I'm a 20 year old student currently attending Ole Miss about to head home for Christmas break. That's a month and a half that I'm going to be without a gaming PC (it's staying at my dorm because I have a private room) and with lots of time to kill.
Recently, I've found myself wondering a lot about the world and how it got to where it is today. I've been desiring perspective, and I think the best way to do that is to read and learn. I have only a high school student's education in history, and I feel that what I know is very limited; I feel like it is holding me back from making educated observations about the world.
Can you suggest books that might help me gain some perspective about the world? I'd like to have a long enough reading list that it could carry me until I have to return to school here at the end of January. My only request is that I'm reading something that can hold my interest- please don't suggest that I just go rent a history textbook.
If you'd like something that'll change the way you think about the colonial era of the Americas, I'd suggest David Stannard's American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World.
James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me directly comments on high school history curriculum and alternative perspectives on it. It's a good read but don't take it as gospel. This book is a fun and useful thought exercise but not absolute truth.
If you're interested in the American Civil War, there's always the gold standard on the subject, James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom
A single, accessible read on pre-Civil War history is Bruce Levine's Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. I took courses with Levine in college and this is basically one of his courses in book form, though it is very readable and certainly NOT a textbook.
Historical Fiction but still a good read: Pillars of the Earth and World Without End both are by Ken Follett. His century trilogy is great too
What era and society are you interested in? I'm a 4th year graduate student in American history and, honestly, the field that I've found has expanded my thinking the most is environmental history. Something like republic of nature by Mark Fiege ranges all across the history of the USA but does an amazing job of showing you how the environment played a crucial and undertheorized role in shaping the American past
For something in another area, The Art of Not Being Governed is a fantastic read on southeast Asia and the broader issues of the limits and extent of government power.