This list is for the most well known history books on Goodreads,

For purposes of this list, only include books with over 9999 ratings and shelved at least 1000 times as history.

Anything with less than 10,000 ratings or shelved less than 1000 times as history will be removed and without comment.

See also:
Best History Books
Best Non fiction American History Books
Best Non fiction War Books
Best Popular History Books on Goodreads

History By Year:
2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010

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4.38 avg rating — 1,385,345 ratings
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4.13 avg rating — 817,328 ratings
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3.90 avg rating — 223,493 ratings
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4.09 avg rating — 270,216 ratings
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4.28 avg rating — 202,637 ratings
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4.23 avg rating — 126,037 ratings
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3.88 avg rating — 35,721 ratings
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34

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4.13 avg rating — 137,256 ratings
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3.99 avg rating — 99,449 ratings
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4.05 avg rating — 96,803 ratings
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3.98 avg rating — 43,021 ratings
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38

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3.90 avg rating — 113,108 ratings
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39

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4.17 avg rating — 84,770 ratings
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40

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4.09 avg rating — 70,133 ratings
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4.23 avg rating — 63,825 ratings
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4.19 avg rating — 121,093 ratings
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4.39 avg rating — 366,858 ratings
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4.17 avg rating — 12,883 ratings
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56

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3.93 avg rating — 47,491 ratings
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3.93 avg rating — 12,775 ratings
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4.39 avg rating — 381,068 ratings
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4.40 avg rating — 372,065 ratings
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4.35 avg rating — 57,825 ratings
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4.30 avg rating — 140,952 ratings
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4.18 avg rating — 58,990 ratings
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4.21 avg rating — 486,515 ratings
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4.32 avg rating — 83,152 ratings
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3.89 avg rating — 57,046 ratings
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4.18 avg rating — 292,087 ratings
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4.28 avg rating — 365,737 ratings
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4.25 avg rating — 69,579 ratings
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4.10 avg rating — 42,434 ratings
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4.13 avg rating — 164,895 ratings
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4.46 avg rating — 22,628 ratings
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81

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3.89 avg rating — 24,732 ratings
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82

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4.23 avg rating — 28,610 ratings
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83

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4.23 avg rating — 150,856 ratings
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3.84 avg rating — 123,065 ratings
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4.30 avg rating — 126,413 ratings
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4.14 avg rating — 458,917 ratings
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4.06 avg rating — 109,387 ratings
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4.03 avg rating — 32,878 ratings
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4.17 avg rating — 35,277 ratings
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4.46 avg rating — 102,271 ratings
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3.76 avg rating — 30,565 ratings
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4.06 avg rating — 91,464 ratings
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3.94 avg rating — 75,275 ratings
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3.99 avg rating — 77,225 ratings
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3.90 avg rating — 31,174 ratings
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4.21 avg rating — 84,133 ratings
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4.39 avg rating — 29,636 ratings
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4.48 avg rating — 119,770 ratings
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4.30 avg rating — 29,292 ratings
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304 books · 54 voters · list created February 2nd, 2017 by Mitchell Friedman (votes) .
48 likes · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.


Mitchell 11144 books
172 friends
~☆~Autumn 8170 books
147 friends
Slj 346 books
0 friends
Margaret 3906 books
220 friends
Carol 4934 books
162 friends
Saturday's 2281 books
66 friends
☆Ruth☆ 5223 books
45 friends
Phillip 5264 books
138 friends

More voters…


Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)

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message 1: by Mitchell (new)

Mitchell Friedman removed the following books for not meeting the criteria of 5000 ratings AND 500 times shelved as history

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England - 2087 ratings, 253 shelved as history
Call the Midwife - 182 shelved as history
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War - 235 shelved as military history civil war


message 2: by Mitchell (last edited May 18, 2026 08:45AM) (new)

Mitchell Friedman I will be tightening down this list's criteria - so a minimum of 10,000 ratings and a minimum of 1000 tags as history

