A Civ reading list: 7 books to celebrate Civilization VII

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kennethbirch

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Having played every single game in the series vigorously, I also over the years developed a passion for geopolitics and world history, and read numerous books on the topic. I probably would have anyway, but I'll venture saying that Civ has been a contributing factor.

And for years I had an idea to compile a list of my favourite books. With Civ VII coming out I finally got around to making it. In short, here's my list:
  1. Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
  2. The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel P. Huntington
  3. Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
  4. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
  5. Age of Revolutions, by Fareed Zakaria
  6. The Victory of Reason, by Rodney Stark
  7. The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan
For more full descriptions and background, go to my blog: https://kennethbirch.wordpress.com/...n-vii-a-reading-list-for-a-geopolitics-gamer/

It would be fun to hear if anyone has done the same - what would be on your list?
 
Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the most essential reading for anyone interested in history.
It's written with a flare and confidence that can't be found in modern historians.

Another essential read is Winston Churchill's The Birth of Britain.

Both of these are recent enough to be perfectly readable, but old enough to be free from the assumptions of our own time, thus letting readers get a perspective they might not otherwise.

I've not read The Victory of Reason, but God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Stark is excellent.
 
kennethbirch said:
Having played every single game in the series vigorously, I also over the years developed a passion for geopolitics and world history, and read numerous books on the topic. I probably would have anyway, but I'll venture saying that Civ has been a contributing factor.

And for years I had an idea to compile a list of my favourite books. With Civ VII coming out I finally got around to making it. In short, here's my list:
  1. Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
  2. The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel P. Huntington
  3. Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
  4. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
  5. Age of Revolutions, by Fareed Zakaria
  6. The Victory of Reason, by Rodney Stark
  7. The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan
For more full descriptions and background, go to my blog: https://kennethbirch.wordpress.com/...n-vii-a-reading-list-for-a-geopolitics-gamer/

It would be fun to hear if anyone has done the same - what would be on your list?
Click to expand...

Jared Diamond is generally a good "big picture" read even if people criticize him for pushing narratives a bit; very good when taken with a pinch of salt. I liked Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. I want to read Upheaval and the World Until Yesterday.

Another book that fits very well into VII's narrative specifically is The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. Again, a little softer on the scientific rigor but a few nice bigger ideas in there.
 
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Archanist said:
You can read Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (The Social Cancer and The Reign of Greed as the title for some translations, respectively) to find out why Jose Rizal pissed the Spaniards enough that they executed him.
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Speaking of which, I just picked up a few fantasy realist books to brush up on mi Espanol, but I also grabbed Che's Global Justice. I think after I'm done with those I will find Rizal copies.
 
"Rubicon" and "Pax" by Tom Holland.
"1177 BC, The Year Civilization Died" by Eric Cline
"At the Gates of Rome" by Don Hollway.
TheSpaceCowboy said:
Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the most essential reading for anyone interested in history.
It's written with a flare and confidence that can't be found in modern historians.

Another essential read is Winston Churchill's The Birth of Britain.

Both of these are recent enough to be perfectly readable, but old enough to be free from the assumptions of our own time, thus letting readers get a perspective they might not otherwise.

I've not read The Victory of Reason, but God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Stark is excellent.
Click to expand...
Gibbon FTW
 
Gibbon's a good example of why you need some detachment from your subject. His seething hatred of Christianity and obsession with "Roman masculinity" both severely warped his perspective. Almost everything he wrote is nonsense. He wrote his nonsense very well, though. It's not hard to see why he was once a staple; it's a shame he continues to dominate pop history, though.

A bit narrower in scope than some of the other suggestions, but Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation is an excellent, approachable, and thorough account of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (since the Reformation touched every corner and aspect of life in the period, it's more than just a religious history). He begins before the Reformation and continues into its aftermath in the early 18th century. Given this is Ed Beach's favorite period, you can bet some of its figures will continue to show up (this is where I first read about Catherine de Medici, for instance, and my top choice for Poland, Sigismund II Augustus).

(I wish I could recommend his Christianity: The First 3,000 Years, but unfortunately it's painfully clear he's out of his depth when talking about anything but Medieval and Early Modern Christianity. His chapter on the early church is vague, brief, and sometimes plainly wrong; I appreciate he includes a chapter on non-Chalcedonian Christianity and the Church of the East, but it is sadly perfunctory; and before his chapter on American Christianity he admits that he's never been to America and it shows--some of his claims are outlandish. All of that is not really an indictment; he just bit off more than he could chew. It's far too enormous a topic for a single author.)
 
Some good fits for civ that focus on narrative and not on analysis and can be seen as introduction books to the topics they cover. I would add more that are specifically on civ 7 topics (Ibn Battuta, Prussia and the 7-years war), but they aren't available in English. Unfortunately, while I've read some of the suggested ones above, my own focus is on things that aren't important in civ games, because I read a lot about earlier times, specific interest on a few select civilizations, or cultural history.

