What history books would you recommend?

It's many volumes but I never considered not finishing.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841)

Reading that helped me understand the NFT craze and how these things get going and usually end

You can find it on audiobook.

This will bring you up to speed from the dawn of pre-civilization through the era of Napoleon.

For computing history, Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond.

For inspirational American stories, David McCullough (1933-2022) is peerless. The Wright Brothers nearly brought me to tears.