Read A People's History of the United States

Haile Selassie's court told by its servants; Kapuscinski on power anywhere.

Russians remember the end of the Soviet Union and the 1990s; Alexievich's chorus.

Solzhenitsyn's literary investigation of the camps from 227 witnesses; the abridged edition is enough.

Edward Said on how the West invented the East to rule it.

Europe from 1945 to 2005 in one volume; Tony Judt's masterpiece.

Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer history of the Soviet camps from the archives.

The fall of the Iranian monarchy in 1979 through photographs and fragments; Kapuscinski.

Mandela's autobiography from the Transkei to Robben Island to the presidency.