The Ten Best History Books of 2021

After 2020 brought the most devastate ball-shaped pandemic in a century and a national see with systemic racism, 2021 ushered in a issue of welcome developments, including Covid vaccines, the revert of beloved social traditions like the Olympics and populace performances, and incremental but measurable progress in the fight against racial injustice .
During this year of change, these ten titles jointly serve a dual aim. Some offer a suspension from reality, transporting readers to such vary locales as ancient Rome, Gilded Age America and Angkor in Cambodia. Others reflect on the fraught nature of the current moment, detailing how the state ’ second past—including the mistreatment of japanese Americans during World War II and police brutality—informs its introduce and future. From a chronicle of civilization told through clocks to a pursuit for autochthonal department of justice in colonial Pennsylvania, these were some of our darling history books of 2021 .

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

“ It ’ s terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die, ” writes Annalee Newitz in the opening pages of Four Lost Cities. This austere statement sets the stage for the journalist ’ s acute exploration of how cities collapse—a topic with clean ramifications for the “ global-warming give, ” as Kirkus notes in its follow-up of the record. Centered on the ancient metropolises of Çatalhöyük, a neolithic colonization in southerly Anatolia ; Pompeii, the Roman city razed by Mount Vesuvius ’ outbreak in 79 C.E. ; Angkor, the medieval cambodian capital of the Khmer Empire ; and Cahokia, a pre-Hispanic city in what is now Illinois, Four Lost Cities traces its subjects ’ successes and failures, underscoring surprise connections between these apparently disparate societies .
All four cities boasted sophisticated infrastructure systems and clever feats of technology. Angkor, for example, became an economic power station in big contribution due to its complex network of canals and reservoirs, while Cahokia was known for its eminent earthen pyramids, which locals imbued with spiritual meaning. Despite these innovations, the featured urban hubs finally succumbed to what Newitz describes as “ prolonged periods of political imbalance ” —often precipitated by poor people leadership and sociable hierarchies— “ coupled with environmental collapse. ” These same problems plague modern cities, the writer argues, but the past offers valuable lessons for preventing such disasters in the future, including investing in “ resilient infrastructure, … public plaza, domestic spaces for everyone, social mobility and leaders who treat the city ’ s workers with dignity. ”

Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace

In the winter of 1722, two white fur traders murdered Seneca hunter Sawantaeny after he refused their bibulous, sneaky attempts to strike a deal. The ensuing fad, writes historian Nicole Eustace in Covered With Night, threatened to spark outright war between english colonists and the autochthonal inhabitants of the middle atlantic. Rather than enter into a prolong, bloody struggle, the Susquehanna River valley ’ s Native peoples forged an agreement, welcoming white traders back into their villages once Sawantaeny ’ randomness soundbox had been metaphorically “ covered, ” or laid to rest in a “ respectful, ritualize way, ” as Eustace told Smithsonian magazine ’ sulfur Karin Wulf earlier this year .
“ native people believe that a crisis of murder makes a rupture in the community and that tear needs to be repaired, ” Eustace added. “ They are not focused on vengeance ; they are focused on animate, on rebuilding community. And that requires a kind of actions. They want aroused reconciliation. They want economic damages. ”
The months of negotiation that followed culminated in the Albany Treaty of 1722, which provided both “ ritual condolences and reparation payments ” for Sawantaeny ’ sulfur murder, according to Eustace. Little know nowadays, the historian argues, the agreement underscores the differences between Native and colonial conceptions of justice. Whereas the former emphasized what would now be considered tonic justice ( an approach that seeks to repair harm caused by a crime ), the latter focused on harsh reprisal, meting out swift executions for suspects found guilty. “ The Pennsylvania colonists never truly say explicitly, ‘ We ’ re following native protocols. We ’ ra accepting the precepts of Native justice, ’ ” Eustace explained to Smithsonian. “ But they do it because in hardheaded terms they didn ’ t have a choice if they wanted to resolve the situation. ”

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Sackler family ’ s role in triggering the U.S. opioid epidemic attracted renewed attention this class with the release of “ Dopesick, ” a Hulu miniseries based on Beth Macy ’ mho 2018 book of the same name, and Patrick Radden Keefe ’ s award-winning Empire of Pain, which thoroughly examines the rise—and very public fall—of the drug-peddling american “ dynasty. ”
meticulously researched, the book traces its roots to the early 2010s, when the diarist was reporting on mexican drug cartels for the New York Times magazine. As Keefe tells the London Times, he realized that 25 percentage of the gross generated by OxyContin, the most popular pill pushed by Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma, came from the black commercialize. Despite this vogue, the class was better known for its donations to leading artwork museums than its part in fueling opioid addiction. “ There was a family that had made billions of dollars from the sale of a drug that had such a destructive bequest, ” Keefe says, “ so far hadn ’ thymine seemed touched by that legacy. ” Infuriated, he began writing what would become Empire of Pain .
The resulting 560-page exposé reap on newly released court documents, interviews with more than 200 people and the generator ’ s personal accounts of the Sacklers ’ attempts to intimidate him into hush. As the New York Times notes in its review, the book “ key [ s ] a annihilative portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest province or show the least sympathy for what it wrought. ”

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

A fantastic, devastating portrayal of three generations of the Sackler class, famed for their philanthropy, whose luck was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain

historian Keisha N. Blain derived the title of her latest book from a well-known quote by its national, voting rights militant Fannie Lou Hamer : “ We have a farseeing fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not spare whether you are white or Black, until I am free. ” As Blain wrote for Smithsonian last year, Hamer, who grew up in the Jim Crow South in a family of sharecroppers, first learned about her right to vote in 1962, at the age of 44. After attempting to register to vote in Mississippi, she faced verbal and physical threats of violence—experiences that only strengthened her decide .
Blain ’ mho book is one of two new Hamer biographies released in 2021. The other, Walk With Me by historian Kate Clifford Larson, offers a more straightforward account of the militant ’ s life. relatively, Blain ’ second volume situates Hamer in the broader political context of the civil rights movement. Both titles represent a long-overdue celebration of a charwoman whose contributions to the fight for equal rights have historically been overshadowed by men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X .

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel

On April 30, 1942, 11-year-old Philip Lazowski found himself separated from his family during a nazi choice in the polish town of Zhetel. Realizing that the aged, the infirm and unaccompanied children were being sent in one guidance and families with function permits in the other, he tried to blend in with the children of a woman he recognized, only to hear her hiss, “ Don ’ t stand future to us. You don ’ thyroxine belong in this group. ” Looking about, Lazowski soon spotted another strange and her daughters. Desperate, he pleaded with her to let him join them. After pausing momentarily, the woman— Miriam Rabinowitz —took his hand and said, “ If the Nazis let me populate with two children, they ’ ll let me live with three. ”
All four survived the excerpt. From there, however, their paths temporarily diverged. Lazowski reunited with his family, remaining imprisoned in the Zhetel ghetto before fleeing into the nearby woods, where he remained hide for the future two and a half years. Miriam, her husband Morris and their two children similarly sought safety in a afforest but did not encounter Lazowski again until after the war. ( Lazowski late married one of the Rabinowitz daughters, Ruth, after running into Miriam at a 1953 wedding in Brooklyn—a “ stroke of luck that … mirrors the random twists of fortune that enabled the kin to survive while sol many others didn ’ t, ” per Publishers Weekly. )
As journalist Rebecca Frankel writes in Into the Forest, the Rabinowitzes and Lazowski were among the roughly 25,000 Jews who survived the war by hiding out in the woods of Eastern Europe. The majority of these individuals ( about 15,000 ) joined the partisan campaign, eking out a meager universe as rabble bands of resistance fighters, but others, like the Rabinowitzes, formed makeshift family camps, “ aiming not for retaliation but survival, ” according to the Forward. Frankel ’ s account of the family ’ s biennial sojourn in the woods captures the coarse realities of this lesser-known chapter in Holocaust history, detailing how afforest refugees foraged for food ( or stole from locals when supplies were scarce ), jab metro shelters and remained constantly on the move in hopes of avoiding Nazi raids. Morris, who worked in the lumber business, used his pre-war connections and cognition of the afforest to help his class survive, avoiding the partisans “ in the hope of keeping outside the fight rub, ” as Frankel writes for the New York Times. today, she adds, the stories of those who escaped into the woods remain “ so baffling ” that some scholars have referred to them as “ the margins of the Holocaust. ”

The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age by Amy Sohn

Though its deed might suggest otherwise, The Man Who Hated Women focuses far more on the american english women whose rights Anthony Comstock sought to suppress than the sexist government official himself. As novelist and columnist Amy Sohn explains in her narrative non-fiction debut, Comstock, a dry goods seller who moonlighted as a extra agent to the U.S. Post Office and the repository of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, spent more than four decades hounding activists who advocated for women ’ s generative rights. In 1873, he lobbied Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send “ obscene, lascivious or lascivious ” material—including documents related to birth control and sexual health —through the mail ; in his opinion, the author adds, “ obscenity, which he called a ‘ hydra-headed-monster, ’ led to prostitution, illness, death, abortions and genital disease. ”
The Man Who Hated Women centers on eight women activists targeted by Comstock : among others, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, the first charwoman to run for president ; anarchist and undertaking organizer Emma Goldman ; Planned Parenthood founder and ill-famed eugenicist Margaret Sanger ; abortionist Ann “ Madam Restell ” Lohman ; and homeopath Sarah Chase, who fought back against censoring by dubbing a birth control condition device the “ Comstock Syringe. ” Weaving in concert these women ’ sulfur stories, Sohn identifies striking parallels between 19th- and 20th-century debates and contemporary threats to abortion rights. “ Risking destitution, imprisonment and death, ” writes the author in the book ’ s introduction, “ [ these activists ] defined generative liberty as an american right, one adenine critical as those enshrined in the Constitution. … Without understanding [ them ], we can not fight the assail on women ’ second bodies and souls that continues tied today. ”

