Books like Persian fire by Tom Holland

A sweeping historical narrative set during Alexander the Great’s final years, seen through the eyes of Bagoas, a Persian eunuch once sold to Darius who becomes Alexander’s close confidant and lover.

A scholarly biography of Alexander the Great that blends rigorous historical research with psychological insight, exploring his rise, conquests, and enduring legacy.

A captivating exploration of Christianity's growth and spread across the Roman Empire through quantitative data and groundbreaking insights from prominent historian Rodney Stark.

A tale of deception, magic, and the rise of machines in the 18th and 19th centuries, featuring the historical figure of a chess-playing automaton and its mysterious disappearance from the world of wonderment to the United States.

A gripping nonfiction thriller exploring the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing and its aftermath, featuring America's greatest detective and other notable figures in the story's unfolding.

A concise, scholarly overview of Iran’s history from Cyrus the Great to the present, tracing empires, Arab conquest, the Sixteenth‑century revival, and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The CIA's hidden manual of magic and deception: How the agency taught its agents to use sleight of hand for espionage and covert operations during the Cold War.

THE MASTER PLAN is a groundbreaking history of a little known Nazi SS archeological research institute, the Ahnenerbe, and the key role it played in the Holocaust. The Ahnenerbe was the brainchild of Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer SS and architect of the Final Solution, who was intensely interested in Germany’s ancient past. His intent was not only to rewrite the history of what he and others termed the “Aryan Race,” but also to use that mythic past to shape a more glorious future for Germany. While attempting to prove that Aryans were responsible for all of civilization’s greatest achievements, he also hoped to use tall, blond-haired SS men as stock to breed future generations of Germans in a racially purer mold. In the tradition of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, THE MASTER PLAN is also an expose of the work of German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be used to justify extermination, and who, in some cases, directly participated in the slaughter—many of whom resumed their academic positions at war’s end. Intensely compelling and exhaustively researched, THE MASTER PLAN is based on extensive personal interviews and previously ignored archival material.

Exploring the origins and spread of world religions from the Stone Age to the Axial Age.

A World Made New tells the dramatic story of the struggle to build, out of the trauma and wreckage of World War II, a document that would ensure it would never happen again. There was an almost religious intensity to the project, championed by Eleanor Roosevelt under the aegis of the newly formed United nations and brought into being by an extraordinary group of men and women who knew, like the framers of the Declaration of Independence, that they were making history. They worked against the clock, the brief window between the end of World War II and the deep freeze of the cold war, to forget the founding document of the modern rights movement.A distinguished professor of international law, Mary Ann Glendon was given exclusive access to personal diaries and unpublished memoirs of key participants. An outstanding work of narrative history, A World Made New is the first book devoted to this crucial moment in Eleanor Roosevelt's life and in world history.

This well researched, painstakingly documented book provides detailed information on the right-wing evangelical organization (Oxford Group Movement) that gave birth to AA; the relation of AA and its program to the Oxford Group Movement; AA's similarities to and differences from religious cults; AA's remarkable ineffectiveness; and the alternatives to AA. The greatly expanded second edition includes a new chapter on AA's relationship to the treatment industry, and AA's remarkable influence in the media.

Turner, Ted. Call Me Ted: A Personal History.

Using remarkable letters, chronicles, and speeches of various witnesses to the violent destruction of Constantinople by Christian crusaders in 1202, Phillips traces the way any region steeped in religious fanaticism might succumb to holy war.

English Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding and Applying Grammatical Concepts in English Language Usage and Composition, Suitable for Teachers, Students, and Non-Fiction Readers alike, with Exercises and Text Analysis Tools for Practice and Improvement.