A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage. Walker and Company, 2005. This is a lively and informative book about the social, political, and economic effects of beverages.
Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke, translated by Thomas Cleary, Tuttle Publishing, 1999. Written in the late seventeenth century, this book is the best available study of the code of bushido in Japan.
Diary of Lady Murasaki, by Murasaki Shikibu. At 144 pages, Lady Murasaki's diary is more accessible for classroom use than her famous novel The Tale of Genji. It also gives an interesting look at life in eleventh-century Heian court circles.
The Song of Roland Written about the time of the First Crusade in about 1040, this book is widely regarded as the greatest of all medieval epics, telling of the defeat of Charlemagne's rearguard at the Battle of Roncesvalles. It is the oldest surviving work of French literature and exists in many readable translations.
The Last Voyage, by Martin Dugard or Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504, by Laurence Bergeen This ships Columbus sailed on offered very primitive living conditions for those on board. The crew often slept on deck because of the dampness below decks and the rats. Also, most sailors could not swim, and being trapped below deck decreased their odds of survival in an emergency. Both selections give a sense of what sailors of the era endured.
Utopia, by Thomas More Written by the greatest humanist of sixteenth-century England and published in 1515, Utopia takes place in a fictional country in the New World and provides a revealing look at European philosophy and attitudes toward the New World.
Oroonoko, by Aphra Ben In this novel, written by an English woman who visited the colony of Surinam, an African prince is sold into slavery and sent to the Caribbean. This novel, published in 1688, accurately depicts the hoors of slavery in the Caribbean colonies and is also a moving romance.
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens In this classic tale of love and death during the Terror, Dickens portrays both the hardships of life under the monarchy and the brutality of the revolutionaries, including the fictional Madame Therese Defarge, who happily knits while her enemies are lined up for the guillotine. In addition to the novel, which is relatively short, there are numerous television and film versions.
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol This novel, written by one of the great Russian authors of the nineteenth century, is a satire and critique of tsarist Russian and the injustice of the serfs' situation.