The following selection of readings and references begins with general books and histories that cover broad themes and large sections of American history. This guide to general readings is then followed by a listing of books keyed by chapter to the present work.
The great breadth and number of sources used in documenting this history would have made standard footnoting cumbersome. For the sake of readability, I have chosen to attribute any direct citations in the text; all other sources used are included in the following annotated listings.
I have attempted to use only those sources that are either standard works still in print or generally available through public libraries, and recently published works that include the most up-to-date scholarship.
Andrew, Christopher. For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush. New York: Harper-Collins, 1995. Exhaustive history of America’s spies and their influence on American presidents.
Bamford, James. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. New York: Doubleday, 2001. An in-depth history of the National Security Agency, the world’s most powerful, farthest-reaching espionage organization, with new material describing the lapses that preceded the 9/11 attacks.
Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (5th ed.). Chicago: Johnson, 1982. A standard work that assesses the impact of blacks in America and the course of black American history.
Beschloss, Michael. Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. Good overview of how several presidents—from Jackson and Lincoln to Kennedy and Reagan—dealt with crisis through their personal courage.
Bettmann, Otto L. The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible! New York: Random House, 1974. An amusing corrective to the widely accepted notion that things used to be much better, on a variety of subjects including education, pollution, and work.
Boller, Paul F., Jr. Presidential Campaigns. London: Oxford University Press, 1984. A refreshingly humorous look at the history of America’s curious process of selecting presidents. Anecdotal and entertaining, as well as fascinating history.
———. Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Like his earlier books in a series about the presidents, this offers a unique snapshot view of presidential spouses, with fascinating and revealing stories of their role.
Brandon, William. The American Heritage Book of Indians. New York: American Heritage, 1963. A lavishly illustrated history with much fascinating detail about Indian life and history.
Buckley, Gail. American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm. New York: Random House, 2001. The largely untold story of the role of blacks in America’s military history.
Burns, James McGregor. The American Experiment: The Vineyard of Liberty. New York: Knopf, 1982.
———. The American Experiment: The Workshop of Democracy. New York: Knopf, 1985.
———. The American Experiment: The Crosswinds of Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1989. A political scientist and mainly a middle-of-the-roader in terms of interpretation, Burns is always lucid and entertaining. These three volumes cover the period from the making of the Constitution through the Reagan years.
Carroll, Andrew, ed. Letters from a Nation. New York: Kodansha, 1997. Collection of personal letters, by both the celebrated and the obscure, spanning 350 years of American history. A wonderful personal view of history.
Colbert, David, ed. Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of American History in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen. New York: Pantheon, 1997. Documentary narratives and eyewitness accounts that create a fascinating and human montage of actual events, both famous and less familiar. Like the letters above, it brings a vividly personal side to the historical record.
Cook, Chris, with Whitney Walker. The Facts on File World Political Almanac: From 1945 to Present (4th ed.). New York: Checkmark, 2001. Valuable reference to contemporary events in international politics, including treaties, elections, and political terms.
Cowan, Tom, and Jack Maguire. Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement. New York: Roundtable/Perigee, 1994. Useful reference presenting year-by-year landmarks in black history in America.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Presidency. New York: American Heritage, 1968. A thematic approach rather than a simple chronology, this is the work of a historian who analyzes the men who shaped the office.
Eskin, Blake, and the editors of George magazine. The Book of Political Lists. New York: Villard, 1998. An irreverent and entertaining reference guide, dealing with everything from presidents with royal blood to openly gay politicians.
Davis, Kenneth C. America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation. New York: Smithsonian/HarperCollins, 2008. Explores six little-known stories, from the European arrival through the Revolution.
———. A Nation Rising: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from America’s Hidden History. New York: Harper-
Collins, 2010. The first fifty years of the nineteenth century through six dramatic tales that most textbooks leave out.
Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: Free Press, 1989. A good overview of women’s roles in the making of the country.
Fitzgerald, Frances. America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. A revealing study of the textbooks that shaped American impressions of our history.
Friedman, Lawrence M. Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books, 1993. A panoramic overview of crime and punishment from colonial days to modern times.
