The Best Social History Books 2024

1. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, (Paperback)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work as "a history of emotions--a history of the soul." Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it's like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres--but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. "Through the voices of those who confided in her," The Nation writes, "Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil--in a word, about ourselves." A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, (Paperback) Author: Random House Trade ISBN: 9780399588822 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2017-03-21 Page Count: 496

2. Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power, (Paperback)

This is the only exposé of one of the world's most secretive and feared organizations: Yale University's nearly 200-year-old secret society, Skull and Bones. Through society documents and interviews with dozens of members, Robbins explains why this old-boy product of another time still thrives today.

Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power, (Paperback) Author: Back Bay Books ISBN: 9780316735612 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2003-09-04 Page Count: 230

3. The Roman Army, (Paperback)

Written by a leading authority on Roman military history, this fascinating volume spans over a thousand years as it offers a memorable picture of one of the world's most noted fighting forces, paying special attention to the life of the common soldier. Southern here illuminates the Roman army's history, culture, and organization, providing fascinating details on topics such as military music, holidays, strategy, the construction of Roman fortresses and forts, the most common battle formations, and the many tools of war, from spears, bows and arrows, swords, and slingshots, to the large catapulta (which fired giant arrows and bolts) and the ballista (which hurled huge stones). Perhaps most interesting are the details Southern provides about everyday life in the Roman army, everything from the soldiers pay (they were paid three times per year, but money was deducted for such items as food, clothing, weapons, the burial club, the pension scheme, and so on) to their often brutal life--if whole units turned and ran, about one-tenth of the men concerned were chosen by lot and clubbed to death and the rest were put on barley rations instead of wheat. Moreover, soldiers who lost weapons or their shields would fight savagely to get them back or would die in the process, rather than suffer the shame that attached to throwing weapons away or running from the battle. Attractively illustrated, this book offers a fascinating look at the life of the Roman soldier, drawing on everything from Rome's rich historical and archaeological record to soldier's personal correspondence to depictions of military subjects in literature and art.

The Roman Army, (Paperback) Author: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780195328783 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-10-01 Page Count: 400

4. Anarchy and Community in the New American West: Madrid, New Mexico, 1970-2000 (Hardcover)

Madrid, New Mexico, is located in an area rich in coal. It was run as a company town from 1919 to the mid-1950s. The resident manager presented it as a model community in order to lure, and guarantee the availability of, willing labor. The mines closed in 1954 and, in spite of the town's beloved Christmas lights displays and Fourth of July parades, Madrid was sold off, piecemeal, in the mid-1970s. High on the eastern slope of the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque, the town has evolved over the ensuing decades from a ghost town to a tourist attraction in which arts and crafts have replaced coal as the commodity on which all livelihoods depend. Kathryn Hovey's account of Madrid's evolution examines the town's identities in the contexts of history, government, and the environment. She interviewed many citizens of the 1960s and 1970s, pioneers who rebuilt and reinvented the community. Her account of the problems they encountered provides a lively chapter in the history of New Mexico and of the counterculture. They openly discuss their conflicts over water and fire prevention, issues of drug use, and child rearing. Hovey sees Madrid as an embodiment of the postmodern West in which tourist enterprises exploit the past. She is acutely articulate on the ironies inherent in the town's reemergence from a community literally owned by the company to one in which dissident hippies hoped to live without social controls.

Anarchy and Community in the New American West: Madrid, New Mexico, 1970-2000 (Hardcover)