The liberation of Paris in August 1944 is one of the most compelling World War II stories. It lifted the spirits of the French people and had long-term political implications for them in the postwar world. As noted historian Jean Edward Smith relates in his authoritative and beautifully written The Liberation of Paris, a complex series of decisions, including those by two generals from opposing armies to change their strategies, led to the saving of many lives and the preservation of irreplaceable cultural treasures.

Paris, unlike other cities, was not bombed, but daily life was difficult for everyone except those who had money or collaborated with German occupiers. Thousands of French Jewish citizens and those from other countries residing in Paris were sent to concentration camps. The Germans exploited the French economy and workers. But by 1944, when Parisians understood that the Germans were losing the war, resistance hardened, and Charles de Gaulle, who had established a government in exile, moved in various ways to strengthen his position. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, had known de Gaulle before the war, had lived in Paris himself and was aware that partisan conflict in Paris could lead to communist control of the city. Despite opposition from his advisers, Eisenhower agreed to send some Allied troops to help French troops reclaim the city.

At the same time, General Dietrich von Choltitz, the newly named German commandant in Paris, concluded, after a meeting with Adolf Hitler, that his leader was an “insane man.” Although seriously concerned about the fate of his family if anything should go wrong, he defied Hitler’s orders to destroy Paris and got cooperation from most of his fellow officers and diplomats. Time was of the essence, and one wrong move could have doomed the effort.

This expertly crafted narrative is a gem, a model of how important and complex events can be conveyed for enlightenment to a general audience.

George Remus legally defended bootleggers. Then he decided to become one. His outrageous scheme involved circulating whiskey from distilleries (that he owned) to pharmacies (that he owned) and, along the way, being robbed by bandits (whom he employed). His flashy second wife, Imogene Holmes, helped him run the ever-growing empire. They bought a mansion. They threw parties. They lived lavishly. Behind the frenetic lifestyle of this German-immigrant-turned-millionaire was an unquenchable thirst, not for whiskey (he was a teetotaler) but for acceptance and admiration. 

When Holmes betrayed Remus by starting an affair with the prohibition agent Franklin Dodge, Remus began to exhibit signs of madness. These “brainstorms” culminated in murder: Remus shot Holmes at point-blank range. The following trial captured the attention of the country. Remus, ever hungry for the limelight, defended himself and pleaded “transitory insanity.” By the end, his fortune was gone.

In The Ghosts of Eden Park, Karen Abbott tells the story of Remus’ rise and fall with a novelist’s eye, and incredibly, every line of dialogue is taken directly from a primary source. Without embellishment or overt psychologizing, she pulls readers into the kaleidoscopic world of Jazz-Age America, full of flappers and whiskey parties, boisterous criminals and crooked government agents. Though Remus seemed unstoppable, he met his match in Mabel Willebrandt, a U.S. attorney and staunch feminist who was determined to bring him down.

As a resident of Cincinnati, where the crimes took place, I drove past the landmarks from Remus’ story: the sites of the Alms and Sinton hotels, the fateful roundabout in Eden Park. I was transfixed, not only by the incredible research that informed this compulsively readable book but also by what the story reveals about human nature, the interplay of brilliant and unpredictable individuals and the societies in which they live, and the way that greed, fame and lust can—and have—corrupted the motives of both lovers and enemies. If you are a fan of true crime, historical nonfiction and the Jazz Age, this is not a book to miss.

On March 13, 1940, an exiled Indian man killed the former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab to avenge a massacre that took place nearly 21 years earlier. The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India’s Quest for Independence, by biographer and radio presenter Anita Anand, sheds critical light on one of history’s coldest dishes of revenge: Udham Singh’s murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer.

The two men were fatally linked by the Amritsar Massacre. In April of 1919, O’Dwyer set off a chain of events that led General Reginald Dyer to order his men to fire on a crowd of thousands of unarmed men, women and children in Jallianwala Bagh, a popular garden in the Punjabi city of Amritsar. Estimates of the number of people killed range from the official 379 to over 1,000. Singh, who lived in Amritsar, swore that he would avenge the victims.