Greenberg, Ellen. The House and Senate Explained: The People’s Guide to Congress. New York: Norton, 1996. A simple reference guide to the procedures and practices of Congress.
———. The Supreme Court Explained. New York: Norton, 1997. A simple guide to the mysteries of how the nation’s highest court gets, hears, and decides cases.
Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. A chronology of world history, tracing developments in politics, culture, science, and other fields. Useful for seeing American history in the larger context of world events.
Heffner, Richard D. A Documentary History of the United States. New York: New American Library, 1985. American history through major speeches, writings, court decisions, and other written documents.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. What we don’t know and why.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. What we need to know, in bite-size portions.
Hofstadter, Richard, and Clarence L. Ver Steeg. Great Issues in American History: From Settlement to Revolution, 1584–1776. New York: Vintage, 1958. This and the succeeding volumes in the series are a presentation of history through major writings, speeches, and court decisions, with interpretive essays.
———. Great Issues in American History: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 1765–1865. New York: Vintage, 1958.
———. Great Issues in American History: From Reconstruction to the Present Day, 1864–1981. New York: Vintage, 1982.
Hoxie, Frederick E., ed. Encyclopedia of North American Indians. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Excellent reference with entries covering all aspects of Indian life in North America, from prehistoric to modern times.
Hoyt, Edwin P. America’s Wars and Military Excursions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987. An encyclopedic but entertaining overview of America’s battles, large and small, naughty and nice.
Hymowitz, Carol, and Michele Weissman. A History of Women in America. New York: Bantam, 1978. A useful overview of women’s achievements and their role in American history and society.
Irons, Peter. A People’s History of the Supreme Court. New York: Viking Penguin, 1999. History of the Court from a contrarian perspective.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians. New York: Knopf, 1994. A lavishly illustrated companion book to a television documentary recounting American history from the Native American point of view.
Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. New York: Pantheon, 2002. A fascinating small book that traces the origins and use of this controversial word.
Kohn, George Childs, ed. The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal. New York: Facts on File, 2001. From Abscam to the Zenger case, and everything in between, including the Lewinsky scandal and the O. J. Simpson case.
Lavender, David. The American Heritage History of the West. New York: American Heritage, 1965. Glossy pictorial history with much useful information, though somewhat dated now.
Lipsky, Seth. The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide. New York: Basic Books, 2009. Handy guide to the meaning behind the words of America’s rule of law.
McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of North American History to 1870. New York: Penguin, 1988. Using a progressively changing map of North America, the author traces the course of American history from prehistory to the Civil War.
McPherson, James M., general ed. “To the Best of My Ability”: The American Presidents. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.
Miller, Nathan. Star-Spangled Men: America’s Ten Worst Presidents. New York: Scribner, 1998. Can you guess who the ten worst are? An entertaining, no-holds-barred, and very subjective list that includes Carter, Taft, Coolidge, Grant, and Nixon. Kennedy and Jefferson don’t make the list, but get special treatment as “overrated.”
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. This is history pretty much the way you may have learned it in school, a highly traditional approach that tends to skim over the unsavory moments in American history and celebrates the nobility of American progress.
Ravitch, Diane, and Chester Finn. What Do Our Seventeen-Year-Olds Know? New York: Harper and Row, 1987. This is the controversial study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that created a furor when its findings were released showing an astonishing lack of fundamental knowledge of American history and literature among high school juniors.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., general ed. The Almanac of American History (rev. and updated ed.). New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993. From 986 to 1982, a day-by-day compendium of events, with introductory essays and brief entries on major people and events in American history. A valuable general reference book.
Shenkman, Richard. Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power, and Got Things Done. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Interesting behind-the-scenes look at power in the White House.
Spitzer, Robert J., ed. The Politics of Gun Control (2nd ed.). New York: Seven Bridges, 1998. A collection of scholarly and journalistic articles relating to the history and meaning of the Second Amendment.
Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Traces the development of the Klan from post–Civil War days to modern times.
Waldman, Carl. Atlas of the North American Indian (rev. ed.). New York: Facts on File, 2000.
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Random House, 2008. National Book Award winner, a grim history of the gross failures of the agency, including those in the run-up to 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Whitney, David C. The American Presidents. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985. A very basic reference to the American presidents through Reagan, with biographical sketches and a brief overview of events during each administration.
Williams, T. Harry. The History of American Wars: From 1745 to 1918. New York: Knopf, 1985. Unfinished at the time of the author’s death, this book presents a solid historical interpretation of events in America’s wars.
World Almanac. The Little Red, White, and Blue Book. New York: Pharos, 1987. A brief chronology of American history from Columbus on.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Looking at American history from the view of the “losers” (Indians, women, blacks, the poor, etc.), this is revisionist history at its best, and serves as a useful and necessary corrective to such traditional views as those of Morison and other standard American historians.
CHAPTER 1. BRAVE NEW WORLD
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America. New York: Knopf, 1986.
———. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1986.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York: Random House, 1958.
Desowitz, Robert S. Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria? Torrid Diseases in a Temperate World. New York: Norton, 1997. A history of disease in the Americas, including the exchange of diseases with Europe after Columbus’s arrival.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton, 1998. Pulitzer Prize–winning examination of the origins of cultures and societies that provides a convincing explanation for the differences in development in different places. Excellent discussion of the peopling of the Americas and the clash between European and Native American civilizations.
Granzotto, Gianni. Christopher Columbus. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985. By an Italian historian, a comprehensive and realistic portrait of America’s European discoverer.
Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. As the title implies, this book departs from the traditional view of a European “discovery” of America, calling it instead an “invasion.”
Klein, Herbert S. The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. A standard history of the slave trade.
Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Walker, 1997. Why Europeans really sailed across the Atlantic, and what fed them along the way. A fascinating account of how dependent the settlement of North America was on the pursuit of this fish.
Lauber, Patricia. Who Discovered America? New York: Random House, 1970. A young-adult book that provides a very adequate introduction to the pre-Columbian history of the Americas.
Magnusson, Magnus, and Hermann Palsson. The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. New York: Penguin, 1965.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor, 1977. How disease has affected and altered the course of history.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
———. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. These two volumes have been abridged and combined by Morison in The Great Explorers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
———. Christopher Columbus, Mariner. New York: New American Library, 1985. Originally written in the 1940s, a rather admiring, and now dated, view of the explorer by a renowned naval historian.
Nash, Gary B. Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. A harsh revisionist view of the European arrival.
Parkman, Francis. France and England in America (2 vols.). New York: Library of America, 1983. Writing for the general public during the mid-nineteenth century, Parkman was one of America’s first great historian writers.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006. A wonderful revision of the Pilgrim and Puritan founding myth, from the arrival through the Indian wars.
Quinn, David Beers. England and the Discovery of America: 1481–1620. New York: Knopf, 1974.
———. Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Brilliant narrative of the Dutch arrival in the future New York City.
Smith, John. Captain John Smith’s History of Virginia. New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1970. The legendary explorer-adventurer’s highly colorful and suspect account of his life and times.
Snell, Tee Loftin. The Wild Shores: America’s Beginnings. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1974.
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. An unvarnished account of the mass destruction of entire societies and millions of people following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.
CHAPTER 2. SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION
Alden, John R. George Washington: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. A sound and readable one-volume biography.
Boatner, Mark M., III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay, 1996. A complete, authoritative, one-volume reference to the names, places, and events of the Revolution.
Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Doubleday, 2000. A thorough and lively account of America’s first international celebrity and probably the most interesting man of the eighteenth century.
Brookhiser, Richard. Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. New York: Free Press, 1996. A laudatory “moral biography” that underscores Washington’s essential role in the creation of the country.
Butterfield, L. H., Marc Friedlander, and Mary-Jo Kline, eds. The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Cohen, I. Bernard. Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison. New York: Norton, 1995. Intriguing look at the significance of the scientific knowledge of these four founding fathers and its impact on their politics, a subject overlooked in most histories.
Commager, Henry Steele. The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/
Anchor, 1977. A dean of American history contrasts the European experience of the Enlightenment with America’s more practical political experiment.
Cunliffe, Marcus. George Washington: Man and Monument (rev. ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, 1984. How Washington was viewed in his time versus his true biography.
Demos, John. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. London: Oxford University Press, 1982.
———. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Knopf, 1994. A prizewinning account of life in colonial New England, this narrative focuses on the capture of a young girl who chose to remain with her Indian captors.
Draper, Theodore. A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution. New York: Times Books, 1996. A thorough and fascinating perspective on the years leading up to the Revolution.
Edgar, Walter. Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution. New York: Morrow, 2001. A valuable history of the overlooked campaign in the Carolinas that ultimately led to the British surrender.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Knopf, 2001. A best-selling group portrait of the key founders—John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington—focusing on the crucial decade of the 1790s.
Fenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. A fascinating book exploring the overlooked role of disease in history—in this case a near-plague during the American Revolution that killed far more Americans than the war did.
Ferling, John. Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A lively group biography that examines this trio: the “pen” (Jefferson), the “tongue” (Adams), and the “sword” (Washington) who ushered the United States into existence.
Fleming, Thomas. Liberty! The American Revolution. New York: Viking, 1997. Excellent companion book to a public television series tracing the American struggle for independence.
Flexner, James Thomas. Washington: The Indispensable Man. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969. This single volume reduces the material found in Flexner’s four-volume study, another standard among biographies of Washington.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography and Other Writings. New York: Signet, 1961.
Freeman, Douglas S. George Washington: A Biography. New York: Scribner, 1985. An abridgment of the seven volumes that constitute Freeman’s biography, considered the standard history of Washington.
Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. One in a series of books looking at the daily lives of Americans during different eras.
Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Doubleday, 1995. A fascinating account of the notorious 1691 witch hunts.
Hofstadter, Richard. America at 1750: A Social Portrait. New York: Knopf, 1971. A snapshot of everyday life in colonial America.
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. Entertaining biography of America’s first international celebrity and one of the key Founders.
Jennings, Francis. The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. An alternative history showing the colonists as conquerors and the Revolution as a rebellion over control of the conquered America.
Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. A groundbreaking view of the Revolution through women’s eyes.
Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soldiers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Military history of the months between the Declaration of Independence and the crucial Christmas victory at Trenton and later Princeton.
———. Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. A stirring account of one of the most important battles in American history, the 1777 battle in upstate New York that prevented the British from controlling the Hudson River.
Kitman, Marvin. George Washington’s Expense Account. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. A funny and revealing book that gives a line-by-line examination of the account the commander submitted to Congress after the war.
Langguth, A. J. Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. A vividly readable history of the Revolution and the personalities behind it.
Levin, Phyllis Lee. Abigail Adams: A Biography. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987. A thorough biography of one of America’s most intriguing personalities. (See also McCullough, John Adams.)
Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1997. An excellent account of the “real story” of the creation of the Declaration by the Second Continental Congress.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Pulitzer Prize–winning assessment of one of the chief architects of the Revolution, the second president, and the founding member of an American dynasty.
Meacham, Jon. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Random House, 2006. Excellent overview of the spiritual beliefs of key Founders and their struggle for a secular republic.
Nash, Gary B. The Urban Crucible: Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. The role of the working class in the quest for independence.
Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. Explores a vastly overlooked segment of American history, the role of women during the War for Independence.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings. New York: Meridian, 1984. (Many other editions of Paine’s writings are available.)
Peterson, Marshall D., ed. The Portable Thomas Jefferson. New York: Viking, 1975.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961. An important and overlooked chapter in American history.
Rossiter, Clinton. The First American Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1956. This paperback standard contains part 1 of Rossiter’s book Seedtime of the Republic.
———, ed. The Federalist Papers: Hamilton, Madison and Jay. New York: Mentor, 1961. A definitive collection of the essays that argued for ratification of the Constitution.
Smith, Jean Edward. John Marshall: Definer of a Nation. New York: Henry Holt, 1996. Definitive biography of the most influential chief justice in American history.
Tuchman, Barbara W. The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1988. The two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner examines key points in the American Revolution, focusing on the intervention of France and the Netherlands and the war’s decisive campaign culminating in the victory at Yorktown.
Wilkins, Roger. Jefferson’s Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism. Boston: Beacon, 2001. Examines the choice faced by those fighting for freedom who kept slaves.
Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978. An in-depth examination of the composition of the Declaration.
