The first history book you chose to read on your own.......

When I was around 15 years old I read Andersonville by Kantor. The blood, death, dying, gore, mud, and killing for page after page is what some teen boys really devour. I couldn't read it now, but as a teen I thought it cool. I was so much younger then.......

It was a gradual thing for me. As a kid I started with historical fiction like Johnny Tremain. The real stuff came later and mostly in journal articles read for high school papers.

Daniel

I can't remember a time I didn't read them. My first bookshelf—the first I set up myself—was organized on the principle of - to +. The far - was dinosaurs. The far + was space. I suppose I mixed fiction in, but I always had non-fiction.

I find it a little toublesome that my son (5) doesn't like books that aren't narrative. When confronted with such a book he says "It's not ABOUT anything." This was true—and very just—about Neil Gaiman's Blueberry Girl. But it seems to apply to much non-ficiton. He does, however, enjoy those (dreadful, but historical) Jack and Annie books.

The first nonfiction books I read were the ones I could reach in the bookcase in my dad's study. They were mostly science books, but I do remember being fascinated with a little book that was portraits of great scientists, and had chapters on Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton and Herschel. There were more, but those were the ones I fixated on.

After that, it was usually science-oriented memoir: My Family and Other Animals (first book I ever "discussed" with my mom), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, stuff like that. I also distinctly remember when I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for the first time, because I couldn't put it down, and it made me cry, and I got so caught up with it that I didn't finish my homework (the only time that ever happened).

As a student of American history, I understood what a woeful job our textbooks and (unfortunately) our teachers do in teaching the actual history of this country, but I never expected both the depth and the level of scholarship presents in history book. It is well researched, well written and much needed. http://www.fairsandfestivals.net

The Landmark biography of Francis Marion, Swamp Fox of the Revolution. The Disney version was on TV at the time.

A MMPB collection of Bill Mauldin's WWII cartoons. I did not know at the time that he had won Pulitzer Prizes or that they were "primary documents" but they led to over twenty years of reading WWII non-fiction and now I'm chasing a career in history.

The earliest history books I'm sure I read on my own were Meet The Men Who Sailed The Seas and Meet Christopher Columbus, probably at 7 or 8.

The earliest non-juvenile history books I read, at maybe 10 or 11, were probably Day of Infamy and A Night to Remember by Walter Lord, along with Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

The first history book I read that was written for the scholarly market rather than the mass market (maybe at 13 or 14) was probably Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, volume III of Samuel Eliot Morison's history of US Naval Operations in World War II.

When I actually took up history as a career, I went into the history of science and technology . . . but I still read military and maritime history for fun.

Can't remember. But it likely was military history, as my mother loved it and had hundreds of titles in the house on the Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWI, and of course the Civil War, this being the South.

I can't remember a specific book. It probably would have been about Native American Indians. I was fascinated with Helen Keller as child. I guess that would be under non-fiction.

Private Breger by Dave Breger was the first 'history' book I remember reading...I was pretty young at the time.

"Memoirs of the Bulgarian Uprisings. Eyewitness Reports." by Zahari Stoyanov (or at least I think that would be the name in English) - part of it was mandatory reading and that was why I checked it out from the library but I liked it enough to read the whole of it (all 3 volumes). It took me way too long but it was worth it.

And it was partially responsible for my fascination with history ever since then.

My parents had a lot of books and I was regular in the library but we almost did not have non-fiction in the house (if at all) and I was gravitating around the fiction shelves in the library. Not that the Memoirs are strictly non-fiction -- but they are as close as I got to non-fiction at these days.

I loved reading encyclopaedia entries and dictionary entries (I still do) but it was years later when I consciously started reading non-fiction books.

In elementary school I read a series I called the blue biographies. The books were all turquoise blue and they were biographies of American historical figures. I am sure they were part political propaganda. I remember the story of Mad Anthony Wayne and the Battle of Fallen Timbers. But I don't remember anything being said about the plight of the American Indians.

Then I got a copy of The Story of Mankind and I was hooked on history.

When I was 9 or 10 I discovered the Landmark series of biographies and read all they had at my local library. Three that I especially remember were those about Murie Curie, Louis Pasteur, and George Washington Carver--probably because I was also very interested in science at the time.

What I remember most was getting totally lost in the lives of people from the past, feeling as if I could have known them (and certainly wanted to).

