His three Ages – The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848; The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, and The Age of Empire 1875-1914 – were the first serious history books I read.
“Thinking the Twentieth Century” by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder
Erudite conversation on the history of ideas in the 20th century. Judt’s biographical sketches and the historical discussion of intellectual circles before World War II are sublime. A lot of the economics is entertainingly misguided.