Singh and O’Dwyer could not have been less alike. One was an impoverished Punjabi orphan and the other an ambitious Anglo–Irish civil servant who became the second most powerful man in the Raj. Anand expertly weaves their stories together, making their unlikely meeting both inevitable and tragic. She also recognizes that many questions surrounding Singh will remain unanswered. The historical record is murky, and the intelligence files surrounding his case have only recently (and incompletely) been released. Singh himself—at turns a charming rogue, a spinner of tales and a passionate revolutionary—didn’t seem to know if he was a patriot, madman or pawn. This lack of clarity allowed Singh to be labeled either a martyr or a terrorist, depending on the point of view of the person telling his story. Anand, whose family was directly affected by the massacre, rejects these easy labels. Instead, she delves into the historical record with rigor and objectivity, painting a portrait of Singh that goes far beyond his symbolic value.

The Patient Assassin is not a whodunit. We know who the killer is before we finish reading the preface. Nonetheless, it’s a suspenseful work of historical detection. Like a le Carré novel, it has a complex, weblike structure that creates a nuanced and compelling account of the massacre and its fallout. As a result, Anand rescues Singh from his pigeonhole, revealing a flawed man driven by anger, guilt and grief. 

Local cowboys scoffed when three mysterious riders arrived at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena in 1908. Their spurs were smaller than the local cowboys’ spurs, they carried rawhide lassos, and they adorned their wider-brimmed hats with—wait for it—flowers. However, these Hawaiian paniolos (cowboys) quickly silenced skeptics with their record-breaking times, leaving the crowd clamoring with questions.

In Aloha Rodeo, David Wolman and Julian Smith answer these questions with the same engaging, thorough prose that marks their solo work. On the surface, this is a book about the cowboy history of Hawaii, which was a new United States territory in the early 1900s. But this book also explores “identity, imperialism, and race” through the wild narratives of “ranchers, warriors, showmen, cowgirls, missionaries, immigrants, [and] royalty.” The narratives are so wild, in fact, that they often read like fiction. 

For example, the British first brought cattle to the Sandwich Islands (now the Hawaiian Islands) in 1793. They were a gift for the ruler, Kamehameha, who had been so displeased with the former British liaison that he had him bludgeoned to death. When it was showtime, the animals were brought out of the dark ship’s hold and into the tropical sunshine, where they were lowered into canoes with a giant pulley. The first two died of shock upon making it into the small boats. Did I mention they were longhorns? 

During this time, cattle were given free rein on the Big Island. They became so fierce that natives feared being gored or trampled. The first Hawaiian cowboys risked their lives to hunt these animals like wild game, subduing the beasts to bring peace to their island again. And as the authors suggest, if you interpret the cattle as a gift from imperialists meant to placate the natives, it gives the conquests of early paniolos even more dimension.

If your perception of cowboy culture has largely been shaped by Louis L’Amour, Lonesome Dove and John Wayne, hold onto your hats. Aloha Rodeo blows open a canyon of inclusionary cowboy history as wide as the Rio Grande. 

Admit it. When you hear “female spy,” you see images of Mata Hari beguiling her hapless victims into confiding secret enemy plans. But beauty so fatally powerful can easily transform from a spy’s best weapon into her greatest liability.

Instead, to be a successful female spy, a woman needs to be outwardly ordinary, a human chameleon who can hide in plain view. She must also have brains, courage and obstinacy. An ability to react quickly to unpleasant surprises—such as concealing incriminating evidence during a Gestapo arrest—is a plus. And the capacity to withstand torture without divulging any information about your spy ring is also desirable. These are the women of D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose’s gripping account of a generation of heroes.

In 1942, the Special Operations Executive, established by Winston Churchill to organize sabotage in German territory, decided to train women to operate behind enemy lines. This decision was not the result of early feminist principles but was instead born out of necessity, since men were rare commodities in wartime. It wasn’t a popular decision either: Colonel Maurice Buckmaster had to sell his idea directly to Churchill before he could get permission to implement it. But the accomplishments of these extraordinary “ordinary” women outweighed any skepticism. They organized, trained and armed thousands of resistance fighters who, on and after D-Day, were able to divert German attention away from the beaches in Normandy.

