Friday, May 03, 2013

Seven top history books

Nathaniel Philbrick's books include In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, Sea of Glory, The Last Stand, and the newly released Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution.

One of his seven favorite history books, as told to The Daily Beast:
Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860
by Richard Slotkin

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history. Slotkin brilliantly interweaves the two as he takes us on a cultural thrill ride that ends with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and the battle for the American West. This book helped me see the story that linked the voyage of the Mayflower to King Philip’s War. Slotkin’s follow up, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, was equally helpful when I took on the Battle of the Little Bighorn in The Last Stand.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue