One of my best friends in the world asked me what books would work well for a world history class to read in order to get a better sense of historical place and time. The only requirements being that the books are set after 1500 and not in the United States. I realized that many of the books that I would include happen to be some of my favorite books of all time:
1. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
--Wonderful story that illuminates French high society, the Romanticizing of Italy as a seat of Roman past (thus the term).
2. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
--Great story; also elucidates the 1848 Revolution in Paris,
and some of the internal politics of royalists/republicans.
3. Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
--Hard to think of a better novel set in the midst of the French Revolution; actually just about any Dickens novel would have great historical insight (as would any Jane Austen novel, for that matter).
4. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
--An interesting look at colonization in Africa from the point of view of the African tribe.
5. Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
--Probably too long for one high school semester, but a great story that also highlights the intellectual struggle in Russian society between the Eastern Orthodox Church, Intellectuals, and Workers that in some ways predicts the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism. Also a great moral philosophical book about free will.
6. The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Count of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later; Alexandre Dumas
--Great adventure stories set at one of high points of French power during the court of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. The final book in the trilogy is commonly broken into various shorter books including The Man in the Iron Mask.
7. Kiddnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
--A wonderful story that is set in the Scottish highlands, and is an interesting telling of the Jacobite uprising in 1752. Like many of the other novels on the list, a good story, but not necessarily historically accurate in all cases.
8. Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
--Like many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, an interesting look into Victorian England, but first and foremost a good mystery.
9. The Spy that Came in From the Cold, John LeCarré
--A great spy novel that highlights the conflict of the Cold War.
10. 1984, George Orwell
--Although set in a dystopian future, this commentary on the possible post-WWII world is an instructive look into the reasonable fears of the time.
In typing this list, I realized that there are probably other books that I have read that would fit this category, but I will have to add them as I remember them. Also, even though it doesn't fit the definition of being set outside the US, Killer Angels by Michael Sharra is one of my all-time favorite historical fiction books. Most of the above books are classic novels—set in historical time periods with completely fictionalized characters. However, Killer Angels, recreates the battle of Gettysburg with concurrent narratives from both sides—quite engaging, even if somewhat controversial in its historical approach.
I saw this sign while driving home from work a few weeks ago. It struck me as kind of odd for three reasons: (1) "Fresh" seems to be at odds with a liquid that generally takes millions of years to produce, (2) If it is referring to fresh because it was recently refined, why is it happening in a residential neighborhood? (unless someone just struck it rich), and finally most simply, (3) I couldn't figure out the immediate reason for the sign. 