History's Greatest Hits

(An idiosyncratic sampling of the greatest, most influential, and best-written works of history from the last twenty-five centuries)

 

Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War

Herodotus. The Histories

Tacitus. The Histories

Plutarch. Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans

Julius Caesar. The Gallic War

Benvenuto Cellini. Autobiography

James Boswell. Life of Samuel Johnson

Benjamin Franklin. Autobiography

Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution

Thomas Macaulay. History of England

Francis Parkman. Montcalm and Wolfe

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto

Henry Adams. The Education of Henry Adams

Lytton Strachey. Eminent Victorians