Great Stories from History for Every Day of the Year

For each day of the year, Marsh and Carrick offer one or two short essays and a brief list of other significant events that happened on that day. Each essay is well written and describes an important event (a birth or a death, a battle or the passage of a law) and then explains what flowed from or caused the event. I've really enjoyed this book. Each morning over breakfast, I read the entries for the day and learn a little bit more about history. The subject changes constantly, so it's never boring, and I can always leap ahead to see what happened on my birthday, or my wife's birthday, or our anniversary or whatever. Although there are several other works that are similar to "365," I think this one is the best of the bunch. Still, in case you want to have something similar on hand when you finish with "365," you might consider these entries, all of which are more lightweight than "365" (but still entertaining): Whitely, "On This Date . . ." (2002); Spinrad, Sprinrad, Miller & Brown, "On This Day in History" (1999); Miller & Brown, "More on This Day in History" (2002); Donaldson & Donaldson, "The Book of Days" (1979) (eccentric and quirky); and Patterson, "What Time of Day Was That: History by the Minute" (2001). For a more encylopedic but less readable approach to the subject, try The History Channel's "Today in History: A Day by Day Review of World Events"--this book has a lot more entries than "365," but it lacks Marsh and Carrick's elegant essays. On the whole, I highly recommend "365" as a thoroughly enjoyable way of boning up on history.