What’s on my bookshelf? Lots of books about history, of course!

In all seriousness, though, historians love books. Books are how we discover the past, whether we’re reading a diary written by someone in 1500 or another historian’s interpretation of that diary. Without books, no historian could do their job.

Because books are so important for doing history, I’ve decided to share what I’m reading with you. Below you will find discussions of books that I’ve recently read, including my thoughts on various historians’ interpretations of the past, methods of doing and writing history, and more.

• What can we learn from a photograph? A great deal, in the case of Wendy Lower, whose book The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed charts her investigation of a photograph depicting a mass killing of Jews in Ukraine in October 1941. Read more about Lower’s investigation and the wider context of the Holocaust by bullets here.
• In September 1962, 29 people escaped under the Berlin Wall from East Berlin to West Berlin. I recently learned about the fascinating story of Tunnel 29, the subject of a BBC Radio 4 podcast and now a book, for the first time. Read more about Tunnel 29 here.
• December 1941 was a pivotal month in world history, when a series of interconnected events changed the course of the Second World War. Historian Evan Mawdsley charts the events of the first twelve days of December 1941 in the aptly-titled December 1941: Twelve Days that Began a World War, a fascinating, exciting, and original study of the world-changing days between December 1 and December 12, 1941. Read more about this book here.