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

In this sweep history, learner Olivette Otele challenges white-centric narratives of european history by tracing african people ’ mho bearing on the continent from the third hundred to the 21st. Featuring a rich draw of characters, including Renaissance duke Alessandro de ’ Medici, 18th-century polymath Joseph Boulogne, and actress and artists ’ chew over Jeanne Duval, African Europeans disingenuously examines changing conceptions of race and how these ideas have shaped both real-world experiences and accounts of the past .
“ The term ‘ african european ’ is … a aggravation for those who deny that one can have multiple identities and even citizenships, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as those who claim that they do not ‘ see discolor, ’ ” writes Otele in the book ’ south insertion. “ The aims of this volume are to understand connections across time and space, to debunk dogged myths, and to revive and celebrate the lives of african Europeans. ”

African Europeans: An Untold History

A dazzle history of Africans in Europe, revealing their unacknowledged function in shaping the continent

The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson

life at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where some 14,000 japanese Americans were incarcerated between August 1942 and November 1945, was punctuated by harsh winters, inadequate aesculapian care, and racist treatment by white staff and locals. A year or so after the clique ’ second opening, however, prisoners gained an improbable generator of hope : eminent school football. As diarist Bradford Pearson writes in The Eagles of Heart Mountain, the team—made up chiefly of second-generation immigrants who ’ d never played the sport before—went undefeated in the 1943 season and lost good one crippled the class after that .
Pearson juxtaposes the heartwarming fib of the underdog Eagles with details of how players resisted the draft. reluctant to fight on behalf of a state that had ordered their detention, respective of the young men refused to enlist, leaving them vulnerable to ( extra ) imprisonment. “ We are not being disloyal, ” declared the Heart Mountain–based Fair Play Committee. “ We are not evading the draft. We are all loyal Americans fighting for judge and majority rule correctly here at home. ”

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney

“ [ F ] or thousands of years, ” argues David Rooney in About Time, humans have “ harnessed, politicized and weaponized ” prison term, using clocks to “ wield ability, make money, govern citizens and control lives. ” A erstwhile curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home plate of Greenwich Mean Time, Rooney traces his fascination with horology to his childhood, when his parents ran a clockmaking and restoration business. Over a life spend studying clocks, the scholar realized that the devices could be used as windows into civilization, revealing insights on “ capitalism, the exchange of cognition, the construction of empires and the revolutionary changes to our lives brought by industrialization. ”
About Time centers on 12 clocks created over some 2,000 years, from a sundial at the Roman forum in 263 B.C.E. to a plutonium time-capsule clock buried in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. As the centuries progressed, timekeeping tools became increasingly accurate—a development that could “ never [ be ] politically neutral, ” notes the Washington Post in its review of the record. rather, the standardization of time enabled capitalist endeavors like the opening and close of fiscal markets and social see measures such as laws limiting when consumers could purchase alcohol. Overall, writes Rooney, his “ personal, idiosyncratic and above all partial bill ” seeks to demonstrate that “ monumental timekeepers mounted high up on towers or populace buildings have been put there to keep us in order, in a universe of fierce disorderliness, … as far back as we care to look. ”

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton

Between July 1964 and April 2001, about 2,000 urban rebellions sparked by racially motivated patrol intimidation, harassment and violence broke out across the U.S. These “ explosions of collective resistance to an inadequate and violent holy order, ” in Elizabeth Hinton ’ randomness words, are much characterized as riots—a condition the Yale historian rejects in favor of “ rebellion. ” Citing a fat treasure trove of historical data, Hinton ’ randomness America on Fire convincingly argues that Black rebellions occur in reaction to police ferocity preferably than the other direction around. President Lyndon B. Johnson ’ s 1960s “ War on Crime, ” for example, contributed to the growth of local patrol forces that “ encroach [ erectile dysfunction on ] all aspects of Black social life sentence, transforming typical youthful transgressions into fodder for patrol assaults on young Black people, ” per the New Yorker .
Published about precisely a year after George Floyd was killed in police hands, America on Fire deftly draws parallels between the violence that followed the assassinations of civil rights leaders in the 1960s and the 2020 protests. entirely “ extraordinary ” acts of patrol ferocity, like the well-documented murder of Floyd, prompt such rebellions today : “ [ T ] he daily violence and indignities that Black people know in encounters with police go unaddressed, ” notes the Washington Post in its inspection of the reserve. “ In this sense, Hinton argues that the condition quo has won. ordinary patrol violence has become normalize, run-of-the-mill. We respond to only its most barbarous forms. ”

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