Non-fiction books

12 books in your first term

Best books about Ancient Egypt

Fifteen books on ancient Egypt beyond pharaohs and tombs: ordinary lives, women, Nubia, Egyptology’s colonial history, Egyptian voices and novels, editions read 14 October 2026.

Best books about Napoleon

Six books about Napoleon, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: the big one-volume life, his campaigns, the long war with Britain, a conscript's diary, the women around him and a novel of his exile.

Best books about Stoicism

Best books about the American Revolution

Six books on the American Revolution, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: the year of 1776, the hidden history, the British side, the loyalists who lost, Washington, and a Bernard Cornwell novel.

Best books about the British Empire

Six books about the British Empire, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: a history of the whole system, the case for it, an enslaved man's own account, the 1857 rising in India, an Indian nationalist's history, and the empire at home.

Best books about the Cold War

Best books about the East India Company

Best books about the financial crisis

Six books about the 2008 financial crisis, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: the traders who bet against it, the weekend Lehman fell, how the bonds were built, the whole cause in one book, and what came after.

Best books about the First World War

Best books about the history of London

Six books on the history of London, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: the whole city in one volume, Tudor merchants, the Great Fire of 1666, the cholera of 1854, five Victorian women and the Blitz.

Best books about the history of New York

Six books on the history of New York City, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: the Dutch colony, the one big history, the tenements, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Harlem Renaissance and the man who rebuilt the city.

Best books about the Industrial Revolution

Six books about the Industrial Revolution, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: why it began in Britain, the inventors and the steam engine, the people who worked in the mills, a first-hand account of Manchester, and a novel of a mill town.

Best books about the Mughal Empire

Best books about the Partition of India

Best books about the Roman Republic

Best books about the Russian Revolution

Sixteen Russian Revolution books from the voices and places the usual lists skip: workers’ and soldiers’ letters, women, civil war memoirs, the émigrés, novels in translation, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia, with UK editions read on 13 October 2026.

Best books about the Second World War

Sixteen Second World War books about the war as ordinary people lived it, at home and under occupation in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, the Soviet Union, China, Japan and India, with UK editions read on 13 October 2026.

Best books about the Tudors

Books like Atomic Habits

Books like The Nightingale

Books like Why Nations Fail

Six books for readers of Why Nations Fail, chosen from two Highstreett book searches: Acemoglu and Robinson's sequel, the deep history of the state, the geography and culture arguments it rejects, and two histories of how rich countries got rich.

Short books

Western political philosophy in order

Western political thought in the order it was written, from Plato's Republic to Neema Parvini's Applied Elite Theory: 83 books that argue with one another, with my ratings and notes as I go.

By Alex