Lewis Lapham, essayist and editor of Harper’s Magazine, chooses his five favorite works of popular history.
The Hundred Years by Philip Guedalla (out of print). Guedalla presents a history of the years 1837–1937 in a sequence of 33 scenes that begins with Queen Victoria’s coming to the throne in England and ends with Adolf Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag. The author is a prose stylist of the first rank, his irony as subtle as his understanding of the private motive hidden behind the arras of public event.
Twelve Against the Gods by William Bolitho (out of print). Sketches of 12 notable adventurers, among them Casanova and Woodrow Wilson as well as Napoleon, Mahomet, and Alexander the Great, marching through history to the music (often savage, always loud) of their own drums.
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The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman (Ballantine, $11.20,) A survey of the social and political attitudes too comfortably in place in Europe and the United States during the two decades (1890–1914) prior to the outbreak of the First World War. A cautionary tale.
Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings by Amy Kelly (Harvard University Press, $12.92). Married first to Louis VII of France and then to Henry II of England, mother of both Richard Coeur-de-lion and the luckless King John who signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede, Eleanor for 50 years glittered in the light at the center of the 12th century’s richly caparisoned medieval stage. I know of no finer portrait of both a lady and an age.
Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell (North Point Press, $12.80) An account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where, on June 25, 1876, General George A. Custer sacrificed a cavalry regiment to his theory of immortality. Connell tells the story in the voice of a patient and accomplished detective unwrapping the ribbons of glorious myth around the memory of the old American West.
