Connolly, Peter. The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens & Rome.

NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.

There’s nothing like precise, clear artwork to enhance a volume of ancient history and archaeology, and this is one of the best around. Athens and Rome were the two most important urban centers in the ancient world (relative to the development of Western culture, anyway) and about half this oversized volume is given over to each city.

Matyszak, Philip. Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day.

NY: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

I’ve read several purported travel guides to various periods in history and they generally come off as too “cute” and trying too hard. This one is different.

Gerster, Georg. The Past from Above; Aerial Photographs of Archaeological Sites.

Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005. [orig. publ. in Munich, 2003]

Aerial photographs began being taken in the mid-19th century, from tethered hot-air balloons, but it was a very iffy business. Among other things, the balloon gondola had to include a darkroom because the glass plates of the time couldn’t wait the photographer to return to earth. The invention of the airplane in the early 20th century made things much simpler in a technical sense, but also more complicated when it came to politics and borders.

Girouard, Mark. Life in the French Country House.

London: Cassell, 2000.

The author’s Life in the English Country House has become a classic of domestic anthropology, an examination of the British aristocracy and landed gentry through an exploration of its preferred places of residence. When I became aware of this successor volume (it’s not a “sequel”) shortly after it first appeared, I had my doubts.

Howard, Rachel & Bill Nash. Secret London: An Unusual Guide.

Versailles, France: Jonglez Publishing, 2011.

When you go to visit a new city for the first time — especially if you’re American and the city is someplace like London — it’s natural to take along a guide book or two, just to make sure you don’t miss the important sights. And usually that means Fodor or some similar general-purpose guide that concentrates on (in this case) the Tower and Parliament and Windsor, and maybe the Millennium Disaster (er, Dome).

Block, Lawrence. A Ticket to the Boneyard.

NY: HarperCollins, 1990.

Matt Scudder, ex-cop, unlicensed investigator, and alcoholic struggling to reform, is both a good person to have on your side and a bad person to cross, especially when the demons have got him. His best friend is Mick Ballou, a frequently violent career criminal, and the only female he’s at all close to is Elaine, a call girl with a lot of money invested in New York real estate.

Deetz, James. In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Expanded & rev. ed.

NY: Doubleday, 1996.

Back forty years ago, when I was first getting into the formal study of “material history” — also called “historical archaeology,” as opposed to prehistorical — Deetz was one of the principal practitioners in the field, teaching introductory courses at Brown and Berkeley and the University of Virginia. Out of those courses came the first edition of this book, published in 1977. It focused mostly on New England — but that didn’t matter because archaeological method and systematic interpretation is the same whatever milieu one applies it to.

Freeman, Charles. Sites of Antiquity, from Ancient Egypt to the Fall of Rome.

Taunton, Somerset, UK: Somerset Books, 2009.

When it comes to subjects like history, I’m always a little suspicious of glossy, oversized picture books because so many of them stint on the text. You have to ask, “Would this still be a worthwhile book without the images?” In this case, I’m pleased to say, the answer is resoundingly “Yes.” The text in this well-produced volume does not merely accompany and identify the hundreds of illustrations, it expands on them a great deal.

Merrifield, Ralph. London: City of the Romans.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

This magisterial volume is an outgrowth of the change in the state of archaeology in postwar Britain, and especially in London. In the 1950s, a great many opportunities unfortunately were missed during the clearing and rebuilding of the devastation left in the city by the Blitz, to poke about and discover what could be found from earlier centuries — but people understandably had other things on their minds.

Ackroyd, Peter. London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets.

NY: Doubleday, 2011.

Ackroyd is a well-known English historian, not of the grand-sweep variety, nor of the academically contentious sort, but a purveyor of absorbing stories, of interesting miscellanea, about which he talks in a quiet, almost poetic style — even when, as here, his subject is sewers, and water mains, and the tunneling of Underground lines.