Harold Dorn & James McClellan: Science and Technology in World History
This is an easy and interesting read with also a bit of analysis, actually. It's certainly at odds with civ's traditional take on science and technology, which might make it even more interesting to read for people that either have only a modern understanding of the terms and how they related, or one that is shaped by civ.

David Abulafia: The Great Sea
12'000 year of history of the Mediterranean (and yes, it's about the sea and the port towns, not about the empires etc.). It's a phenomenal narrative that highlights the connections between the shores over time. It's not in great detail, but it provides a great overview also on lesser known topics and has a rich bibliography on all parts of the med in all times.

François-Xavier Fauvelle: The Golden Rhinoceros
An overview on (Sub-Saharan) Africa in the Middle Ages. Probably the best (and only) book you find on that which is not tailored to academic, popular or nationalist readers, but seeks to be an entry drug for further reading. I feel that African history is still the least known for most people, and maybe this book can provide some more understanding and ideas for civ choices.

Hermann Kalke & Dietmar Rothermund: A History of India
India is surely better known than Africa, but this is also entry drug for people that want to see a bigger picture of what happened on the subcontinent in the past thousands of years. I think with 7's deblobbing of India, this is worth a read.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel: The Buried City
This might seem like a strange choice: by cover and content, it's a book about Pompeii written by the current head of the archeological park and it doesn't relate much to civ. However, this short book has some very well put thoughts on why we are fascinated by history, and how the personal beliefs and opinions of archeologists/historians shape our views on previous societies, despite us actually knowing better by facts. And it includes ideas and projects how to experience antiquity for kids and teenagers. All these points can be connected to civ in some way.
 
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Zaarin said:
Gibbon's a good example of why you need some detachment from your subject. His seething hatred of Christianity and obsession with "Roman masculinity" both severely warped his perspective. Almost everything he wrote is nonsense. He wrote his nonsense very well, though. It's not hard to see why he was once a staple; it's a shame he continues to dominate pop history, though.
Click to expand...
Clash of Civilizations is also a really bad book.
 
Here's my take.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Age of... series. These are three volumes that go in depth into global (albeit largely Europe-centered) dynamics throughout the core of our Modern era (the "long 19th century"). They are vital at understanding economic, political, and cultural currents and how they intersect.

Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy. William Dalrymple is a great chronicler of Indian history. This book goes into the East India Company and its appearance in India, its rise to power and its ultimate fall and integration into the Raj. The conflict here between private capital/empire, feudal empire, and empire-empire, and how people in these systems acted to change their course, is really interesting. (Dalrymple in general is great).

Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. What's fascinating here isn't just the rise of Temujin from minor nomad to slave to ruler of the world, but the groundwork that the Mongols made in creating a global system. How do we manage a world where power is absolute, but which does not have a common cultural, linguistic, or religious basis? That, it seems, is a lesson for the present as well. Let's hope for less bloodshed, though.

Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. I've talked about this one before, and so I won't go back over it, but the interesting parts here involve the encounter between a British Empire obsessed with borders and mapping, and a Siam that was center-oriented. What I like is not that it goes into these two conceptions of space, or not just that, but that it both challenges our assumptions about nations and borders, and easy characterizations of a rapacious all-conquering colonialism. I should mention here Ben Anderson's Imagined Communities as well, the second edition of which draws key points from Thongchai.

Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce. Reid's speciality is in island Southeast Asia, but he goes into the interconnections across the region at the time - between China, the Middle East, etc.

Cozzens, Peter. Tecumseh and the Prophet. Here is a biography of Tecumseh that goes over not only his personality and his time (as well as that of his brother), but also the transformations that were taking place in the Midwest as a newly unleashed United States moved to claim what it saw as its destiny, a British Empire sought to curb these ambitions and limit this power, and indigenous groups sought new possibilities.

Silk Roads was mentioned here already, but I want to underline that.

Many of you might know Mike Duncan as a podcaster, but I found his Storm before the Storm and Hero of Two Worlds great reads (on Rome and Lafayette, respectively).

I also don't want to recommend primary sources here, as they can be difficult to get through and not exactly the kind of higher-level look that we're talking about, but they're there. The Secret History of the Mongols, for instance, or Xenophon, etc. Certainly reading the Analects and the various Hindu epics was something that I did in preparation for this work.

