Simon Sebag Montefiore's 6 favorite books

As a historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore's works include The Romanovs: 1613–1918, Jerusalem: The Biography, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and Young Stalin, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Prize (UK), and Le Grand Prix de Biographie Politique (France). His novels include the critically acclaimed Sashenka and One Night in Winter.

One of the author's six favorite books, as shared at The Daily Express:

BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy

This a towering masterpiece of modern American literature.

It’s about a desolate, terrifying world on the borderland between America and Mexico when the remains of Indian tribes were being hunted down by ruffians damaged by the American Civil War. It is a Western but also a study of total evil which is always interesting.

Read about another entry on the list.

Blood Meridian is one authority's pick for the Great Texas novel; it is among Richard Kadrey's five books about awful, awful people, Jason Sizemore's top five books that will entertain and drop you into the depths of despair, Robert Allison's top ten novels of desert war, Alexandra Silverman's top fourteen wrathful stories, James Franco's six favorite books, Philipp Meyer's five best books that explain America, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, David Vann's six favorite books, Robert Olmstead's six favorite books, Michael Crummey's top ten literary feuds, Philip Connors's top ten wilderness books, six books that made a difference to Kazuo Ishiguro, Clive Sinclair's top 10 westerns, Maile Meloy's six best books, and David Foster Wallace's five direly underappreciated post-1960 U.S. novels. It appears on the New York Times list of the best American fiction of the last 25 years and among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue