Historian
Marc David Baer is an American historian and professor of international history at the London School of Economics, specialising in the connected histories of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. His book The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs was shortlisted for the 2022 Wolfson History Prize.
by Marc David Baer
Baer retells six centuries of Ottoman history as integral to European history rather than exotic to it, tracing how a Turkic frontier dynasty became the heir of Rome, Islam, and the steppe simultaneously. He argues that Europe cannot understand itself without the Ottomans, and that the empire's religious pluralism, genocidal endpoints, and legacy of partition still shape the Middle East and the Balkans.
The books Marc David Baer references, cites, and recommends most frequently.
by Will Durant
The Durants compress five thousand years of civilisation into sharp observations on recurring patterns in politics, morality, and economics. Human nature ensures history rhymes.
by Graham Allison
Allison revives Thucydides's Trap: war between a rising and ruling power is historically the norm, not the exception. He applies this lens to the US-China rivalry.
by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the stark prosperity gap between nations is driven not by geography, culture, or ignorance but by the distinction between inclusive and extractive political and economic institutions. Their sweeping comparative history, built on pairs like Nogales Arizona/Sonora and North/South Korea, claims that elites who monopolize power lock in poverty while pluralistic institutions create self-reinforcing prosperity.
by Barbara W. Tuchman
Tuchman reconstructs WWI's first month, showing how rigid war plans and national pride turned a crisis into catastrophe. The tragedy was a cascade of avoidable errors.
Who Marc draws from, and who draws from Marc — aggregated across every book in this collection. Counts show the number of citation links, not the depth of each one.