Zall, Paul M., ed. The Wit and Wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco, 1996. Quotations and aphorisms showing the lighter side—usually not seen—of Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson.
CHAPTER 3. GROWTH OF A NATION
Adams, Henry. History of the U.S.A. During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 1801–1805. New York: Library of America, 1986.
———. History of the U.S.A. During the Administration of James Madison, 1809–1817. New York: Library of America, 1986.
Adler, Mortimer J. We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution. New York: Macmillan, 1987. A readable primer on constitutional rights.
Alderman, Ellen. In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action. New York: Morrow, 1991. An excellent discussion for the legal layperson of the dilemmas posed by the Bill of Rights when conflicting “rights” bump into each other, with fascinating examples drawn from actual cases.
Amar, Akhil Reed. America’s Constitution: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2005. A lively and readable history of the Constitution from its beginnings.
Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. An exciting account of one of the great adventures in American history, the expedition through uncharted America following the Louisiana Purchase.
Bergon, Frank, ed. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The National Experience. New York: Random House, 1965. A sequel to The Colonial Experience, carrying the American story from the Revolution to the Civil War.
Brodie, Fawn. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: Norton, 1974. The controversial “psychobiography” that restarted the issue of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings.
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin, 2004. Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the controversial first secretary of the treasury.
Daniels, Jonathan. Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton and Burr. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. The stormy relationship of three men at the center of American politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Davis, William C. Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis. New York: Harper-
Collins, 1998. A daunting 800-page account of one of the most mythologized events in American history, the siege of the Alamo in Texas’s war for independence from Mexico.
Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1988. Excellent popular history of the Cherokee nation’s deadly forced march after being ousted from their tribal lands.
Fleming, Thomas. Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Fascinating retelling of the fateful duel and the extraordinary intersection of personality and politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Arguing in scholarly and lawyerly fashion, the author dispassionately presents the evidence for both sides of the case, which weighs in favor of the likelihood of the notorious relationship.
———. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: Norton, 2008. The eminent scholar looks at the family of Thomas Jefferson’s supposed lover, down to 1826.
Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. New York: Random House, 1976. An important scholarly work.
Hendrickson, Robert A. The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981. An abridgment of the author’s Hamilton I and Hamilton II.
Jahoda, Gloria. The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removal, 1813–1855. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Ketcham, Ralph, ed. The Anti-Federalist Paper and the Constitutional Convention Debates. New York: Mentor, 1986. (Other editions are available.) The text of essays published in opposition to the Constitution. (See also Rossiter, The Federalist Papers.)
Kitman, Marvin. The Making of the President, 1789. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. Amusing look at the first presidential “campaign.”
Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790–1840. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. One in a series of books looking at the daily lives of Americans.
Lavender, David. The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. An exciting narrative account of the epic expedition undertaken after the Louisiana Purchase.
Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. New York: Dial, 1968. An excellent book aimed at young adults, recapturing the life of a slave.
Levy, Leonard W. Original Intent and the Framers’ Constitution. New York: Macmillan, 1988. Rejecting the arguments of both right and left, this is an insightful reconstruction of what the framers had in mind—and why they didn’t think it mattered what they thought.
Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Times (6 vols.). Boston: Little, Brown, 1948–1981. This is the standard scholarly biography of Jefferson, but many alternative views of Jefferson now exist.
Meacham, Jon. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. New York: Random House, 2008. Pulitzer Prize–winning account of one of the most influential presidents in U.S. history.
Morris, Richard. Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay and the Constitution. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985. Examines the impact of these three men on the writing and ratification of the Constitution.
———. The Forging of the Union: 1781–1789. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. A basic recounting of the creation of the Constitution.
Padover, Saul K. Jefferson. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1942. A sound one-volume biography, now somewhat dated by new discoveries.
Rogin, Michael P. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Destruction of the American Indian. New York: Knopf, 1975. An unsparing look at Jackson’s record in matters pertaining to the Indians.
Rossiter, Clinton, ed. The Federalist Papers. New York: Mentor, 1999. (Many other editions are available.) A collection of the series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in defense of the Constitution as it was being debated before ratification by the states.
CHAPTER 4. APOCALYPSE THEN
Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Scholarly, in-depth treatment of the 1863 rioting that followed the Conscription Act and left hundreds dead in New York.
