Hoyland, R., In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (Oxford, 2014)

This book is easily my book of the year. It's aimed at the general public, but it also included the very latest scholarship on the exciting topic of early Islam and was written in a very accessible way. Unlike Hugh Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread Of Islam Changed The World We Live In (another book aimed at the public written by an excellent historian from 2008), it looked at not only later Muslim sources, but also emphasised the importance of sources written in the seventh century, which isn't done very often or very well in non-specialist literature. This book also talked extensively about the late antique milieu that shaped early Islam in its formative years, even adding a comparative angle by discussing other peoples living on the edge of Byzantium and Persia, such as the Turks and the Avars, which is again something that is often missed out when talking about Islam. This book is basically a synthesis of everything I've wanted from historians of early Islam, so I thoroughly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the rise of Islam and its many consequences for world history - I genuinely can't think of any introductory texts from the past few decades that is as relevant or well-written as this book.

Hi! I'm allowing this thread, as it falls under the rubric of historiography. I would ask anyone replying to post a real bibliographic reference to the book they want to talk about, and to explain their choices, since just posting "I enjoyed so-and-so's book on precolumbian underwater basket weaving" is not helpful.

Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Harvard UP, 2014)

I think Sutton provides an excellent history of evangelical history in the US and poignantly links the roots of evangelism to modern politics and current events. In particular, he looks into how dispensational premillennialist beliefs---a term likely unfamiliar to most people---became a staple of American and American Christian culture. Premillenialism is the belief that Jesus will take true believers to heaven in the Rapture, and those left behind will fall subject to seven years of Tribulation, ultimately leading to the rise and fall of the Anti-Christ and paving the way for Jesus to establish his thousand year reign on earth. While this idea might sound somewhat familiar to many Americans, it was a fringe and radical idea in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries but slowly rose to popularity and has since pervaded most, if not all, facets of American culture. Sutton has written a necessary and accessible history, one that finds itself on par with Ernest Sandeen's The Roots of Fundamentalism, written more than forty years ago.

Short List for the McGill History Prize

Owsley and Jantz's edited volume Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton was published earlier this year.

The book is a compilation of essays written by more than 50 researchers in archaeology, physical anthropology, and geology all surrounding the investigation of the remains of Kennewick Man. Simply put, the book is the most complete analysis of a Paleoindian skeleton to date. Access to Kennewick Man has been limited by a protracted three-way legal battle between Pacific Northwest Native American nations, the Army Corps of Engineers, and academics. After several decades of fighting it out in the courts, a pan-disciplinary team was allowed brief access to the remains, and this volume is the result of their fevered research. I have yet to purchase my copy, it is a little pricy, but you can check out the Smithsonian Magazine write-up here to get an idea of the book.

It is perhaps more of a book of economics (and economic history) than a history book, but if we're talking about influential, the English translation of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty was published this year. While most people that bought it didn't actually read it (I'm about a third of the way through, but I've every intention of finishing!), it's been extremely influential by providing an empirical data and economic arguments for the historic relationship between inequality and capitalism.