About ORIAS World History Reading Group books
Books for each year are listed in the order in which the group(s) read them. In early years, the San Francisco book group organized their reading by theme. In more recent years groups have not always followed a theme, so books are simply listed in the order in which they were read.
Group members selected books each year to fit their own academic needs and interests. Book choices do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government
2023 - 2024 San Francisco and East Bay Books
Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones
Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trioullot
River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman
Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall by Margaret E. Roberts
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo
An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci
The Prince and the Coyote by David Bowles
2022 - 2023 San Francisco and East Bay Books
God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence
The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project by Krithika Varagur
A Fortress in Brooklyn by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper
The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca by Eric Tagliacozzo
To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity by Allan Heaton Anderson
Anatomy of Torture by Ron E. Hassner
How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr
The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began by Valerie Hansen
Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present by Benjamin Lieberman, Elizabeth Gordon
Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy by Andy Bruno
Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green by Henry Sanderson
Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser
The Backstreets: a novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun
Podcast playlist and article related to British East India Company.
- Read "Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History" from The New Yorker.
- Listen to 4 episodes of Empire. It's available on Apple Podcastsand Spotify.
- Option 1 - Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 (focus on British East India Co)
- Option 2 - Episodes 8, 9, 10, 11 (focus on South Asian politics, via the diamond)
Climate change podcast playlist
-
- "What Is Climate Change?" Future Imperfect(link is external) (48 minutes)
- "Coalbrookdale" Threshold, season 4/episode 3(link is external) (48 minutes)
- "Climate Change And Record Breaking Heat Around The World"Consider This, July 21, 2022(link is external) (13 minutes)
- "Pakistan, Under Water"The Daily, October 5, 2022(link is external) (39 minutes)
- "Makoko and Eko"Threshold, season 4/episode 7(link is external) (55 minutes)
Optional - urban planning/extreme weather:
2021 - 2022 San Francisco and East Bay Books
Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World by Gillen D'Arcy Wood
The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Girard and Lockley
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples by Alastair Couper
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear
The Other Slavery by Andres Resendez
The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics by Mae Ngai
African Europeans by Olivette Otele
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes by Anand Gopal
Playlist of podcasts and online lectures about Ukraine.
- About Ukrainian history: "Ukraine: A Normal Country - Petryshyn Lecture with Timothy Snyder" from Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University (~57 minutes)
- About Ukrainian history (recorded during the Russian invasion of Ukreaine in 2014): "Episode 46: Ukraine and Russia" from 15-Minute History podcast (~18 minutes)
- "Angela Stent: Putin Wants a Disruptive World Order" from Amanpour & Co. (~17 minutes)
- "Hindsight Up Front: Ukraine | Who is Vladimir Putin? A Conversation with Baroness Catherine Ashton" from the Wilson Center (38 minutes)
- About China, Russia, and Ukraine: "Chinese international relations scholar Dingding Chen on Beijing’s position in the Russo-Ukrainian War" from Sinica podcast (~57 minutes)
- About the global food crisis resulting from the war: "How the War in Ukraine is Creating a Global Food Crisis" from The Daily podcast (21 minutes)
2020 - 2021 San Francisco and East Bay Books
How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Women on the Margins by Natalie Zemon Davis
In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint, by Donald Lopez, Jr.
The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan, by Adam Clulow
The World and a Very Small Place in Africa, by Donald Wright
The Tar Baby: A Global History, by Bryan Wagner
The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico, by Lisa Sousa
God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World, by Alan Mikhail
The Ottoman Age of Exploration, by Giancarlo Casale
Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire, by Coll Thrush
Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia, by Danielle Ross
Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich
A Sea of Debt: Law And Economic Life In The Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950, by Fahad Ahmad Bishara
Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid
Playlist of recorded lectures in lieu of reading:
Ancient Civilizations of the Americas by Anna Guengerich 2.5.2015 - The Moche
Ancient Civilizations of the Americas by Anna Guengerich 2.12.2015 - The Mississippians
Ancient Civilizations of the Americas by Anna Guengerich 2.25.2015 - The Amazon Basin
2019 - 2020 San Francisco and East Bay Books
Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World by Gregory T. Cushman
India Connected by Ravi Agrawal
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper
Empire of Guns: the violent making of the Industrial Revolution by Priya Satia
Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca by Eileen Kane
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam by Michael G. Vann
The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade by Benjamin Breen
The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico by Lisa Sousa
A Social History of the Deccan, 1300 - 1761 by Richard M. Eaton
Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between by Ed Pulford
2018 - 2019 San Francisco and East Bay Books
Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
Myanmar's Enemy Within by Francis Wade
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Return by Hisham Matar
Dear Leader by Jang Jin-sung
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Khaki Shorts Saffron Flags by Tapan Basu et al.
