History-writing as Art: Part 2
Explore the artistry of history-writing with our curated list of masterful books. Discover how historians blend fact and narrative to craft compelling stories of the past.
Book
House of Meetings
by Martin Amis
Relates the tale of two brothers and a Jewish girl in a Russian slave labor camp in 1946.
Book
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
In 1327, finding his sensitive mission at an Italian abbey further complicated by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William of Baskerville turns detective.
Book
Citizens
by Simon Schama
In this New York Times bestseller, award-winning author Simon Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural, and narrative history of the French Revolution ever produced.
Book
Sexual Personae
by Camille Paglia
The fiery, provocative, and unparalleled work of feminist art criticism that launched the exceptional career of one of our most important public intellectuals—"a remarkable book, at once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant.... One must be awed by [Paglia's] vast energy, erudition and wit" (The Washington Post). Is Emily Dickinson “the female Sade”? Is Donatello’s David a bit of pedophile pornography? What is the secret kinship between Byron and Elvis Presley, between Medusa and Madonna? How do liberals and feminists—as well as conservatives—fatally misread human nature? This audacious and omnivorously learned work of guerrilla scholarship offers nothing less than a unified-field theory of Western culture, high and low, since Egyptians invented beauty—making a persuasive case for all art as a pagan battleground between male and female, form and chaos, civilization and daemonic nature. With 47 photographs.
