Possibly because they assume I have no life and spend my time buried among the tottering piles of books and overstuffed bookshelves at the stately Mead manor in the storied and exclusive residential borough of Queens, my students and younger colleagues often ask me for advice about what to read.
Many are surprised when I advise them to steer away from the hot books of the moment, but up until your early thirties I think it’s much more important to catch up on the old books rather than trying to keep up with the latest thing. (My books of course are an exception; everyone should immediately go out and purchase three or four copies of each one, preferably in hardcover.)
The reason isn’t just that a large percentage of what is published every year is drivel — although that is true. (I review books on the United States for Foreign Affairs and I often serve on book prize juries; I see a LOT of books in a year and while there are a lot of good ones, there are many more books that just aren’t worth the trouble.)
The real reason that young people should read old books is that in your twenties you should be laying the foundation of general knowledge that will enable you to have something sensible to say when, beginning in your thirties and then increasingly through the coming decades, you may actually have some influence over events and over policy.
Ten years from now we will be debating a different set of issues and policy options than those that preoccupy us today.They will be related; we will for example probably still be talking about US-China relations. But you will be better prepared for those future debates if you spend your time now reading about Chinese history rather than following the twists and turns of the daily China chit-chat from month to month. As for the memoirs of former officials, these door-stopping insomnia cures can almost always be safely ignored. Virtually any books on American grand strategy written now will seem useless and quaint in just ten years; speculations on the future world order have an equally short half-life.
If by the time you hit 35 you are well grounded in American history and the history of the world’s chief powers and major cultures and civilizations, and you have some understanding of financial and economic history, you will be far better prepared to play a useful role in the political life of your generation than if you have spent the last 15 years trying to follow the hot issues and topics of each passing day.
I’d put extra weight on the importance of studying European history between 1500 and 1945. This isn’t because Europe is the center of world affairs today; it isn’t. But Europe was the first major world cultural center to undergo the kinds of religious, ideological and national conflicts that have since appeared in all parts of the world. The industrial revolution, the French revolution, the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, the rise of socialism, the emergence of nationalist movements, the breakup of old empires, the rise of democracy: in European history we can see all these forces at work. We can’t use European history to predict the future in other parts of the world, but we can gain insight into the crises and transformations of our time.
Add that background to an equally deep one in the religious, cultural and political history of the world’s most important non-European regions, and put that together with a study of the Anglo-American world order as it has evolved over the last 300 years, and by the time you are reaching your years of maximum influence and power, you will be better equipped than most to make a constructive contribution to the struggles of your time.