · History

All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.

Both dig into war.

07

Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission

Hampton Sides · History

Ghost Soldiers tells the story of the January 1945 raid on the Cabanatuan prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines — a mission to rescue 513 American and Allied prisoners, survivors of the Bataan Death March, before the retreating Japanese army could execute them.

Both dig into war.

08

History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides · History

Thucydides' account of the twenty-seven-year conflict between Athens and Sparta stands as the founding document of political realism and the first work of history that treats evidence and causation as problems to be solved rather than stories to be told.

Both dig into war.

09

The Changing World Order

Ray Dalio · History

The Changing World Order is Ray Dalio's attempt to map the long arc of rising and declining empires through a systematic historical framework, with the explicit goal of understanding whether the United States is in decline and what a world with China as a co-dominant power would look like.

Both dig into geopolitics.

10

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Samuel P. Huntington · History

Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, published in 1996, is an expansion of a 1993 Foreign Affairs essay that generated more response than almost any article in that journal's history.

Both dig into geopolitics.

11

The Cold War: A New History

John Lewis Gaddis · History

John Lewis Gaddis wrote The Cold War: A New History as a short, synthetic account of the entire superpower conflict, from the end of World War II through the Soviet collapse in 1991.

Both dig into geopolitics.

12

The End of History and the Last Man

Francis Fukuyama · History

Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man was published in 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of liberal democracy as the world's dominant political model.

Both dig into geopolitics.