Books like 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
12 books with a reading profile close to 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Outward-looking; a moderate read.
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1
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Michael Pollan investigates the origins of the human diet by tracing four distinct food chains: industrial corn, organic agribusiness, local pastoralism, and personal foraging.
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2
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Peter Frankopan shifts the focus of global history away from the Atlantic and toward the central nervous system of Eurasia.
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3
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Elizabeth Kolbert explains that Earth is currently undergoing a sixth mass extinction event, differing from the previous five because it is caused by human activity rather than natural disasters.
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4
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Yuval Noah Harari tracks the biological and social evolution of Homo sapiens from our origins as a minor African primate to our current dominance over the biosphere.
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5
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
by Erik Larson
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Erik Larson weaves together the true accounts of two men who shaped Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
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6
How Music Works
by David Byrne
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
David Byrne argues that musical composition is driven by external constraints rather than pure internal inspiration.
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7
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
history, analytical
Patrick Radden Keefe reconstructs the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten taken from her Belfast home by the Irish Republican Army.
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8
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Steve Brusatte traces the evolutionary trajectory of dinosaurs from their emergence as small, peripheral specialists in the Triassic period to their ultimate dominance and sudden extinction.
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9
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
During the 1920s, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma became the wealthiest people per capita in the world after oil was discovered beneath their reservation.
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10
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by Bill Bryson
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Bill Bryson uses his 1851 Norfolk rectory as a physical map to trace how the modern domestic world evolved.
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11
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Eric Schlosser tracks the evolution of the American fast food industry from its roots as localized drive-ins to a global economic force.
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12
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
Also outward-looking · history, analytical
Bill Bryson tracks the development of human understanding from the Big Bang to the arrival of modern civilization.
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