Human history is a great and grand story that spans at least five thousand years, and possibly more. It's hard to separate it into subtopics, but my history books tend to divide into three major groups and a couple of lesser ones:
Ancient history starts with the first written historical records. The oldest known written records come from Egypt: the Scorpion King tablets and the Narmer Palette, circa 3000 BCE -- about five thousand years ago. Shortly after, written records also appear in Sumeria and the other civilizations of Mesopotamia. It also includes the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas, and all the other human cultures of antiquity.
Western history is exactly that: the history of the Western World, meaning Europe and the United States, mainly from about 1000 to the present. I don't have all that many books from this period, and many of them were acquired when I was thinking about trying my hand at fiction writing set in a pseudo-medieval realm. They tend to focus on subjects that would be useful to a writer: the Crusades and other wars, medicine, and what life was like for medieval peasants.
Another shelf is devoted to what one might call the history of technology. At the moment, this consists mainly of books about sailing, with one or two about other types of technology: airplanes and railroads, mostly. A second shelf is full of books about the space program.
My largest history section is military history. I have a number of books about the American Civil War . I also have some about espionage, and a shelf full of books about modern warfare and weapons. However, the mainstay of my military-history bookcase is a sizable collection of books about World War II. These break down readily into five categories:
- On top, naturally, are a number of books about aerial warfare, divided more or less evenly between the European and Pacific theaters of the war.
- The next shelf is populated by books about the land wars, also more or less evenly divided between the two theaters.
- Next down comes a couple of shelves full of books about the war at sea. These books focus more on the Pacific War.
- Below that (naturally enough) is a shelf of books that all focus specifically on the submarine war, US subs in the Pacific, and British subs and German U-boats in the Atlantic.
- And last but not least is a set of books about the secret side of the war: deception, intelligence, codebreaking, spying, and other covert activities.
