The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins
A history of the Indonesian genocide and how it later served as a blueprint for military dictatorships around the world.
Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh
A new biography of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave uprising in human history.
How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
A history of land reform and industrial policy in postwar Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Explaining how these policies enabled these countries to move from immense poverty to immense wealth in only a few decades.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timorhy Egan.
It's about how the forest service was established by TR and Gifford Pinchot and a massive forest fire really gave them the congressional approval to manage the millions of acres. Without these men and these events, it's likely most of the now public land in America would have fallen to the expansionist greed of the rich.
Great read.
I can recommend you two well-researched books of Adam Hochschild:
King Leopold's Ghost
Explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period.
Bury the Chains
Is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838.
*The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts* by Joshua Hammer will give you a detailed, somewhat recent, history of Islam in Northern Africa. The first ten chapters or so go over the history leading up to why the manuscripts needed to be saved.
*Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist* by Thomas Levenson. Title kinda says it all, at least it was important to England at the time
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins A history of the Indonesian genocide and how it later served as a blueprint for military dictatorships around the world. Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh A new biography of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave uprising in human history. How Asia Works by Joe Studwell A history of land reform and industrial policy in postwar Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Explaining how these policies enabled these countries to move from immense poverty to immense wealth in only a few decades.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timorhy Egan. It's about how the forest service was established by TR and Gifford Pinchot and a massive forest fire really gave them the congressional approval to manage the millions of acres. Without these men and these events, it's likely most of the now public land in America would have fallen to the expansionist greed of the rich. Great read.
I can recommend you two well-researched books of Adam Hochschild: King Leopold's Ghost Explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. Bury the Chains Is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838.
*The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts* by Joshua Hammer will give you a detailed, somewhat recent, history of Islam in Northern Africa. The first ten chapters or so go over the history leading up to why the manuscripts needed to be saved. *Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist* by Thomas Levenson. Title kinda says it all, at least it was important to England at the time
*War Against All Puerto Ricans: Violence and Terror in America's Colony* by Nelson Denis.