But their story is also marked by sadness and tragedy. Betrayed by the incompetence and arrogance of their commanders and fellow agents, scores of these women died under hideous circumstances. Others survived but were scarred. 

Their deeds may have been forgotten and their names obscured, but with her book, Rose has resurrected them, so that Odette Sansom, Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac and their sisters in arms will be remembered and honored.

Those who know the British Regency mostly from Georgette Heyer novels of heaving bosoms and Beau Brummel-ish heroes, or from Jane Austen’s witty satires on British manners, may be surprised to discover that the real Regency decade (1811 to 1820) was a period of intense political and social unrest, both nationally and internationally; of cavalier (in both senses) cruelty and contempt; of crushing taxes, tariffs and starvation versus extravagance; and of addiction (often prescribed and socially consumed), organized crime and pornography. It was also the setting for a golden age of London theater and art; for a fanatic explosion in sports both elegant and excruciatingly bloody; for literal Dickensian child poverty and criminal exploitation; and eventually for (almost redemptory) scientific and technical innovation.

Morrison’s well annotated and engagingly anecdotal book is a worthy romp through one of the most licentious, libertarian and obviously paradoxical decades in British history. Warfare, which was almost continual from Napoleon to New Orleans, required immense funding, while the Irish and other colonials were alternately taxed and denied relief. It was also a great era of expansion in India and the Middle East, which Lord Elgin saw as artistic reclamation and Lord Byron considered blatant looting.

Morrison reminds us that what literature classes refer to as the Romantic poets were also prominent social revolutionaries, writing against obvious profiteering Parliament laws and in favor of universal rights, suffrage and prison reform. It didn’t come cheap, either. Shelley was the near-victim of an attempted assassination, Byron lost his life fighting for Greek independence from Turkey, and newspaper publisher Leigh Hunt spent two years in jail for his scathing criticisms of the Prince Regent, which probably lead to his early death.

Morrison also offers a timely debunking of current misnomers. “Luddites” were not anti-tech—only anti the machines that stole their jobs during the industrial revolution. And despite the way Victorian has come to mean “prudish,” the 19th-century Brits (including those from the Regency era) endorsed sadomasochistic floggings at boys’ schools, incest (which was more socially acceptable than masturbation) and celebrity affairs. The Regent himself, and his brother and successor William IV, were famously dissolute and shared an almost hereditary weakness for actresses. William had at least 10 illegitimate children, most of whom survived with titles and a few honors, but of course, they could not inherit the throne. And thus, the brothers’ niece Victoria ushered in Britain’s next era.

Focusing on the origins, translation, transmission, interpretation and reinterpretation of three ancient and enduring texts—Euclid’s Elements, Ptolemy’s Almagest and Galen’s medical writings—Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge charts a breathtaking path not only through the life of a book but also through the political, religious and cultural forces that ensure some books survive while others are lost to history.

Part history of ideas and part mystery story, Moller’s briskly paced chronicle opens in the great library in Alexandria, were Ptolemy discovered Euclid’s writings and used them as an indispensable guide to his own astronomical writings. Later, Galen discovered both Euclid and Ptolemy in this library and produced his own voluminous writings on medicine.

Moller then conducts a whirlwind tour of the lives of these books as they make their way from Alexandria to Baghdad, Córdoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo and Venice—collected by scholars and rulers in repositories and preserved and translated into new languages that gave the original texts new life for other cultures. In Baghdad, for example, the ninth-century caliph Harun established the House of Wisdom, where scribes copied manuscripts and scholars translated them—including the works of Euclid, Ptolemy and Galen—from Greek into Arabic. When Baghdad’s fortunes waned in the late ninth century, Muslims carried the impulse to preserve and transmit these texts to Córdoba, the great Spanish center of learning that drew scholars from near and far in the tenth century. Later, Moller brings us and these texts into 15th-century Venice, where we witness the work of printer Aldus Manutius, whose innovations with the printing press enabled these texts to be widely disseminated.

Moller delivers a brilliant tour-de-force in the history of ideas, illustrating the sometimes-messy ways that important ancient texts endure over time and encouraging us to consider the religious and intellectual tolerance that often led to the desire to preserve and transmit these books.