Recently, I’ve read three nonfiction books—which is unusual for me. I’m drawn to books that invite us to view the world through a different lens, and all three were phenomenal, despite being remarkably different from one another..
The story of America I learned in school began with Columbus “discovering” a strange continent and paving the way for civilization—and, ultimately, for my ancestors. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen offers a remarkable counternarrative told from the Indigenous perspective. He argues that even the term “colonial America” is misleading. Instead, we should think of an “Indigenous America” that Europeans colonized only slowly, unevenly, and with great difficulty.
My rating: 4 out of 5.
In Pathogenesis, Jonathan Kennedy challenges the myth of human exceptionalism—the belief that men and women are the primary drivers of social and political change. Many of history’s heroes and villains, he argues, were shaped by something far more humble: microbes that won wars, toppled empires, and transformed civilizations. The book takes readers through sixty thousand years of history, examining eight major outbreaks of infectious disease that helped create the modern world.
This is a great book.
My rating: 5+. That means I bought the clothbound edition and fully intend to read it again.
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild tells a much darker story. In the late nineteenth century, while European powers were carving up Africa, Belgium’s King Leopold II carried out a brutal plundering of the territory surrounding the Congo River. His regime of colonial exploitation contributed to a catastrophic loss of life, even as he carefully cultivated a public reputation as a great humanitarian.
It is a great book—and a horrible, horrible one.
The world eventually learned what was happening in the Congo through what became one of the twentieth century’s first major international human-rights movements.
My rating: 5 out of 5. But I will never read it again. It still gives me flashbacks.
Thanks for leaving a reply