General Grounding in History.
History always repeats itself. He who knows no history remains forever a child. History doesn't repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. We've heard it all. The real truth is that people with even a basic grounding in world history have a major advantage over those who don't. They can more easily contextualize material from various periods, they have a feel for what trends run through the ages, and they always win in Trivial Pursuit.
A History of the Modern World (8th Ed.)
This is it. The bible of history since 1500. I love this book. It got me through AP European in high school, and I was constantly pulling it off my shelf as a history major at Harvard. It's a little expensive, but the Palmer-Colton is such a monumental synthesis that it does the work of twenty normal history books.
The Penguin History of the World
A great history reference source that has a little something on everything, but takes up very little space. I've read it straight through, but I wouldn't recommend cover-to-cover reading of this monster for anyone but the most hardy. Still, a valuable reference.
The American Pageant
Today's sine qua non among AP American History classes. A great read, as history books go, that is written with particular flair. The book presents a variety of viewpoints, and contains great pictures and political cartoons from throughout American history.
Oxford History of the Classical World
We are all students of the Greeks and inheritors of Roman language and legacies. It's worth getting to know these ancient civilizations to which ours owes so much. In many ways, these societies were far more modern than we might like to think.
The Timetables of History
This massive tome is a fantastic reference for everyone. It is basically an enormous timeline. If you want to find out what happened in 1352, just flip to that year and all the events are listed by topic (politics, culture, religion, society, arts, etc.). Whenever I write a paper about a book published in 1844 or a scientific discovery made in 1708, I just turn to that year to quickly see what was going on at the time. When you're writing a paper on Balzac, it makes it very easy to do things like this: "The best-seller of 1834 was Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That same year, Honore de Balzac published Pere Goriot..." It makes it seem like you're extremely erudite and just happen to know things like that.
Sumer and the Sumerians
OK, this isn't tremendously important to the average person, but I just think this stuff is so cool! This was the society that invented writing, accounting, social stratification, cylinder-seals (locks), and centralized temple-palace bureaucracies, and all because some clever gal (or guy) decided to start using irrigation. And if you have a chance, check out how similar Utnapishtim's tale in the Epic of Gilgamesh is to the classic flood story of Noah in Genesis.
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