Top 5 Books with a Global Perspective

What Is a Global Perspective?

These books include ones with a comparative, Atlantic world, transnational, or international point of view.

General U.S. History

  • The Comparative Approach to American History (1968), ed. C. Vann Woodward

  • America Compared: American History in International Perspective, 2 volumes, (1997), ed. Carl J. Guarneri

  • A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006), by Thomas Bender

  • American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context (2013), by Michael Schaller et al.

  • America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History (2008), ed. by Gary W. Reichard and Ted Dickson

American Civil War

  • Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), by Barrington Moore, Jr.

  • Forge of Empires: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made, 1861–1871 (2007), by Michael Knox Beran

  • The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict (2012), by Andre M. Fleche

  • The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (2014), by Don H. Doyle

  • A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (2021) by Andrew F. Lang

Race and Slavery

  • Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987), by Peter Kolchin

  • White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History (1981), by George M. Frederickson

  • Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (1982), by Orlando Patterson

  • The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (2007), by Laird Bergad

  • The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776–1888 (2024), by Robin Blackburn

A Global Perspective on the World in 1860

Antique 1860 world map in globular projection, showing colored Western and Eastern Hemisphere maps within an ornate floral border.

Map Of The World On The Globular Projection Exhibiting the Eastern And Western Hemispheres. Constructed and Engd. by W. Williams Phila. No. 1. Entered ... 1860, by S. Augustus Mitchell, Jr. ... Pennsylvania. Mitchell, Samuel AugustusWilliams, W.Mitchell, Samuel Augustus Jr., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.