Mostly Carroll Quigley's works like Tragedy and Hope, Anglo-American Establishment, or The Evolution of Civilizations.
Another I consider at the level of Quigley is Anthony Sutton.
There are quite a few less academically accurate books that are good eye openers anyway like Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States. As a combat vet a couple that speak to the issue of war are God's War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman and The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt (some really good stuff about the future of nation-states in a post nuclear world.)
Those are just a few key ones off the top of my head. Personally, what I find one of the best ways is to find a more narrow interest and find books written by or about the key players at the top. I often find that tidbits across various sources add up to very interesting insights.
Also, a must in my opinion for an American is the Norman Dodd interview about his investigations on the Reece Committee and how history was targeted as being needed to be controlled.
https://archive.org/details/TragedyAndHope_501
Oh, and BTW, don't get spooked by the length or the Bill Clinton endorsement. Quigley transcends mainstream ideology, and this book is a real page-turner!
I also recently finished Beneath The Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. He's normally an epic fantasy author, but he wrote a narrative account of a true story about a young boy in Milan who spied on the Nazis. I highly enjoyed it.
To hijack this thread a bit, though, I'm interested in reading more about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Can anyone recommend a good book on it? (Something digestible yet info-rich, like Chernow's books, preferably.)
Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East by Amanda H Podany - Covers how international relations worked between the different rulers of the Ancient Near East. Covers different things and in a different way than I had heard in a lot of other ANE history.
Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos by Jonah Keri - Lots of fun, interesting stuff about a sport I like and a team I didn't know too much about.
Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World by Noel Malcolm - This one is really good, covering the history of a single family amidst the relationships between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian world.
The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox - Another excellent book, this discussing how Linear B was deciphered, with particular emphasis placed on Alice Kober, whose work was largely overlooked since she died before Michael Ventris ultimately deciphered it.
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor - This one won the Pulitzer for history in 2014, so that should tell you something. This book covers an aspect of history I had never heard before, with a lot of focus on slaves themselves, rather than their owners or the people around them. The roles of the British as liberators and slaves as their aids in the War of 1812 is very interesting.
And one last one that I'm currently reading is Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter H. Wilson. I haven't finished it yet, so take this with a grain of salt, but it's very interesting to hear about a large aspect of European history I wasn't too familiar with and that doesn't fit into the neat, centralized nation-state based history of the world that is predominantly taught.
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America - I read this a few years after Hurricane Katrina. It provides some historical context to the problems of Katrina, especially the levee system
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - This is the current book to read on Lincoln
The Island at the Center of the World - If you're interested in NYC history this is one of the books to read.
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation This is a must-read if you're interested in religion in the US
EDIT: formatting and switched out the Triumph of William McKinley with American Gospel
http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/aRnlEw/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-...
http://toptalkedbooks.com/books/_5tcQA/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-...
It's true, he sounds too enthusiastic with the German operations and very sympathetic to some Nazi officers (Rommel and Manstein for example), but I think it stems from his overall enthusiasm with strategy and military operations in general.
While for most people a dead soldier is still a horribly murdered human, I think his view is that battles between armies do not count as atrocities (not an uncommon view) and officers who didn't murder civilians (or allege they didn't know civilians were murdered under their command) should not be tried for war crimes. Of course that's a bit too much to swallow, especially on the soviet side.
By the way, the same argument was applied for scientists as well (see Wernher von Braun and the operation paperclip bunch, who also "didn't know")
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Germans Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution - https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth https://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0...
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates - https://www.amazon.com/Poison-King-Legend-Mithradates-Deadli...
To End All Wars - https://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/0...
The Northern Crusades - https://www.amazon.com/Northern-Crusades-Second-Eric-Christi...
The Fall of Constantinople 1453 - https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Constantinople-1453-Canto-Classi...
Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane - https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-Conquest-T...
The Indian Ocean - https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Ocean-Seas-History/dp/04154453...
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire - https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Summer-Secret-History-Empire/d...