Show newest 3 posts from difrnt catigories

I am trying to show the 3 newest posts from 5 different categories I don’t just want to show all of the posts from the this post type since there are 3 I no not want to show. The best way to do this seams to be to exclude posts from those categories but not sure how to do that either.

Here is the code I have so far but I need it to be not pull in category Arts,Outdoors, history

<?php $recent = new WP_Query('post_type=post&posts_per_page=3' ); ?>
<?php $count = 0; ?>
<?php while( $recent->have_posts() ) : $recent->the_post(); ?>
<?php $count++; ?>
  <?php if ($count < 2) : ?>
      <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php
if ( has_post_thumbnail()):
    the_post_thumbnail( 'feed-fixed' );
endif;  ?></a>

          <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php echo wp_trim_words( get_the_excerpt(), 20 ); ?>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">>>More</a>
   <?php else : ?>
<ul>
<li>
          <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

</li>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Thank you for any help.