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I read a ton of terrific work by historians on political violence this year (thanks, COVID19). Here's a thread of 13 of the best 2020 books, in no particular order, that I read. All have links to @Bookshop_Org to help support local bookstores. And let me know what I missed!
Margaret MacMillan’s “War” is a sweeping, and gorgeously written, essay on how war has shaped society --- and how society shapes war. Drawing mostly on Western examples, she offers an impassioned plea for the continued relevance of studying war https://bookshop.org/books/war-how-conflict-shaped-us/9781984856135
Vincent Brown’s “Tacky’s Revolt” is a wondrously detailed account of Jamaica's 1760-61 slave uprising, the largest rebellion vs. 18th C British Empire. New archival evidence traces how rebels organized, fought, & how the revolt reverberated beyond Jamaica https://bookshop.org/books/tacky-s-revolt-the-story-of-an-atlantic-slave-war/9780674737570
Catherine Fletcher’s “The Beauty and the Terror” combines social and military history to show how war shaped the Italian Renaissance. She weaves rich sources (interrogation records! maps! letters!) to argue that 1492 marks the West’s true bloody birthday https://bookshop.org/books/the-beauty-and-the-terror-the-italian-renaissance-and-the-rise-of-the-west/9780190908492
David Abulafia’s “The Boundless Sea” is an endlessly ambitious survey of how the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans bound societies together through trade & war over millennia. Starts w/ canoes & island societies; ends w/ supertankers & modern states https://bookshop.org/books/the-boundless-sea-a-human-history-of-the-oceans/9780199934980
Kelly Hammond’s “China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire” explores the little-known history of how imperial Japan sought to defeat the Nationalists in World War II by winning over China’s Muslims. Draws on material from 7 national archives in 5 languages. https://bookshop.org/books/china-s-muslims-and-japan-s-empire-centering-islam-in-world-war-ii/9781469659657
Richard Frank’s “Tower of Skulls” is the first in a projected trilogy that offers a new history of the Asia-Pacific War (here, from 1937-42). Briskly written, China is restored to center stage; a cavalcade of colorful characters illustrate the war's costs https://bookshop.org/books/tower-of-skulls-a-history-of-the-asia-pacific-war-volume-i-july-1937-may-1942/9781324002109
OK, technically a late-2019 book, but Camilla Townsend’s “Fifth Sun” is a revelation. She crafts a new narrative of the Aztec Empire, one based on Mexica, rather than Spanish, sources. A tale of a vibrant, complex, empire whose fall was not predestined https://bookshop.org/books/fifth-sun-a-new-history-of-the-aztecs/9780190673062
Claudio Saunt’s “Unworthy Republic” is a hard-hitting history of the Indian Removal --- the forced expulsion of 80,000 Native Americans across the Mississippi in the 1830s by the US govt. A warning of the dangers of white supremacy as official policy. https://bookshop.org/books/unworthy-republic-the-dispossession-of-native-americans-and-the-road-to-indian-territory/9780393609844
Stephanie McCurry’s superb “Women’s War” uses 3 vignettes --- a Confederate spy, a fugitive slave, and a Reconstruction-era socialite --- to unearth hidden histories about how women actively shaped wartime violence https://bookshop.org/books/women-s-war-fighting-and-surviving-the-american-civil-war/9780674987975
Richard Eaton’s sprawling “India in the Persianate Age” has everything: cultural collisions and fusions, the rise and collapse of multiple empires, war, the diffusion of ideas, more war --- all unfolding across the Indian subcontinent from 1000-1765. https://bookshop.org/books/india-in-the-persianate-age-1000a-1765/9780520325128
Christy Pichichero’s “The Military Enlightenment” provocatively argues that the hallmarks of modern war, including PTSD, Geneva Conventions, & our notions of “band of brothers” flow from the same taproot: 18th C French military culture. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501752063/the-military-enlightenment/#bookTabs=1
Scott Levi’s “The Bukharan Crisis” takes a mystery – why did Bukhara collapse in 1747? – and provides a new answer. Far from a remote backwater, Bukhara’s perch astride the early Silk Road created vulnerability to global economic shocks & local rivals https://bookshop.org/books/the-bukharan-crisis-a-connected-history-of-18th-century-central-asia/9780822945970
Now in paperback, Jinping Wang’s “In the Wake of the Mongols” draws on new evidence (stone tablets!) to chart how ordinary Chinese lived with their Mongol overlords in the wake of their conquest (1211-34) of north China that killed 1/3rd of its populace https://bookshop.org/books/in-the-wake-of-the-mongols-the-making-of-a-new-social-order-in-north-china-1200-1600/9780674987159
