The 25 best history books
The 25 highest-ranked history books in our ranking of 2,816, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 198 history books in all. How we rank
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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer93.3Must-Read ScoreThe Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, set out to answer a patient's question: what exactly is she fighting?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2011)33 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2010NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2010)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 2
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland91.9Must-Read ScoreSay Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
In 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked members of the IRA and never seen again.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (2019)17 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2019NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 3
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration91.5Must-Read ScoreThe Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Between World War I and 1970, about six million Black Americans left the South for the cities of the North and West, one of the largest migrations in American history.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (2010)39 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2010NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 4
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York91.2Must-Read ScoreThe Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert Moses never won an election, yet for forty years he was the most powerful man in New York.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1975)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 5
The Making of the Atomic Bomb91.1Must-Read ScoreThe Making of the Atomic Bomb
The full story of how the atomic bomb came to be, from the discovery around 1900 that atoms held unimaginable energy, through the physicists who raced to understand it, often fleeing Nazi Europe as they did, to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, the first test at Trinity, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 6
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer90.1Must-Read ScoreAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
The definitive biography of J.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2006)NBCC Award (Biography) winner (2005)#1 New York Times bestseller (5 weeks at #1) - 7
A Brief History of Time89.6Must-Read ScoreA Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking's attempt to explain the biggest questions in physics to ordinary readers: where the universe came from, how it might end, what black holes are, why time only moves forward, and whether physics can ever find a single theory of everything.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 25 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (19 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 8
Maus89.6Must-Read ScoreMaus
Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived Hitler's Europe and Auschwitz, in comic form, with Jews drawn as mice and Nazis as cats.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Special Citation) winner (1992)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 9
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/1189.6Must-Read ScoreThe Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
How did 9/11 happen?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2007)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2006)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 10
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany89.2Must-Read ScoreThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
William Shirer was an American journalist who reported from Berlin in the 1930s, and after the war he gained access to the captured archives of the Nazi government.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1961)#1 New York Times bestseller (39 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 11
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind88.9Must-Read ScoreSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
A hundred thousand years ago, at least six species of humans walked the Earth.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 25 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1)Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 12
Stamped From the Beginning88.4Must-Read ScoreStamped From the Beginning
Ibram X.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2016)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2016) - 13
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 194588.2Must-Read ScorePostwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
Tony Judt's history of Europe from the ruins of 1945 to the start of the twenty-first century covers the whole continent, from Lisbon to Leningrad: rebuilding after the war, the Cold War division into East and West, the welfare state, 1968, the collapse of communism, and the long, uneasy project of European union.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) finalist (2006)Baillie Gifford Prize finalist (2006)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 14
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents87.8Must-Read ScoreCaste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson argues that America's racial hierarchy is best understood as a caste system, an artificial ranking of human worth like the ones in India and Nazi Germany.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1)73 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2020NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2020) - 15
Cosmos87.7Must-Read ScoreCosmos
Written alongside his landmark TV series, Carl Sagan's tour of the universe covers fifteen billion years of cosmic history: how stars are born and die, how life might have begun, what we've learned from planets and comets, and the long human story of how science pieced it all together, from ancient Greek astronomers to the Voyager spacecraft.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 40 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (16 weeks at #1)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1981) - 16
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness87.1Must-Read ScoreThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration in the United States, driven by the War on Drugs, has created a new system of racial control: millions of Black Americans labeled felons and then legally stripped of the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to get jobs, housing and benefits, much as Jim Crow laws once did.
Why it made the list22 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2012NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 17
Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-6386.6Must-Read ScoreParting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63
The first volume of Taylor Branch's monumental history of the civil rights movement, covering 1954 to 1963: from the Montgomery bus boycott that made a young Martin Luther King Jr.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (1989)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1989) - 18
How the Word Is Passed86.6Must-Read ScoreHow the Word Is Passed
Poet and historian Clint Smith travels to places across America where the history of slavery is remembered, or misremembered: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, a Louisiana plantation turned museum, Angola prison built on a former plantation, a Confederate cemetery, Galveston where Juneteenth began, New York City and Senegal's Gorée Island.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (2021)#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1)Goodreads Choice (history biography) finalist (2021) - 19
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X86.5Must-Read ScoreThe Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne set out to interview everyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X: his siblings, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI informants and political leaders around the world.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2021)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2020)NBCC Award (Biography) finalist (2020) - 20
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History86.2Must-Read ScoreThe Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer, sets out to explain the five mass extinctions in Earth's history and to argue that humans are now causing a sixth.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2015)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2014)Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 21
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West86.1Must-Read ScoreBury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
Dee Brown tells the history of the American West from 1860 to 1890 from the side of the Native Americans who lived there.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (24 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 22
Everything Is Tuberculosis85.7Must-Read ScoreEverything Is Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis killed more people than any other infectious disease in history, and it still kills over a million people a year, even though it's curable.
Why it made the listGoodreads Choice (nonfiction) winner (2025)#1 New York Times bestseller (2 weeks at #1)43 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2025 - 23
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America85.3Must-Read ScoreNative Nations: A Millennium in North America
Long before Europeans arrived, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations, and when Europeans did come, Native nations stayed powerful for centuries.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (2025) - 24
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power85.2Must-Read ScoreThe Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
Daniel Yergin's history of oil, from the first well in Pennsylvania in 1859 through John D.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1992)#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1) - 25
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century84.6Must-Read ScoreOn Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
Historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on 20th-century Europe, draws twenty lessons from how democracies collapsed into fascism and communism.
Why it made the list82 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2017
