Hello! I'm a sophomore in college and I recently declared my major in history! This summer, I want to do a lot of reading in order to give me grounding on the intellectual work of history. Particularly, I am interested in texts that will give me understandings of key ways to look at and analyze history. Basically, essential works to understanding the discipline of history and the work that it involves.
I am also interested in works that will help me understand key threads of modern history such a liberalism, socialism, colonialism, etc.
Finally, I am also very interested in works on Latin American history and in particular the colonial system in the Americas and to a lesser extent sub-Saharan Africa. Also, the historical relationship between people and nature/their land is another topic that I am fascinated with.
Sorry for the overload, but I appreciate any advice!
These are a lot of topics! :-)
I will only make a small recommendation: on the relationship between people and the land, the most interesting popular books I have read on the subject are those by Charles Mann's 1491 and 1493, which are both pretty great (I like 1493 more, but to each their own). Mann does a lot in them and manages to do it very well, considering he is a journalist. He also knows how to synthesize the work of academics well, and to cite them correctly. So good on him. Both of these book weave environmental history deep into their tales. If you want to read a serious work of an academic historian on this topic, but a still-readable one, William Cronon's work is well-written and considered a must-start place for people interested in environmental history. You can find descriptions of his books online — you can't really go wrong.
Entirely separately, you might find E.H. Carr's What is history? a provocative read. It is essentially about trying to ask the Big Questions of history. One need not agree with Carr's own views (many do not), but he asks interesting questions that can be applied to a wide variety of historical subjects. It is very readable.