“History,” in the words of Edward Gibbon, “…is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” In no pursuit has man so prolifically added to the historical registry than in the creation and preservation of nations. Think of the crimes committed in the name of land acquisition, the fanatical quests for power at any cost, and it is apparent why plucky historians snoop through governmental archive files with such zeal. Not even the pursuit of treasure offers such theater.

Even now, as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and other nations implode from ethnic conflict, there is ample reason to question the geographical model heretofore used in the forming of nation-states. We are learning the hard way how ill-advised it has been for leaders to circle the metaphoric wagons; keeping countrymen in and enemies out. Nationalists would have us believe the ideal is when peoples of similar blood and beliefs band together—implying a pure-strain from which a sense of solidarity is formed. Rarely though has history delivered such tidiness. On the other hand, virtually all nation-states evolve through periods of weak civil and state control, and some binding factor besides ethnicity or religion is needed to keep the whole thing together.

Over the past hundred or so years, political ideology served as the preeminent coagulate, and in the case of Communism, offers some spectacularly ignominious failures. In his preface to Comrades: A History of World Communism (Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-02530-1), Robert Service points to his student days in the United Kingdom and the “endless discussion about whether communism was inherently despotic or potentially liberating.” This question, and the realization that countries covering a third of the earth’s surface dabbled with it in the twentieth century, compelled Service to complete this fascinating compendium of arguably the world’s most important movement. A Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Russian History, Service examines the Soviet bloc, Cuba, China, and communism’s spread through Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as political parties in the United States and elsewhere with communist ambitions.

Patrice Higonnet, a Harvard and Oxford educated historian with homes in both Paris and Cambridge, with a widely acclaimed study of France to his authorial credit (Paris: Capital of the World, Harvard University Press) has turned his attention to American nationalism, posing the question of whether America is at a turning point for the worse. In Attendant Cruelties: Nation and Nationalism In American History (Other Press, 978-1-59051-235-7), Higonnet writes, “The gap between an older (and wiser) Europe and an America that carries forward retrograde European religious and economic traditions, which Europe has now left behind, is wide and widening. And so it matters today that all of us, both in America and in the world at large, should be aware of the connections that bind the dark chapters of America’s past to its darkening present. George W. Bush’s America is a threat to the world and to itself.” To be sure, nationalism has too often been misused to unite a populace behind insular and exclusionist policies, and according to Higonnet, Bush’s “failed and immoral pre-emptive war has been an excuse to attack America’s civil liberties.” It didn’t have to be this way, writes the author. Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt served to instill a sense of national pride accompanied by more open policies. Higonnet points to their brand of nationalism as leading the way to a more inclusive future.

South Africa would certainly be short-listed for the Gibbons Crimes, Follies, and Misfortune Award; talk about colonial-power malpractice, isolationist insecurities, and a reprehensible racial policy record. For the full register of events, we turn to Diamonds, Gold and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa (PublicAffairs, 978-1-58648473-6), a new book by African scholar Martin Meredith, which opens during the Napoleonic Wars when the British first took possession of the Cape Colony, then populated by Dutch, German, and Huguenot settlers. Surprisingly, aside from minor squabbles with the Boers leading to a decree for separate states, all remained relatively peaceful until 1871 when the discovery of diamonds, and then gold, raised the stakes considerably. The ensuing rush attracted tens of thousands of men, trapped the native Africans in a bloody war between various European factions, and began the long exploitation of African resources. Meredith writes captivatingly of characters like DeBeer’s founder, Cecil Rhodes, native king Lobengula, and nationalist Paul Kruger. World history buffs know colonization as an all too familiar tale of woe, but South Africa remains unique in its absurdly rich natural resources.

The Balkans offer another undeniable registry of nation-birthing, ethnic conflict, and nationalism at its worst. To be sure, Slobodan Milosevic is just one in a long list of Slavic villains over the long history of that region. Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro (978-0-8014-4601-6), is endorsed by its publisher, Cornell University Press, as “the first comprehensive history in nearly 100 years of the world’s newest nation.” Predominantly Orthodox, Montenegro is a nation of 675,000 people containing a number of minorities including Slav Muslims, both Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, Croats, and Roma, all of whom are Montenegrins politically speaking, yet not all of them wished to break ties with Serbia in 2006. One sociologist describes the Montenegrin condition as “double or divided consciousness,” founded in shared language and religion with Serbia. Elizabeth Roberts, a former diplomat and Balkan history professor at various Irish universities, produced this important work knowing it contained lessons for future nation-builders, politicians, and historians concerned with ethnic relations. “Identities,” she writes, “are neither primordial nor set in stone, as nationalists would have us believe. Instead they are, within limits, fluid and opportunistic; they evolve over time.”

The Islamic terrorist—stateless, lawless, and unconscionable to anyone grounded in a nationalist mindset—figures prominently in Witch Hunts: From Salem to Guantanamo Bay (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 978-0-7735-3186-4). It is a disturbingly prescient study of fear and paranoia, twenty-first century style. The author of a previous book on witchcraft trials, Robert Rapley identifies 1) presumption of guilt without proof, 2) falsified evidence, 3) unproven secret testimony, and 4) frequent use of torture as the prescribed tactics used by overzealous prosecutors now and in numerous cases over the past several centuries. In the first of three sections, Rapley documents three famous witchcraft events of the seventeenth century, followed by a detailing of the Dreyfus Affair in France, the Scottsboro Boys trial in Alabama in the 1930s, and the Maguire Seven terrorism case in England. In Part Three, he turns his attention to the United States after September 11, 2001, noting that the antiterrorist Patriot Act was passed only six weeks later. Rapley’s writing is brisk, relaxed, and eye-opening.

Much of the history of man is up for debate, but one might think historians at least agree that history should begin at the beginning. Think again. Now, well into the twenty-first century, it is important to remember that top-tier presidential candidates still openly point to evolution as “only a theory,” and that fifty-five percent of Americans believe every word in the Bible is “literally true” according to a Newsweek poll. Daniel Lord Smail, author of On Deep History and the Brain (University of California Press, 978-0-520-25289-9), is hell-bent to further muddy our view of human history by asking readers to think about “the historical implications of recent developments in neuroscience and human biology.” In this carefully documented and beautifully written work, he looks to the study of human diseases, genetics, and what is known about human interaction with the environment “as compelling devices for building a long historical narrative.” Our understanding of “prehistory” is his concern, not only for historians but for neuroscientists. He writes in his epilogue, “The new science of the brain cannot make sense without history.”

To their credit, each of the aforementioned author/historians writes with grace and humility. History books may be filled with “the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind,” but history’s registrars are by no means immune from the same human faults and weaknesses. From South Africa to Montenegro, American nationalism to world communism, we have learned that nations are nothing if not a sum of their personalities.