100 Best Ancient History Books of All Time

Richard BransonOne example of a book that has helped me to #ReadToLead this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. While the book came out a few years ago now, I got around to it this year, and am very glad I did. I’ve always been fascinated in what makes humans human, and how people are constantly evolving, changing and growing. The genius of Sapiens is that it takes some daunting,... (Source)

Reid HoffmanA grand theory of humanity. (Source)

Barack Obamaeval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. (Source)

Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey)I think SPQR is a wonderful book. Ancient Roman history is so very dense and intricate that it can be difficult to teach and learn about. Mary Beard makes it accessible—and she goes through it all, from the early days right up until the present day. (Source)

Reid HoffmanReid read Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as a boy, which informed his strategic thinking. (Source)

Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] The Art of War (Sun Tsu) [to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)

Evan SpiegelAfter meeting Mark Zuckerberg, [Evan Spiegel] immediately bought every [Snapchat] employee a copy of 'The Art Of War'. (Source)

Ryan HolidayThis book – of a long forgotten war – really functions as a biography and strategic analysis of some of the greatest minds in the history of war. We have Pericles, Brasidas, Alcibiades and many others. The anecdotes and the stories in this book are timeless. If you make your way all the way through it, I promise you will not forget it. Because the war was so long, involved so many different... (Source)

Steven PressfieldIt is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy. (Source)

Ted TurnerWhen I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek - and to a lesser extent Roman - history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. (Source)

Max PorterI still have an image of Odysseus in my head from when I was a child – he’s very Anglo-Saxon and stubbly, a bit like Michael Fassbender (Source)

Janine di GiovanniThe thing I loved about Ulysses was that he’s so in love with adventure and with love. (Source)

Ted TurnerWhen I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek - and to a lesser extent Roman - history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. (Source)

John GittingsHomer, like Shakespeare, encompassed all humanity in his work, and in The Iliad he encompasses peace as well as war. (Source)

Kate McLoughlinA lot of people who had public school educations, classical educations, might have gone into the First World War thinking that they were fighting Homer’s war. (Source)

Tom HollandIt really had a crucial sense of shaping our understanding of Imperial Rome as a place of savagery, sexual depravity and brutal, bawdy splendour. (Source)

Arianna HuffingtonI find [this book] so inspirational and instructive, it lives on my nightstand. (Source)

Chip ConleyI have given [this book] away to a number of people. (Source)

Marvin LiaoMy list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make... (Source)

Marvin LiaoMy list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make... (Source)

Daniel MendelsohnI don’t want to know what Achilles did in bed, frankly. If you want to play with the big boys, fine, but don’t turn The Iliad into a Twilight novel. (Source)

Lucy CoatsI loved the richness of the language, the descriptions. She really made me feel I was in ancient Greece — the smells, the whole environment. (Source)

Anne Thériault@annfosterwriter Omg isn’t this book the best?? (Source)

Bill GatesFascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)

Daniel EkA brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. (Source)

Yuval Noah HarariA book of big questions, and big answers. The book turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind. (Source)

Ron ConwayThe story of the battle of 300 Spartan soldiers against the Persian army. (Source)

Chris FussellA classic in the special operations community. (Source)

Zach Even EshFrom @SPressfield . I love this excerpt from his book. . It reminds me of many things and people... . people who tell you how to grow your gym yet they have never owned a gym a day in their life. . People who… https://t.co/73UaLfH55K (Source)

Daymond John[Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

Grant CardoneThis book emphasized the need to get reliable income streams and to never ever confuse your necessary expenses with the things you want. It’s a timeless classic that every school in America should have in their curriculum. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonThis is a 1920s classic version of How To Get Rich. The ancestor of all the pale imitations, like Rich Dad/Poor Dad, that came since. And while I scoffed at plenty of the allegories from ancient Babylon that presents the lessons, it was still a neat package. And at least ancient Babylon is a more interesting backdrop for teaching lessons about money than some suburban house flipper. I ended up... (Source)

Mary BeardThis is the best work of history ever written. (Source)

Robert GreeneA few of my favorite bios for the new book. #whatimreading (Source)

Hugh BowdenArrian is using Alexander as a model for how to be a king and setting up his bad points as things to avoid and his good points as things to follow. (Source)

Mark ZuckerbergOh, it’s not a favorite book or anything like that, I just added it because I liked it. I don’t think there’s any real significance to the fact that it’s listed there and other books aren’t. But there are definitely books—like the Aeneid—that I enjoyed reading a lot more. (Source)