Brands, H. W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Random House, 2002.
Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953.
———. This Hallowed Ground. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956.
———. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. New York: American Heritage, 1960.
———. The Coming Fury. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.
———. Terrible Swift Sword. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963.
———. Never Call Retreat. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.
———. Gettysburg, the Final Fury. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.
Classic military histories, although Catton is now somewhat dated by more recent works.
Davis, Burke. Sherman’s March. New York: Random House, 1980. Excellent account of the infamous march to the sea.
———. The Long Surrender. New York: Random House, 1985. Excellent account of the closing days of the war.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Signet, 1968. (Other editions are available.) Originally written and published in 1845, this autobiography by a self-taught slave is an American classic, perhaps the most eloquent indictment of slavery ever written.
Eisenhower, John S. D. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848. New York: Random House, 1989. A narrative account of the war with Mexico by the son of the president.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. A massive book that examines the social, political, and economic aspects of this controversial period.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative (3 vols.). New York: Random House, 1958–74. A narrative account sometimes called “America’s Odyssey.”
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. The men who surrounded Lincoln in his cabinet.
Kaplan, Justin. Walt Whitman: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980. One of the best portraits of the poet and his times.
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery: 1619–1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Scholarly but very useful and carefully researched history of slavery in the United States.
Kunhardt, Philip B., Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kun-
hardt. Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography. New York: Knopf, 1992. A wonderfully illustrated photobiography, companion to a public television series.
Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Knopf, 1979. A standard work on postwar life for former slaves.
Lowery, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1994. Fascinating look at the true underside of the war—from brothels and venereal diseases to nineteenth-century homosexuality.
McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1981. A strong single-volume life of the soldier and president.
———. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991. Excellent account of the former slave turned abolitionist leader.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. London: Oxford University Press, 1988. This prizewinning book is an indispensable single-volume history of the war and the events leading up to it.
Mellon, James. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. Compiled during the Depression, this volume brings together reminiscences of life by the last surviving slaves.
Mitchell, Lt. Col. Joseph B. Decisive Battles of the Civil War. New York: Putnam’s, 1955.
Oates, Stephen B. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Excellent account of the controversial abolitionist.
———. Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. A dramatic account of the most famous American slave uprising and its controversial and charismatic leader.
———. With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. This biography of Lincoln is one of the best and most balanced single-volume histories of Lincoln’s life and times.
Rosengarten, Theodore. Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter. New York: Morrow, 1986. Using diaries, the author re-creates a vivid portrait of southern plantation life in this prizewinning best seller.
Sears, Stephen W. The Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983. A compelling account of one of the bloodiest battles in American history.
Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Knopf, 1956. Groundbreaking study of the “peculiar institution” by one of the deans of Civil War scholarship.
———, ed. The Causes of the Civil War. New York: Spectrum/Prentice-Hall, 1974. A collection of scholarly essays discussing the full range of social, economic, political, and moral causes of the war.
Swanson, James L. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. New York: Morrow, 2006. Thrilling account of the days following Lincoln’s assassination.
Ward, Geoffrey C., with Ric Burns and Ken Burns. The Civil War. New York: Knopf, 1990. Companion to the award-winning PBS television series.
Winik, Jay. April 1865: The Month That Saved America. New York: Harper-
Collins, 2001. A best-selling narrative portrait of the crucial last month of the Civil War.
CHAPTER 5. WHEN MONOPOLY WASN’T A GAME
Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan, 1910. The personal account of the remarkable reformer who started one of the nation’s first settlement houses in Chicago.
Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. New York: Free Press, 2001. Portrait of New York’s underside.
Brady, Kathleen. Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker. New York: Putnam, 1984. Life of the crusading journalist.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An American Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. A modern classic, retelling American history from the Indian perspective.
Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern American Finance. New York: Grove, 1990. Winner of the National Book Award, a biography of the first family of American finance.
———. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller. New York: Random House, 1998. A great biography of a man who has been called the Jekyll and Hyde of American capitalism—a rapacious robber baron who was one of America’s great philanthropists as well.
Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty. New York: New American Library, 1977. A popular history of the family by a pair of modern “muckraking” journalists, this book covers the rise of John D. Rockefeller.
