Book Recommendations

It occurs to me that I should offer a list of supplementary reading to The Many-Headed Hydra, since I basically contended that it should not be read on its own due to its authors' Marxist-colored lenses.

Telling the Truth About History
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob
Excellent critique of Marxism, as well as other historiographical fads.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann
A revisionist work looking that tackles the long-standing "noble savage" image of Native Americans (in both North and South America) as pre-Raphaelite environmentalists.

The Atlantic World: A History, 1488-1888
Douglas Egerton, Alison Games, Jane G. Landers, Kris Lane, Donald R. Wright
That "first full-length textbook" I mentioned. Extremely long and dry, but well worth it. Just the facts, with no spin.

Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World
John Thornton
Everything the PC types preferred you didn't know: the truth about African involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Bernard Bailyn
Radicals they may have been, the primary concern of the Founding Fathers was to "purify a corrupt constitution and fight off the apparent growth of prerogative power, not to address sociopolitical inequality. Also discusses the diverse and often surprising origins of their revolutionary ideology.

The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
T.H. Breen
Argues that it was capitalism that inspired the American Revolution! Who knew?

Leonardo Da Vinci: Flights of the Mind
Charles Nicholl
Because I said so!