Looking for History Book Recommendations?

Chris Harmon's "A People's History of the World" is the best historical book I've read in the past five years. Jacob Burckhardt's "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (preferably in Middlemoore's translation) is the best source for that time period. Howard Zinn and Richard Hofstadter are probably your best bets for American history, although "Only Yesterday" by Frederick Lewis Allen is a must for any study of the Roaring Twenties (even if Allen is a total jerk). .