The best recent history books
For further recommendations, try our annual round-up of the best books, films, TV, music, podcasts and more. Budapest. By Victor Sebestyen. W&N; 432 pages; £25 Forever caught between East and West, the capital of Hungary encapsulates the drama of central Europe in its wonders and horrors.
The author, who left the city as a child after the uprising against communist rule in 1956, excels in describing Budapest’s Habsburg heyday, the historical role of its Jewish population and the hubris and humiliations that have helped shape the city. The Siege of Loyalty House. By Jessie Childs.
Bodley Head; 318 pages; £25 The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless.
The Serpent Coiled in Naples. By Marius Kociejowski. University of Chicago Press; 506 pages; $27.95. Haus Publishing; £20 To write about Naples, you really need to be a poet—or, even better, an antiquarian bookseller.
This author is both and has produced a delightful work that is as eclectic, labyrinthine, ironic and shocking as the great Italian city itself. A Pipeline Runs Through It. By Keith Fisher.
Allen Lane; 768 pages; £35 A sprawling, scrupulously researched history of oil from the Palaeolithic era to the first world war. Black gold has been as much a curse as a blessing for the people on whose land it has been found. A compelling read and an immensely valuable guide to a great and terrible industry.
The World: A Family History. By Simon Sebag Montefiore. W&N; 1,344 pages; £35. To be published in America by
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