Ryan HolidayI made an effort to read some classical poets and playwrights this year. The Aneiad was far and away the most quotable, readable and memorable of all of them. There’s no other way to put: the story is AMAZING. Better than the Odyssey, better than Juvenal’s Satires. Inspiring, beautiful, exciting, and eminently readable, I loved this. I took more notes on it that I have on anything I’ve read in a... (Source)

Ted TurnerWhen I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek - and to a lesser extent Roman - history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. (Source)

Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey)What’s (Source)

John David LewisThe ancient writer Polybius narrates Rome’s rise to dominance over the Mediterranean within a 53-year period, an achievement that he calls unprecedented. He is very concerned with the causes of war. He thinks that war and foreign policy events have definite causes, and he presents a method to understand those causes. For example, he sees Hannibal’s attack on Italy as caused by Hannibal’s... (Source)

Ray DalioThe book I’d give [every graduating senior in college or high school] would be 'Lessons From History'. This is the Durants, they were maybe the greatest historians of all time. Anyway, of 5,000 years of history, probably wrote 5,000 pages on it, and they took this book - I think it’s 104 pages - and they took the themes of history, it could be from religion, natural resources, who knows, each one... (Source)

Naval RavikantGreat book. I really like how it summarizes some of the larger themes of history. Very incisive and, unlike most history books, is actually kind of small and it covers a lot of ground. (Source)

Kevin SystromA great book. (Source)

Adrienne MayorThe scholarship is impressive, but he also has this dramatic narrative style – leaving you in suspense at the end of each chapter. (Source)

Robert ServiceIt was the trauma of Thucydides’ lifetime and in the book he sought to explain why the war had gone on so long and why Athens lost it. (Source)

Joseph Nyewhen Thucydides is trying to account for the Peloponnesian War, an extraordinary war in the fifth century BC in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart, he says the basic cause of the war was the rise in power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta. He points out that when there is this kind of fear, and there is a belief that war is inevitable, it can itself become a cause of... (Source)

Gideon RoseThucydides is the single best treatment of international relations, foreign policy and military affairs that exists. It is the best description of what life in a multipolar world is like, what politics and war are like for the units involved, of the basic realities of international relations. It has no single line. (Source)

Professor Frank McdonoughChristmas is coming and if you want to give a thought-provoking book to that history fan in your life then the recent books by the brilliant @peterfrankopan will satisfy. Some write books, this guy changes perceptions. https://t.co/gWZWZnv5TN (Source)

Raoul Pal@The92ers @zerohedge It’s fascinating. The Peter Frankopan book on the Silk Roads told history well from the perspective of Iran in particular (Source)

Simon KuestenmacherAmazing series of symbol visualises Greek mythology. I just finished @stephenfry's amazing book Mythos and could remember more characters than expected. Icon source: https://t.co/xd2ZbgqUca The book: https://t.co/svtMJRmEiF #Greece #mythology #history #booklovers https://t.co/opZxytQDCU (Source)

Ryan HolidayI read this on my honeymoon (probably the only person on the beach reading it, if I had to guess). Especially when I learned after that a new introduction paragraph had been discovered only recently. His tomb may have been found recently too. Imagine if Homer’s works had only been discovered in the mid 1800’s after being lost to history for thousands of years. How crazy would that be? Reading the... (Source)

Stephen CaveGilgamesh is a hero in the ancient mould. He’s half-god, enormously strong, a bit randy, a bit dim, and he goes through adventures which embody the human experience writ large. He starts off as the king of a small kingdom, making a nuisance of himself – enforcing droit du seigneur, sleeping with women on their marriage night, pushing other men around, being a bit of an arse. So the gods make a... (Source)

Jacqui PrettyWhen it comes to fiction, there are so many to choose from! Some books I've loved in the past year include Circe by Madeline Miller. (Source)

Jason KottkeAnother contemporary reinterpretation of Greek mythology from the perspective of a woman. I’m 3/4s of the way through Circe right now and I might like it even more than The Odyssey. (Source)

Jeffrey BenekerAgricola is a tribute to his father-in-law and it’s really nice to have this family connection. A lot of ancient literature can oftentimes seem so distant and cold that it’s hard to see the human connection, but it’s strong in this book. In the introduction and especially in the conclusion you can feel the real bond that Tacitus must have felt with this person. (Source)

Timothy FerrissThis is a letter from Stoic heavyweight Seneca the Younger — who lived a mere 2,000 years or so ago — to his friend Lucilius. It’s from a collection of letters that comprise, effectively, my favorite book of all time. I’ve read it dozens of times, and I loved it so much that I turned it into The Tao of Seneca, a three-volume set of audiobooks. (Source)