To contribute to the existing conversation: I've taught Huntington before, but kind of as an example of what political scientists get wrong about culture and history. Huntington's thesis is that conflicts in the post-1990s are characterized more by cultural affiliation rather than economic or political ideology. But there are a few errors that he makes - the list of civilizations and maps of the world he generates rely upon present-day (well, 1990s) groupings that an American political scientist not well versed outside of Europe might think about. There's no reason, for instance, that Thailand and not India would stick up for Tibet, though he groups both Thailand and Tibet as "Buddhist civilization." More broadly, it erases the historical development of these "civilizations" and the development of how we imagine them to be - why do we ("we" = Harvard political scientists) think about the world in this way? It also homogenizes within groupings - to explain the Taliban, for instance, one must look at modernizing religious movements (modernization = the "purification" of religion into fundamental forms), ethnic Pashtun politics, and class and regional conflict within a "civilization" - to say "Islamic Civilization" or even "Sunni civilization" simply washes out any attempt at real understanding of local events, history and politics. An unfortunate consequence of such models is that they often can create what they seek to observe - as places self-essentialize as a part of nationalist projects, they often can bring about these sorts of configurations.
 
I think I can put the Huntington critique a bit better. By grouping countries by culture, Huntington makes the error (a typical senior professor error, I might add) of stepping outside of his realm of knowledge without getting versed in what's out there. One could categorize places by economic conditions ("middle income", etc), alliances, or government type (one can see, for instance, interesting parallels between Turkey and Thailand: places in middle income zones, democratic at times but with a history of authoritarian rule, an idea of ethnic and religious homogeneity but with regional insurgency, a military that has a history of intervening in politics) - all zones that political science has a history of addressing. But the minute he steps out into history and culture, he's in a world where tons have been written... that he's not going to address. Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel makes a similar error, though founding the origins of societies in ecological (and thus economic) sources is a little more warranted.
 
I haven't finished it yet (most of my reading time is going towards academic papers) but I'm enjoying The Other Ancient Civilizations by Raven Todd DaSilva for the same reasons that I enjoy the Civ franchise - introductions to cultures and empires I'd either heard of but never looked into before or hadn't even known about to begin with.
 
Going to stick with only recent works, here, or I'll go on for page after page . . .

William Taylor: Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History This lays out the new argument for the domestication of horses, placing the event almost 2000 years later than was once assumed. He published the same thesis as an article in Scientific American, but that was not convincing (to me) since it left out the detailed paleo-osteopathic and archeological evidence. This book also discusses in detail the alternative domesticated animals that messed up the original interpretation. Short form: all the early solid-wheeled carts and wagons were drawn by donkeys, equid hybrids or oxen, and the Wheel as an invention predates the spoked wheel chatiot by about 2000 years. All of our Tech Trees will need revising . . .​

Daisy Dunn: The Missing Thread: Women in the Classical World. I did an advanced degree in Classics half a century ago, but this book was still a revelation. The amount of female inclusion in Greek and Roman (and Achaemenid Persian) history, and the complete mis-interpretation of their activities by traditional hisyorians, is amazing. On a more narrow topic, her Shadow of Vesuvius, a biography of Pliny the Younger, is also very good: she uses his life as a mirror for Roman cultural history in the first years of the Empire: reads like a Who's Who of the early Imperium.

Islam Issa: Alexandria: The City That Changed the World. A love letter to his hometown, and a marvellous history of Alexander's city from its founding to the present day.

Nandini Das: Courting India. The history of England's first contacts with Mughul India in the Seventeenth Century, a combination of history, farce, and tragedy if ever there was. This is a different view of "British Empire" in that in Mughul India the British (and other Europeans) were supplicants, desperate to stay on the good side of the richest civilization in the world.

Catherine Hanley: 1217: the Battles That Saved England. Did you know England once had a French king? - And not just some Norman who spoke some French, but a real Prince of the French royal family who came to England with a legitimate claim to the throne and a large number of English supporters. And then lost it all by losing a land battle, a siege, and a sea battle all in the same year. Fascinating.

I'll second the reccommendation of Tecumseh and the Prophet, and add a companion piece:
James Horn: A Brave and Cunning Prince. A biography of Opechancanough, the adamant anti-European native in the early history of Jamestown and Virginia. He came by his attitude with good reason: he was kidnapped by the Spanish, taken to Europe and educated as a Jesuit missionary, returned to America to convert his fellow natives, and showed what he thought of the whole process by escaping the Spanish missionaries and then returning with a war party and wiping out the Europeans. A far more compelling tale than the Pocahontas fantasy . . .
 
Boris Gudenuf said:
Daisy Dunn: The Missing Thread: Women in the Classical World.
Click to expand...
This reminds me, though it's not terribly related to Civ, Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years is a fantastic case study on women's economic impact in the Ancient and Classical world as well as a thorough history of spinning, weaving, and cloth-making, all written in a very approachable style.
 
The Ancient Guide to Modern Life is a neat book that examines classical Greek and Roman culture and history through the lens of their similarities and differences from modern society while deconstructing or debunking common misconceptions about the era. Very entertaining read imo.
 
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