Popular European Historical Books
Find historical books written by authors from Europe for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (127)
101.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria A. Trapp EN
AustriaDescription:
With nearly 1,500 Broadway performances, six Tony Awards, more than three million albums sold, and five Academy Awards, The Sound of Music, based on the lives of Maria, the baron, and their singing children, is as familiar to most of us as our own family history. But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold. Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America. Now with photographs from the original edition.
Greece103.
The Teacher of Cheops by Albert Salvado EN
AndorraDescription:
This is the history of the time of Pharaoh Snefru and Queen Hetepheres, the parents of Cheops, who built the largest and most impressive pyramid of all. It is also the story of Sedum, a slave who became Cheops' teacher, the high priest Ramosi, and how the first pyramid came to be built. Sebekhotep, the great wise man of that time, said, "Everything is written in the stars. Most of us live our lives unaware of it. Some can read the stars and see their destiny. But very few people learn to write in the stars and change their destiny." Ramosi and Sedum learned to write in them and tried to change... continue
104.
The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare EN
AlbaniaDescription:
In the Balkan Peninsula, history’s long-disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, the receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring peoples who fight over everything, from their pastures of sheep to the authorship of their countless legends. One such gruesome tale declares that a castle under construction cannot be finished until a young mason’s bride has been walled up alive, one breast left exposed to suckle her growing infant even after her death. Myth becomes perverse reality when a mason is plastered into a bridge over a strategically important river, where his will not ... continue
105.
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht EN
SerbiaDescription:
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.”—Entertainment Weekly Look for Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland, now available. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Kansas City Star • Library Journal Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best A... continue
106.
The Vikings by Else Roesdahl EN
DenmarkDescription:
Far from being just 'wild, barbaric, axe-wielding pirates', the Vikings created complex social institutions, oversaw the coming of Christianity to Scandinavia and made a major impact on European history through trade, travel and far-flung consolidation. This encyclopedic study brings together the latest research on Viking art, burial customs, class divisions, jewellery, kingship, poetry and family life. The result is a rich and compelling picture of an extraordinary civilisation.
107.
The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier EN
Country: Europe / 
Switzerland
Switzerland
Description:
Travel writing, reflects convincingly on the meaning of the experience.
108.
The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec EN
Country: Europe / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Angrboda's story begins where most witch's tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to give him knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into a remote forest. There she is found by a man Loki, and her initial distrust grows into a deep and abiding love. Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who she is keen to raise at the hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life - and possibly all of existence - is in danger.
109.
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue EN
IrelandDescription:
A major film from the makers of Normal People and Room, starring Florence Pugh and streaming on Netflix. 'An old-school page turner with crackling intensity' Stephen King 'Powerful, compulsively readable' Irish Times Eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story . . . Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's The Wonder – inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth – is a ps... continue
110.
The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography by Stefan Zweig EN
Description:
Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a poet, novelist, and dramatist, but it was his biographies that expressed his full genius, recreating for his international audience the Elizabethan age, the French Revolution, the great days of voyages and discoveries. In this autobiography he holds the mirror up to his own age, telling the story of a generation that "was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history." Zweig attracted to himself the best minds and loftiest souls of his era: Freud, Yeats, Borgese, Pirandello, Gorky, Ravel, Joyce, Toscanini, Jane Addams, Anatole... continue