History Books You Should Read James' Burke's The Day the Universe Changed. I have always enjoyed Burke's television series (they aired on the Discovery Channel at the time that I worked there) with his emphasis of pivotal changes (greatly influenced by Kuhn's vitally important book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as Burke credits in his introduction) . This book gives an overview of European history, with an emphasis on the connections between discoveries, and other pivotal moments. If you feel you're lacking a cohesive understanding of European history, this is a good book for you. James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me examines several high school history textbooks, to show how they blatantly violate the truth, and leave out huge, and important parts of history. The reason is not some right-wing conspiracy, but the need for textbook companies to be approved by textbook committees (in order to sell) and in order to do that, they must be as bland, neutral and non-controversial as possible. Like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States (who endorses this book on the cover), an important contribution to historical understanding. The bulk of the book fills in the gaps in our historical knowledge caused by this effect. I greatly enjoyed Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (the fates of Human Societies). It offered a believable, and comprehensive, history of world society since the origin of man. I have also read Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, which I enjoyed, but which did not effect me like this book did. Mao Tse-Tung's book On Guerrilla Warfare is a fascinating, honest appraisal of the psychology, organization, techniques, and benefits of Guerrilla Warfare, by one its great experts. While I'm unlikely ever to need the knowledge contained herein, I found the issue very interesting. Christopher Hitchen's The Missionary Position is an expose of Mother Theresa's fraud. Essentially, the problem with her is that she gathers millions of dollars, sends it all to the Vatican, and refuses to give any medical treatment beyond aspirin to the horribly suffering patients in her facilities, because she believes that suffering is good. An important book, though it was generally ignored due to the reverence attached to the topic. Other book categories: Business Science, Science fiction, Ayn Rand, Salman Rushdie, Buckminster Fuller