Last year I read Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, followed up by Gone With the Wind, a suitable combination of books. I now realize I also need to read Cold Mountain, another novel set in the
Civil War. The trio of works no doubt compliment each other and give you a better understanding of a critical time in U.S. history.
I realized today that at Heart of Darkness, Josef Conrad's novel of British imperialism in Africa, is probably best preceded or followed up with Things Fall Apart, another take on the same subject by African writer Chinua Achibe. It probably also would not hurt to follow it up by trekking across Los Angeles to see the stage production of Heart of Darkness that was featured in the Los Angeles Times yesterday.
You can also try The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, followed by any number of novels about WWII. I just finished Jeff Shaara's No Less Than Victory, but my favorite WWII novels are David L. Robbins' The War of the Rats, about the Battle of Stalingrad and The End of War, about the fall of Berlin. Both novels gave me insight into parts of WWII I knew little about.
Does anyone else out there in the blogosphere have a favorite string of books--novels and non-fiction--they would recommend to better understand what happened during a specific time in history?
See ya’ later.
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