Good Reads, Anyone?

On my previous post to /t/history, a user asked if anyone could recommend good history books for this user to read.

I think it would be fun to create a list of book recommendations within the comments of this post for any user on /t/history who is interested in picking up a new book. I know I would love to hear some recommendations as well! So I ask you, Snapzu, can you recommend any good history reads? They can be biographies, memoirs, or even historical fictions (though please mark the fictions as such). If you want to include documentaries or films that's cool as well!

I just finished a read of Robert K. Massie's Peter the Great: His Life and World and highly recommend it for anyone interested in seventeenth and eighteenth century Russia and it's continuous attempts to either avoid or adopt Western European culture. It reads like a novel and, although may seem bland, is really quite gripping.