I too started off reading children's historical fiction. Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece, Geoffrey Trease (preferably illustrated by Victor G Ambrus). I often say that I spent a lot of my childhood in Roman Britain! For a long time I don't think I was aware of the existence of histories as such, but then I began with a series for children "Everyday Life in (insert time and place)".

From there I know I moved on to biographies of historical figures, but from this distance I have trouble recalling particular works. I am, after all, nearer sixty than fifty.

The first straightout history that I can remember reading, that wasn't for school, is The Tyranny of Distance.

The first history book I chose for myself was something about the First World War. It focused on the nature of trench warfare in a way I found riveting and heartbreaking.

I like the categories "mass market" and "academic" adult histories. I'm not sure that Bury my heart at Wounded Knee was the first adult history I tackled, but it made an overwhelming impression on me, and I was young enough to feel daring and proud for having finished it.

However I set my face against history in college and went for a long time without reading much of it, although I didn't object to other nonfiction. At one point, though, I splurged on a nice-looking copy of Albert Hourani's History of the Arab peoples, which seemed like an eclectic choice at the time. I ended up feeling disappointed in it, though, and can't claim to have read the whole thing. But at least it sat on my shelf and made me seem worldly-wise. :-P

All in all it's a pretty inauspicious start for someone who now aspires to write history. I'm hoping it will help that I was such a persnickety reader.

Stonewall in the Valley by Tanner. I as 14 and it was a gift from my parents. I still have the book and it led to my passion for civil war history as well as collecting civil war books. lol

The first books that I read were about ancient history but no specific title that I can remember. The first specific book that I can recall is "The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech" I can't say that I comprehended much considereing that fact that I thought that I thought that the SS had neat uniforms! Thank God that I have progressed beyond that. I have to second the comments by Urquhart and for the same reasons.

One of my firsts was about Thomas Edison and his inventions. I got into WW2 stuff early on, as well.

Since I have a list of every book I have read, I can answer these questions definitively. The first book dealing with a historical character I read was:

14. Kit Carson by J. Carroll Mansfield (read in 1936 or 1937)

The first book dealing I think with actual fact though fiction was:

26. Through the Desert by Henryk Sienkiewicz (read in 1938 or 1939)

The first book of non-fiction history of at least current events seems to be:

114. I Saw It Happen: Eye-Witness Accounts of the War, edited by Lewis Gannett (read early 1943)

When LamSon refers to getting "into WW2 stuff early on, as well" he speaks for me as well.

As a young boy I was an excellent candidate for membership on the island of the Lord of the Flies and could not see enough of the television series Victory at Sea. Somehow as a child seeing lots of dead bodies on the screen presented no problem.

So when I moved on in junior high to read Andersonville I was a fox in the chicken coop when dealing with death and dying.

Now of course I am at the other end of the spectrum.

Ur.

Beyond children's historical fiction, my first "grown-up" historical non-fiction was Paul Rival's The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which I read at 8 or 9 after seeing the Masterpiece Theatre series of the same name on TV. It was a terrible book, but it got me started on history.

I don't remember specifically but as others have mentioned, when very young I read many in the Landmark series, many in a series of biographies that I suspect was the same one that wildbill mentions (illustrated in a pseudo woodcut style and concentrating on what was certainly a completely imaginative account the subject's childhood rather than their accomplishments as adults. I remember them in orange bindings though) and another series I Was There At... which placed a kid in the middle of some important event and narrated it's story from his/her viewpoint. I specifically remember the I Was There at Gettysburg and I Was There at Pearl Harbor. The Civil War centenary motivated me to turn to adult popular history such as Bruce Catton.

>22 Marissa_Doyle:

I never saw the TV series, but the soundtrack album "Henry VIII and His Six Wives" had a lot to do with getting me launched as an enthusiast for early music. The challenges of “historically informed performance” (HIP) can be intriguing to anyone interested in history.

For a while, I think, “early music” was a backup career for players who didn’t quite have the chops to make a career in classical concertizing — i.e., if you weren’t that hot on the cello, you might scrape along on a viola da gamba. Nowadays, though, early music demands superb technique, the scholarship of a good historian, and enough imagination to turn all that into music. And as Jordi Savall and others have shown, the viola da gamba need yield nothing to the upstart violoncello. Lately I’ve been following Savall around the Mediterranean (so to speak) as he masters reportoire for the vielle, rabab, and other once obscure instruments.

Music like this adds another rich dimension to my feeling for the past.