[Overactive Imagination]

My recommendations:

Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy by Michael Hunt

The Punishment of Virtue by Sarah Chayes

What are your recommendations?

This post has been edited by Overactive Imagination: 12 December 2013 - 04:56 AM

[lastname]

Not what I had in mind when I saw the title.

But if you want recs along these lines, try Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

[worry]

Haven't read these since college, so none of them are recent works, but they were memorable:
Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West Was Lost edited by Colin Calloway. Primary sources, very interesting.
To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Linda McMurry. One of my favorite figures in American History, excellent text.
The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within by Geoffrey Hosking. Thorough without being overwhelming.

More recent:
The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves by Andrew Ward. Lots of primary sources again, though the book is definitely written by (as opposed to simply edited by) Ward. The voices are personal, intimate, and often insightful.
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. I like Sarah Vowell in general, but this is by far her best IMO (subject matter is the Puritans). Obviously she's an NPR-friendly essayist rather than a hardcore historian, but this book in particular gets the balance just right.

[D'iversify]

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie - Montaillou. Reconstruction of life in one of the last Cathar villages in the late 13th century Languedoc.

Michel Foucault - The Order of Things. Interesting thesis regarding the origins of the human sciences, a little obtuse towards the end but the main body of the text is excellent.

Robert E. Kohler - Lords of the Fly. Chronicles the history and personalities of early fruit fly genetics. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea but is very readable and very informative for those interested in the history of genetics.

Peter J. Bowler - Evolution: The History of an Idea. Will challenge your preconceptions.

[Tapper]

Snuck between La Roy Ladurie and Foucault should probably be Fernand Braudel's La Mediterranée (good luck reading it, though...it's tough), and it is mostly because of its Longue Durée approach, which was revolutionary.
I quite like David Halberstam's works, the Best and the Brightest and The Coldest War stand out.
Natasha's Dance, a cultural history of Russia by Orlando Figes. Extremely readable. Figes himself got under a lot of fire for The Whisperers (which is based on oral accounts that were found faulty).
Also, Thucydides' History of the Peloponessian War.

[Morgoth]

You can always og for some Tom Holland if you want some lighter, more accessible ancient history.

[Overactive Imagination]

Oh another one I liked was "All the Shah's Men" about an American coup in Iran

[D'iversify]

Tapper, on 12 December 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:

Snuck between La Roy Ladurie and Foucault should probably be Fernand Braudel's La Mediterranée (good luck reading it, though...it's tough), and it is mostly because of its Longue Durée approach, which was revolutionary.

Haven't read Braudel, but very much aware of and have meant to give his work a go at some point.

[stone monkey]

Vanished Kingdoms: A History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies is pretty interesting. An often surprising, and regularly very sad, set of stories of lands that just aren't there any more.