William the Conqueror is one os several volumes of history centered on specific characters.
This little volume raises many vital issues that illustrate how important an actual Catholic perspective is. Another resource says, for example, that the French clerics that William brought to England after the Battle of Hastings were the same religion as the English bishop Stigand, so any quarrels between them were clearly political, not religious.
No, Stigand was a brigand. The difference was in their commitment to the actual meaning of Catholicism; there is a level of corruption that prevents cultural growth, something not immediately evident to a historian who is not thinking about the gospel as an actual body of teaching.
Warren Carroll is one of the eminent popular Catholic writers of both topical and comprehensive history.
The Guillotine and the Cross is his riveting account of the French Revolution. An interesting note on the Hope Diamond...
The Last Crusade: Spain 1936 It is not commonly understood how bitterly anti-Catholic the Spanish civil war was: Communists lining up Catholic seminarians and shooting them for being seminarians. It is a large piece to leave out of a story.
Several titles, and see below for a history that is not mainly a biography.
Dr. Tom Dooley
Edge of Tomorrow
The Night They Burned the Mountain Deliver Us from Evil
Three books by the famous doctor, Tom Dooley give us a picture of doctoring in the third world in the 1950’s, and of VietNam before the war, but facing the Communist persecution of Christianity. He was treating children whose eardrums had been pierced with chopsticks for listening to the gospel. Courage.
Washington: the Indispensible Man
Flexner wanted to write a short biography of Washington, but he couldn't see how to do it. So he wrote six volumes, and then he saw how to write just one. This is it.
Ishi the Last of the Yahi An interesting account of the last member of the Indian group called the Yahi. Interesting not only as a Native American piece, but simply as a human story of a man who loses his last relative and reaches out to the only people in the area, who do their best to take him in.
Longitude: the True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientic Problem of his Time
Here is the account of a different aspect of the problem addressed in the Bowditch story above. It pits inventiveness and math against class consciousness, while sailors are dying of scurvy because their captains don’t know where they are. Sad story, but solid introduction to the heroes and the unexpected villains of this difficult enterprise. An important account of culture and science.
There is also a DVD of the same name. Lots of good imagery.
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
This very personal insight into Galileo will help you love him as well as the daughter who loved and supported him during his tribulations.
James Alexander Thom
From Sea to Shining Sea, Ballantine Books NY, 1984
This is the Clark Family story. Everyone knows about Lewis and Clark, who mapped the western part of our country in 1807, but the Clark family, over a few generations, mapped America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, against all kinds of odds including nefarious schemers who sought to prevent them from doing this work or from being paid. Fascinating.
There is an American history book with the same title -- short, elementary, Protestant, different topic.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
Wonderful account of the inventiveness of the Chinese people over many centuries, and of the man, Joseph Needham, who discovered this past.
The Professor and the Madman One of the great contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary was locked up for his madness. Fascinating story.
Historical & Geographical Fiction
An expert at local color, Willa Cather works to make her characters true to their place in history.
Death comes for the Archbishop is set in old Mexico.
Shadows on the Rock is set in old Quebec City (not the same city as Quebec.)
This is just a fun author of American Western fiction. Easy to read. Better than the Hardy Boys, which are not as clean as they started out.