Recommended reading for fans of The History of the Twentieth Century. These are some of my favorite sources for the Belle Époque portion of the podcast (1901-1914):
The War That Ended Peace
by Margaret MacMillan
MacMillan is a scholar I admire and this book is a thorough and up-to-date examination of the causes of the Great War.
The Proud Tower
by Barbara Tuchman
This is the book that inspired The History of the Twentieth Century podcast. Tuchman is a brilliant writer, and in this collection of essays, she examines a series of issues and controversies in the run-up to the Great War. If you have listened to our podcast, you will like this book, and you will recognize the style that juxtaposes political and cultural milestones. I understand the audiobook version is awesome, too.
In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines
by Stanley Karnow
Karnow gives a thorough and brutally honest historical account of the complex relationship between the United States and the Philippines.
The Bully Pulpit
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
A joint biography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, with an emphasis on the muckraker journalists of the era, by one of America’s greatest living biographers.
King Leopold’s Ghost
by Adam Hochschild
The definitive work on King Leopold II’s crimes in the Congo. Hochschild bravely presents a story that many would prefer to forget.
A Box of Sand
by Charles Stephenson
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only modern English-language study of this important but forgotten war.
Dawn of the Belle Époque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends
by Mary McAuliffe
Clearly a labor of love. McAuliffe tells intertwining stories of some of the key historical figures in Paris from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 through the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Twilight of the Belle Époque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends through the Great War
by Mary McAuliffe
Companion volume to the above, which carries the story forward to the end of the Great War.
A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
by Geoffrey Wawro
Charts the failures of Austria-Hungary before and during the war and makes a persuasive case that the overreaching and bungling of the Empire was an major element in the tragedy of the Great War, one that still doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
by Miranda Carter
A history of the period that focuses on the world’s three leading monarchs, all related, and their personal relationships. The author is perhaps too eager to attribute all the major events of the era to the foibles of these three rulers and the ups and downs of their interactions, but nevertheless an engaging look at a time when such things mattered.
The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905
by Geoffrey Jukes
A short but thorough examination of this crucial conflict.
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
by Mike Davis
Groundbreaking historiography on the effects of both climate variation and Western exploitation on India, China, and Brazil and how the destructive policies of imperialism contributed to the wealth gap in today’s world.
Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War
by Richard Hallion
Thorough and perceptive recounting of the dream of human flight from the legend of Icarus to the Great War.
Polar Reaches: The History of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration
by Richard Sale
A careful recounting of all that is known (sometimes tantalizingly little) about expeditions to the North and South Poles in the 19th and twentieth centuries.