Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion

Share and discuss book ideas for Task 1: Read a microhistory

I'm going to finally read Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I’m going to read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Several Goodreads lists for possible ideas here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I don't know if it counts, but I always recommend The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

Considering one of the following:

Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

or anything of Mary Roach

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain

I've had this to read since it won the Pulitzer Prize for History (2021) - will get to it in 2026.

I've loved everything that I've read by Mary Roach! I think I'm going with Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.

Luci wrote: "I'm going to finally read Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall"

This sounds quite good - adding to my TBR. Thanks

I have a few things in mind for this one. I'm currently considering Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández, The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence by Marilyn Brookwood, and The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddharth Kara. I really haven't decided though!

Some suggestions others might like that would count as microhistories (at least count enough in a for fun challenge rather than an academic context haha):

-Bellevue: A History of America's Oldest Hospital by David M. Oshinsky
-Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fictionby Gabrielle Moss
-Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy by Albert Marrin
-Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Brandy Colbert
-Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies

Salt: A World History Mark Kurlansky

I highly recommend anything by Mary Roach

I picked up a used copy of The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, which has been on my TBR list and sounds really interesting.