Five History Books Every Social Entrepreneur Should Read

One of the most important books during the British Abolitionist Movement, former slave Olaudah Equiano's autobiography.

This morning I got an email from someone who had helped put together this list of the top 100 non-business books that every entrepreneur should read. It's a fun list, with categories that include Communication, Leadership, Success, Personal Development and more. What's conspicuously absent, however, is history.

As a history major (read: nut), this is a major axe I have to grind with activism. We don't teach the history of civil society and social change in high school's and universities the way we should. Sure, in the course of normal history courses, students get the brief view of a few social movements. All too often, however, the brevity with which these topics are covered reduces them to the mythology that a few great men shaped the entire course of human history.

This is particularly damaging when it comes to understanding the history of activism and social change, which is a story of messy, confusing, poorly organized, and largely about the way different people with different types of interests found common ground, much more than the story of a few key actors.

With that in mind, here's a quick list of five history books every social entrepreneur should read, roughly listed in the chronological order of the time periods they cover.

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405

After Tamerlane is a comparative history of global empire that seeks to understand and explain both how the modern world came to be structured and to help combat a deterministic view of history that see's the rise of the West as inevitable. Instead, author John Darwin demonstrates how many specific differences could have fundamentally reshaped our world. This is an essential part of understanding the current context of activism because the haves and have-nots of our world have a specific lineage that extends back into the last 500 years of colonial expansion. What's more, the philanthropic impulse gained much of it's clout in the context of the European colonial mission of the 19th century.

Bury The Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

Adam Hochschild's seminal Bury The Chains is one of the single best refutations of the "great man of history" theory of change. Telling the story of the motley assortment of former slaves, Quakers, women, pre-industrial laborers and others who changed the sentiment of the British nation against slavery in the late 18th century, this book provides incredible insight into the very first movement in history in which people advocated for the rights of someone other than themselves.

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991

Just as the colonial era and age of empires inextricably shaped the fabric of our modern world, the major economic, political, and military shifts of the twentieth century structured the nature of philanthropy, activism, and social justice work. Few history's have as sweeping and comprehensive a scope as Eric Hobsbawm's celebrated Age of Extremes.

Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955

The Civil Right's movement is rightly celebrated for the incredibly transformative impact it had on modern American society, but there is more to the story. Carol Anderson's incredible "Eyes Off the Prize," talks about the layers of compromise that inflected the movement, particularly focusing on how the drafting of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights process became a proxy battle between those who sought sustained segregation and those who were pushing for full social, economic, and human rights for all Americans. This fundamental complication of our perspective on a movement we treasure as a nation is particularly healthy for those of us who seek new ways of creating change.

A Bed For The Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis

Not a pure history, David Rieff's "A Bed For The Night," nevertheless discusses the history and origins of the modern humanitarian relief system, from the birth of the International Red Cross in the 19th century to the origins of modern humanitarian action during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. A beautiful, devastating and important book.