History students are readers and book collecters.  To aid them in this pursuit the history faculty has suggested works that might be a part of a selective library.  Obviously, these are only a few of the many standards works in the various areas of history.  This bibliography will grow over time, so re-visit the page every so often.  Happy reading.

I.World History
    William McNeill,  The Rise of the West (1963), Plagues and Peoples (revised 1992)
    Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (two-volume Somerville abridgement)
 

II.  European History
    Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (1991)
    Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (1998)
    Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine (1987)
    Peter Gay, The Enlightenment (1966)
    Ian Kershaw, Hitler (two volumes, 1998)
    Norman Davies, The Isles (history of Britain, 1999)
     G. R. Elton, Reform and Reformation, England, 1509-1558 (1977)
    Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism (3 vols,1984)
         "           "       The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949)
 

III. Non-Western History
    Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples (1960)
    Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong (2001) (discusses the decline of Islam relative to Western culture)
    Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding (1986)
 

IV.  American History
   Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (biography of Columbus) (1942)
    Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967)
          "          "     Voyagers to the West (1986) (on 18th-century British immigration to the colonies)
    Edmund Morgan, American Slavery/American Freedom (1958),
            "         "      The Puritan Dilemma (1975) (life of John Winthrop)
    Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic (1969)
    Joseph Ellis, American Sphinz: the Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996)
        "       "   , Founding Brothers (2000)
    Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (5 vols, 1948-)
    Clinton Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (1966)
    Geroge Dangerfield, Era of Good Feelings (1952)
    Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The Age of Jackson (1941)
    Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
    John D. Unruh, The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West (1979)
    David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976)
    James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988)
    David Donald, Charles Sumner (1996); Lincoln (1999)
    Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (1965); The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South (1956)
    Eric Foner, Reconstruction: The Unfinished Revolution (1988)
    C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951)
    John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1956)
    Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975) (excellent urban and political history)

V. Church History
    Carsten Peter Theile, Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence about the Origin of the Gospels (1996)
    Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1950)
    Jaroslav Pelikan, TheChristian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols)

V. Collections and Specialized Works
    The Library of America has published authoritative editions of a number of American statesmen and historians.  These are excellent building blocks for a personal library.  Volumes of historical works include the writings of Francies Parkman and Henry Adams, and W. E. B. Dubois.  The writings of political and military figures include the works of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, and William Tecumsah Sherman.  The Library of America also has excellent two-volume series on the debates on the Constitution and the best journalistic reporting from World War II and the Vietnam War.