Recommended 

Summer Reading 

for IB History Students

Incoming juniors - optional reading

Priority: If you read one book over the summer, choose one of the following three:

• Peter Frankopan: Silk Roads: A New History of the World. First published 2015. 9781408839973

• Richard Overy: Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945. Kindle edition published in 2021

• Robert Marks: The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century. First published in 2001. This edition published in 2019. ISBN for Kindle: 1538127040

After we cover the long term causes of World War II in Asia and Europe (Paper 1), and the causes course and consequences of the Cold War (Paper 2 topic 1), students will have a choice of which topics we cover for the second Paper 2 topic. Each student will also choose their own topic for the Internal Assessment, which we begin in 11th grade. The books below relate to topics recently chosen by IB History students and teachers: 

20th century Asian history 

• Jonathan Spence: The Search for Modern China. Published 1991. 9780393307801

• Jung Chang: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. First published in 1991.

• Marius Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan. Published in 2002. 9780674009912

Causes and Consequences of World War I

• Robert Gerwart: The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End. 2016. 9780374282455

• Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Kindle edition published in 2012.

19th Century World History

• Jurgen Osterhammel: Transformation of the World: A Global History of the 19th century. Published in 2009. 9780691147451. 

Empires and postcolonialism, 20th century

• Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt against the West and the Remaking of Asia, published in 2012. 9780385676106

• Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth. Published 1961. New translation published in 2005. 9780802141323

Incoming seniors

Select ONE text:

• • Jung Chang: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. First published in 1991, this is a family history of China from the Qing dynasty through the Cultural Revolution

  • Jung Chang and Jon Holliday: Mao: The Unknown Story. A quite controversial revisionist take on Mao’s time in power, we’ll use it as an extreme perspective on all things Mao

  • Jonathan D. Spence: The Search for Modern China.  A very comprehensive overview of modern China, can skip the first almost half to get to the PRC for our purposes

  • Ramachandra Guha: India After Gandhi Focus on Part 1 and 2, looks at the aftermath of partition and the challenges faced in the first ten years of independence

  • Martin Evans and John Phillips: Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed A comprehensive overview of Algeria from French Colony to (briefly) progressive leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, but with the foreshadowing of the violence and repression to come. Focus on Chapter 2 and 3. Accessible via JStor!

  • Alistair Horne: A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, a very comprehensive and influential, if quite conservative overview of the Algerian War 

  • (More for SL) Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes for those who didn’t read it last summer, I’d particularly recommend chapters 8, 12, 13, and 14.

  • (More for SL) John Lewis Gaddis: The Cold War, A more traditional, narrative-based text on the course of the Cold War, Gaddis is one of the most respected post-revisionist, if conservative historians of the period. 

  • If you're looking for a more passive way to be productive, here is a list of films to watch!