Found 86 to add and 76 to remove.


message 3: by Mitchell (new)

Mitchell Friedman Books that should be ADDED (Meet criteria on shelf): The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Hardcover) and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Hardcover) and The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Hardcover) and The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (Hardcover) and How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Hardcover) and An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3) and The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Hardcover) and White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Hardcover) and The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (Hardcover) and The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War (Hardcover) and Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (Kindle Edition) and These Truths: A History of the United States (Paperback) and The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors (Hardcover) and How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Hardcover) and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Paperback) and The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich, #1) and Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (Hardcover) and Orientalism (Paperback) and Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection (Hardcover) and The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Paperback) and Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Paperback) and American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Paperback) and A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (Hardcover) and The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1) and Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (Hardcover) and All the Light We Cannot See (Hardcover) and Jerusalem: The Biography (Hardcover) and A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (Hardcover) and The Origins of Totalitarianism (Paperback) and Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens (Kindle Edition) and Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (Hardcover) and Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Hardcover) and War's Unwomanly Face (Hardcover) and The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (Hardcover) and The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West (Hardcover) and The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War (Hardcover) and American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Hardcover) and The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Hardcover) and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (Hardcover) and Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (Hardcover) and Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Paperback) and Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Hardcover) and The Things They Carried (Paperback) and The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride (Hardcover) and A Night to Remember (Paperback) and Peter the Great: His Life and World (Paperback) and Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1) and Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 (Hardcover) and The Iliad (Hardcover) and The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Hardcover) and Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (Paperback) and The Conquest of Gaul (Paperback) and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (Paperback) and The Fall of Berlin 1945 (Paperback) and The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (Hardcover) and The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1) and All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Paperback) and The Second World War (Hardcover) and Caesar: Life of a Colossus (Hardcover) and The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (Paperback) and A Promised Land (Kindle Edition) and The Odyssey (Paperback) and India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy (Hardcover) and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Hardcover) and They Called Us Enemy (Paperback) and The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Paperback) and The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (Audible Audio) and The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (Hardcover) and Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Hardcover) and The Wordy Shipmates (Hardcover) and Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (Hardcover) and In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (Hardcover) and The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (Paperback) and The End is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses (Hardcover) and Civilization: The West and the Rest (Hardcover) and The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (Hardcover) and The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (Paperback) and The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (Hardcover) and Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Vintage Departures) and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War (Hardcover) and Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues (Hardcover) and A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (Hardcover) and George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution (Hardcover) and War and Peace (Paperback) and The Song of Achilles (Paperback) and The Underground Railroad (Hardcover)


message 4: by Mitchell (new)

Mitchell Friedman ❌ Books that should be REMOVED (Not found in top 25 shelf pages or below threshold): Shakespeare: The World as Stage and Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates and The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression and The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, #1) and The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam and Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II and Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History—Without the Fairy-Tale Endings and The Cold War: A New History and The Children of Henry VIII and The Third Reich in Power (The History of the Third Reich, #2) and A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991 and What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England and A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years and The Kite Runner and Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521 - 1580 and The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 and The Wives of Henry VIII and A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World and The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade and Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood and The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 and London: The Biography and Ten Days that Shook the World and Mythology and How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created our World & Everything in It and Lincoln and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 and Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners and The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America and A History of the World in 100 Objects and She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth and 1421: The Year China Discovered America and No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam and Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture and The Fire Next Time and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy and Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality and American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and Capital in the Twenty First Century and Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam and Killing Jesus: A History and The Gene: An Intimate History and Inside the Third Reich and The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology and Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill and The Complete Persepolis and First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers and Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders and Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69 and The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way and The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself and Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine and Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels and 11/22/63 and The Best and the Brightest and American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic and The Children's Blizzard and Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Persepolis, #1) and The Republic and The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt and The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Master of the Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #3) and Fear: Trump in the White House and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective and Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General and The Longest Day: June 6, 1944


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