Read King Leopold's Ghost

The carillon capital, St Rumbold's unfinished tower and the Kazerne Dossin Holocaust museum.

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.

American history from the losers' side, Columbus to Clinton; Zinn's two million copies.

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

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