The mistakes in judgment that led to the United States invasion of Iraq are richly documented in Robert Draper’s To Start a War.
In The Unidentified, Colin Dickey introduces readers to lesser known yet delightfully named phenomena, like the 1876 Great Kentucky Meat Shower.
In Looking for Miss America, historian Margot Mifflin encourages us to view Miss America as more complicated than just sashes, hairspray and high heels.
To understand Teddy Roosevelt and his passion for American wilderness, David Gessner digs into a cultural and political history as complex as Roosevelt himself.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his times are brought vividly to life by Nicholas A. Basbanes in his authoritative and wonderfully readable Cross of Snow.
Wendy Lesser’s Scandinavian Noir is a fascinating tribute to a unique breed of mystery. Fans of Nordic noir, take note.
Colin Woodard tackles the evolution of ideas about America’s nationhood leading up to the Civil War in Union.
The Vapors is David Hill’s true crime narrative of Hot Springs, Arkansas, arguably America’s gambling capital until it all came crashing down in the mid-1960s.
Leila Slimani collects Moroccan women’s testimonies, woven together with her own reflections on Morocco’s social attitudes toward sex, in Sex and Lies.
How did brooding, solitary private eye character come to rule the crime scene? Susanna Lee sheds light on the mystery.
For readers interested in thinking critically about American history, this is a good start.
A sobering, expansive study of discrimination and nativism, but also eminently readable thanks to Okrent’s accessible writing style.
This absorbing look at a pivotal point in civil rights activity before the 1950s and ’60s is well done and should be of interest to us all.
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