Book Recommendations • History of the Germans Podcast

On this page I share some of the books I regularly reference for the History of the Germans Podcast. This is not a comprehensive bibliography you may find in a scholarly article but a selection of books I found useful and a pleasure to read. There are lots more sources I read which I did not include here because I did either not enjoy them or feel there are better ones covering the same subject. Most of them are in German for the simple reason there is not much available in English.

And a big thank you to listener J.C. and Dominic Mendyka. who so kindly provided all the ISBN and OCLC numbers as well as the links to where you can buy these books. THANKS SO MUCH!

Also be aware that some texts are from 19th or early 20th century. They have to be read with caution as historic scholarship has moved on and they often reflect outdated attitudes and political convictions.

I have tried to organise them in sections and within the sections chronologically as far as that was sensible.

Before getting into the books themselves, here are some websites that I found extremely useful either to quickly check facts or to do more in depth research:

The Regesta Imperii is a database of charters and other documents issued by the emperors, organised chronologically and with reference links. An amazing resource: Regestensuche : Regesta Imperii (regesta-imperii.de)

If you are looking for a book that has gone out of copyright to read, the Internet Archive has digitised more than 36m books. You can find primary and secondary sources here that you would only find in places like the British Library or a university library: Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Also check out the medieval internet sourcebooks from Fordham University: Internet History Sourcebooks (fordham.edu)