Ryan HolidayAfter Marcus Aurelius, this is one of my favorite books. While Marcus wrote mainly for himself, Seneca had no trouble advising and aiding others. In fact, that was his job—he was Nero’s tutor, tasked with reducing the terrible impulses of a terrible man. His advice on grief, on wealth, on power, on religion, and on life are always there when you need them. (Source)

Oliver BurkemanIt’s important to stress that I take a completely mercenary attitude towards Stoicism, picking and choosing the bits that seem to me to be useful techniques for the present day. There are aspects of Stoicism that are very hard to stomach today. For example, the underlying principle that the universe as a whole is in some sense God, with a will or agency of its own, and that rational behaviour... (Source)

Maria PopovaTim Ferriss: "If you could guarantee that every public official or leader read one book, what would it be?": "The book would be, rather obviously, Plato's The Republic. I'm actually gobsmacked that this isn't required in order to be sworn into office, like the Constitution is required for us American immigrants when it comes time to gain American citizenship." (Source)

Rebecca GoldsteinLiving today in Trump’s America, I am constantly reminded of specific passages in the Republic, most saliently his warnings of how a demagogue might arise in the midst of a democracy by fanning up resentments and fears. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonI’m about a third through this and still can’t tell whether Plato is making a mockery of Socrates ideas for the idyllic society or not. So many of the arguments presented as Socrates’ are so tortured and with so disconnected leaps of logic that it’s hard to take it at face value. Yet still, it’s good fun to follow the dialogue. It reads more like a play than a book, and again, immensely... (Source)

Ben HorowitzUnexpectedly the most interesting book on the topic of how you think about inclusion. (Source)

Daymond John[Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

Lisa LingGenghis Khan was a great democratizer. His Mongol Empire conquered more territory in 25 years than the Romans did in 200. (Source)

James HollandCecil Beaton was my next door neighbour when I was growing up, and was one of the reasons why I got interested in this era in the first place. He died when I was 10 but I remember him very well – not least when one of our bantam cockerels escaped into his garden. We all went round searching for it in his beautiful flower beds, him with a huge straw hat on and a magnificent butterfly net that he... (Source)

Johanna HaninkHe goes through to the end of the Peloponnesian War and becomes the major source that we have for what happened in Athens during the rise and the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. He then goes on into this very interesting period, in the first part of the 4th century, when Athens has some aspirations to regain the Aegean empire that it had. (Source)

Tom HollandThis…is an absolute classic which is completely informed by Tacitus. It has that very mordant take on the way that power works and operates. (Source)

Jeffrey BenekerPlutarch would argue that what you’re doing in your private life will predict what’s going to happen if we put you in charge of public life. If you can’t run the small economy of your household in a competent way, why would we put you in charge of the city’s economy? It’s that way of thinking. (Source)

Tom HollandIt takes Tacitus as its model, who was famous for his waspish style, and a careful balancing and modulating of the sentences so that irony would be generated. This is what Gibbon does as well, and it means that not only is it an incredible work of scholarship but it is also compulsively entertaining. I really think that anyone who is prepared to give it a chance will find themselves smiling at... (Source)

Diarmaid MacCullochIt’s a formidable task to read it, but it’s very readable, because although Gibbon was humourless about himself, he has a tremendous sense of humour about the rest of the world. (Source)

Bill GatesI found this to be an interesting follow-up to the excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel. It examines the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations. (Source)

Matthew YglesiasI wanted to get a book on my list that is actually enjoyable to read, so not everything is quite so dry and dull as a narrative. I also wanted to include something that reflects the growing importance of environmental and ecological concerns to progressive politics in America. This is relatively new to the agenda – it’s only been in the last 30 to 35 years. But going forward, one of the most... (Source)

Stefan LessardHe should read this book I’m almost finished with. Jared Diamond is one of my favorite historical authors. https://t.co/f9JLYlsc4v https://t.co/KtPgMZaWen (Source)

Robin Lane FoxWhat I like about this book is that it is focused on cultural, religious and philosophical changes, particularly in the Greek-speaking world where they were strongest. (Source)

Judith HerrinReally, Late Antiquity wasn’t much of a concept before that book came out. In very few words he managed to sketch out a whole new geography. (Source)

Alan KayA few more books like this, and by the time I got to first grade I had been ruined for the 'single book - single truth' ideas of school and church. (Source)

Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey)A lot of Robert Harris’s books are quite similar: they have a protagonist and you see the story, all the machinations through his eyes. In Imperium we see the life of Cicero through the eyes of his slave, Tiro. We know Tiro was a real person, who recorded everything Cicero wrote. (Source)

Stephen Kinsella@gavreilly @SLSingh Love that book (Source)