The Global Transformation of Time by Vanessa Ogle
1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline
Empress of the East by Leslie Peirce
Tell This in My Memory by Eve M. Troutt-Powell
Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China by Melissa Dale
Podcast Playlist
Fall of Rome Podcast -
Tides of History: Natural Disasters and the End of the Roman Empire
Interview: Historian Kyle Harper on Disease, Climate and the Fall of the Roman Empire
Ottoman History Podcast -
Episode 252: Tracing Plague in the Ottoman Empire
Episode 276: War, Environment, and the Ottoman Habsburg Frontier
Generation Anthropocene -
A Tale of Two Grain(link is external)s
99% Invisible -
2017 - 2018 San Francisco & East Bay Books
The Art of Not Being Governed, by James C. Scott
Seeing Like a State, by James C. Scott
Selections from The Perspective of the World, by Fernand Braudel
(Volume 3 of Civilization & Capitalism 15th - 18th Century)
China's Asian Dream, by Tom Miller
In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint, by Lopez and McCracken
Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, by Christian Parenti
Africa's Discovery of Europe, by David Northrup
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
Little Soldiers, by Lenora Chu
2016 - 2017 San Francisco & East Bay Books
The Little Ice Age, by Brian Fagan
Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
Family, by Ba Jin
Paradise in Ashes, by Beatriz Manz
The Myth of Continents, by Martin W. Lewis & Kären Wigen
The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia, by Donald R. Wright
Famine, by Cormac Ó Gráda
Where the Jews Aren't, by Masha Gessen
Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China, by Alec Ash
Migration and Diasporas & Cross-Cultural Interactions
Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, by Kathleen Lopez
Migration: A World History, by Michael C. Fisher
The End of Empire: Attila the Hun & the Fall of Rome, by Christopher Kelly
Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, by Ehud R. Toledano
A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia, by Thomas Keneally
After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry, by Jonathan S. Ray
Immigrants in the Lands of Promise, by Samuel L. Baily
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp, by Ben Rawlence
Carbon Democracy, by Timothy Mitchell
The Modern World
Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul, by Charles King
Pink Sari Revolution: A Tale of Women and Power in India, by Amana Fontanella-Khan
The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century, by David Reynold
A History of Future Cities, by Daniel Brook
Religion and the State
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, by Pankaj Mishra
Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand, by Justin McDaniel
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, by Vali R. Nasr
Shinto and the State, 1868-1988, by Helen Hardacre
The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti, by Kate Ramsey
Travel Narratives
Disorienting Encounters: Travels of a Moroccan Scholar in France in 1845-1846, Susan Gilson Miller, (trans. and ed.)
An Area of Darkness, by V. S. Naipaul
Drifting Toward the Southeast: The Story of Five Japanese Castaways, by Junya Nagakuni and Junji Kitadai
Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology, Elizabeth A. Bohls & Ian Duncan, eds.
Shadow of the Silk Road, by Colin Thubron
A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People, by Zhou Daguan (author), Peter Harris (trans.)
The Hye Ch'O Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India, by Hye Ch'O, Jan Yun-Hua, Iido Shotaro, Yang Han-Sung (authors) and Laurence Preston (ed).
Trade, Finance & the Global Economy
Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chunking Mansions, Hong Kong, by Gordon Mathews
Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber
Before European Hegemony: The World System 1250 - 1350, by Janet Abu-Lughod
The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800 - 1914, by Roger Owen
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean: Seas in History, by Michael Pearson
The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, by Thant Myint-U
Maritime SE Asia to 1500, by Lynda Shaffer
Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
East Africa and the Indian Ocean, by Edward Alpers
Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History, by Giles Milton
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, by Robert D. Kaplan
Transnational Transgressions
Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, by Marcus Rediker
McMafia : A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, by Misha Glenny
Smuggling: Contraband and Corruption in World History, by Alan Karras
The Great Hedge of India, Roy Moxham
Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915, Eric Tagliacozzo
The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright
No Boundaries, Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement, by Tom Diaz
Central America and the Caribbean
A Brief History of Central America by Perez-Brignoli
Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois.
BANANAS: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World, by Peter Chapman.
Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel
Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under US Imperial Rule, by Michel Gobat
After Fidel, Updated Edition: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba's Revolution by Brian Latell