Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in History (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

Ben Wilson

4.5 on Amazon

6 HN comments

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Erik Larson, Stephen Hoye, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Deborah Blum

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

These Truths: A History of the United States

Jill Lepore and Recorded Books

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Nathaniel Philbrick

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

Jim Mattis, Bing West, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Stephen E. Ambrose

4.8 on Amazon

5 HN comments

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

G. J. Meyer, Robin Sachs, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations

Marcus Aurelius , David Hicks, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

Lindsey Fitzharris

4.8 on Amazon

4 HN comments

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

Nancy Isenberg

4.4 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Edmund Morris, Mark Deakins, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

David E. Hoffman

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

Ron Chernow, Robertson Dean, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History

DK and Smithsonian Institution

4.8 on Amazon

3 HN comments

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dghughesonFeb 7, 2021

The Poisoner's Handbook on PBS is a great documentary it mentions lead in gas but also showed police forensic science was developed.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners/

smacktowardonJune 6, 2019

Midgely absolutely knew of the risks of lead, or at least he should have -- he had to take a leave of absence from his work to recover from a case of lead poisoning, and so many workers in the plant that made tetraethyl lead (TEL) developed inexplicable odd behaviors from their own cases that locals referred to the plant as "the loony gas building."

Worse still, Midgely worked actively to cover the risks of lead up. He even held a press conference in 1924 where, to assure reporters that TEL was safe, he washed his hands in a bowl of the stuff (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353)!

Deborah Blum covered the whole story in her excellent 2011 book, The Poisoner's Handbook (https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Me...). Blum excerpted the story of TEL for a piece in Wired, which can be read here: https://www.wired.com/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-...

smacktowardonJune 27, 2019

If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Deborah Blum’s excellent 2011 book The Poisoner’s Handbook (https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Me...), which tells the stories of a bunch of different chemical catastrophes from the same period. Radium is covered, as well as such other “what were they thinking?” stories as the introduction of lead into gasoline and the poisoning of industrial alcohol by the government during Prohibition in a misguided effort to keep it from being turned into bootleg liquor. It’s full of fascinating case studies, and Blum has an engaging writing style that makes it a good read.

If you prefer to watch your history, PBS’ American Experience documentary series did an episode based on Blum’s book (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners ); it can be streamed via a bunch of different video services.

barbeonJuly 4, 2020

A Spy Among Friends by Ben McIntyre--eye-opening account of Britain's most famous double-agent Kim Philby--and why we should be very concerned about Russian meddling in U.S. politics
The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone--about David Fairchild, the man who changed what we eat in the U.S. over 100 years ago
Regeneration by Pat Barker, a novel based on real facts about WWI
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum--the origin of modern forensic medicine

barbeonMay 9, 2020

any history book by Ben MacIntyre is a terrific read. He has written sseveral about WWII: I've read Agent Zig-Zag and Operation Mincemeat. He also wrote a good book about the spy Kim Phiulby, A Spy Among Friends.
Another great book about WWII is Citizens of London by Lynne Olson.
One of the best books I've read recently is Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads that fills in the gaps of history for Westerners. Jaw-dropping details on almost every page--such as the real meaning of the Italian greeting ciao ("I am your slave") because Italian ports were the ceneter of the Roaman slave trade--they had to import 450,000-500,000 per year to keep the empire humming...and the origin of the word slave from the Slavs who were captured by the red-haired Vikings as they moved south...knowns as the Russes, who became known as the Russians..

some others--
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone
anything by Erik Larson but especially Isaac's Storm (about the Galveston hurricane of 1900) and In the Garden of Beasts (about the American ambassort to 1930s Nazi Germany)
Travels with Herodotus and Shah of Shas by Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum
Parisians by Graham Robb

sethrinonOct 23, 2012

My source was The Poisoner's Handbook, which suggests that deaths were not tracked well or at all in most of the US. The book gives statistics for New York City but a cursory examination of its sources does not seem to list where those statistics were obtained from. The best source for statistics likely doesn't exist, but likely bets would include hospital records and any statistics published by whatever coroner/medical examiner's offices you can find.

One source [0] seems to suggest that deaths were lower but rising. Deaths from poisoned alcohol tripled between 1920 and 1925.[1] The author of the latter paper (Mark Thorton) has written extensively on the subject, his book The Economics of Prohibition may be informative.

[0] http://druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults1.htm
[1] https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

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