Does anyone have a suggestion for a good book on history?
One of the first that springs to mind for me is Garry Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg — a fascinating look at the Gettysburg Address in terms of the history of rhetoric/spoken oratory as well as Lincoln’s evolving thoughts on the Declaration of Independence and, more specifically, what the Civil War was really for My hands-down favorite “readable” social-cultural history book (with lurid, mysterious murder-suicide plot thrown in for good measure!) is Frederic Norton’s A Nervous Splendor, which almost reads like a novel set among the artists and aristocrats of Vienna during the winter of 1888-89.