Connell, Evan S. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. Berkeley, Calif.: North Point, 1984. A novelist recounts the most famous battle of the Plains Indian wars with a compelling character study of the controversial soldier.
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: Random House, 2002. A compelling social and cultural account of the history of thousands of black Americans lynched between the 1880s and World War II.
Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Monumental reassessment of World War I and its aftermath.
Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. An award-winning book about the British experience of trench warfare from 1914 to 1918, emphasizing the literature that this experience produced.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R., 1890–1940. New York: Knopf, 1955. Pulitzer Prize–winning landmark history of the populist and progressive movements at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934. An American classic recounting the corrupt growth of some of America’s greatest fortunes.
———. The Politicos. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963. A 1938 sequel to the muckraking The Robber Barons chronicles America’s Gilded Age.
Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.
———. Lincoln Steffens: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. A life of one of the most prominent muckrakers.
Karnow, Stanley. In Our Image: America’s Experience in the Philippines. New York: Random House, 1989. A fascinating study of America’s long entanglement in the Philippines, dating from the time of the Spanish-American War and the insurrection, and carrying through to events following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship by Corazon Aquino.
Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Knopf, 1999. A narrative history by one of America’s preeminent military historians.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: A Biography of a Race, 1868–1919. New York: Henry Holt, 1993. Winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize, a definitive biography of the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America.
Manchester, William. The Arms of Krupp: 1587–1968. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. This history of the German munitions and armament family provides a fascinating account of the rise of militarism in Germany that played prominently in both world wars.
Marshall, S. L. A. World War I. New York: American Heritage, 1964. A military historian, the author concentrates on the armed confrontations, with far less emphasis on the causes and effects of the war or its long-term consequences.
McCullough, David. The Great Bridge. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. The fascinating story of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
———. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977. The epic story of the creation of the canal.
———. Mornings on Horseback. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. An excellent biography of the young Teddy Roosevelt.
Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history, this fascinating “intellectual history” examines the impact of four people, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and William James, who changed the way Americans thought about education, democracy, and other philosophical notions.
Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Coward, McCann and Geohegan, 1979. An admiring yet balanced and excellent account of Roosevelt’s life, to his first inauguration.
———. Theodore Rex. New York: Random House, 2001. Excellent account of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential years, a sequel to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919. New York: Norton, 1987. A fascinating portrait of the country during this period of transition from minor power to empire.
Tuchman, Barbara W. The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962. The Pulitzer Prize–winning account of European events leading to World War I and the first fighting at the Battle of the Marne.
———. The Zimmerman Telegram. New York: Macmillan, 1966. An account of the diplomatic turmoil and conspiracy between Germany and Mexico that helped push America into World War I.
Williams, John Hoyt. A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Times Books, 1988.
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
CHAPTER 6. BOOM TO BUST TO BIG BOOM
Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. New York: Penguin, 2009. Pulitzer Prize–winning history of the Great Depression, focusing on the small group of central bankers who were behind the meltdown in 1929. Great economic history with new relevance.
Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change: America Transforms Itself: 1900–1950. New York: Harper and Row, 1952. A classic by one of the great journalist-historians of the first half of the twentieth century.
———. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. New York: Harper and Row, 1931.
———. Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1939. A social and cultural history of life in the Depression years.
Armor, John, and Peter Wright. Manzanar: Photographs by Ansel Adams; Commentary by John Hersey. New York: Times Books, 1988. A detailed chronicle of the Japanese-American internment camp, illustrated by Ansel Adams’s photo documentary of the camp.
Badger, Anthony J. FDR: The First Hundred Days. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. A brief, very readable, balanced overview of the intense period of New Deal legislation introduced as Roosevelt battled the Great Depression.
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh. New York: Putnam, 1998. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a definitive account of the dramatic life of the heroic, tragic, and later controversial aviator.
Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Excellent social history of life on the home front during World War II.
Brooks, John. Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920–1938. New York: Norton, 1969. Magazine journalist’s classic telling of Wall Street’s Great Crash and its aftermath; his story of easy credit, inflated egos, and greed has been repeated often.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997. A gripping account of one of the worst atrocities of World War II, the assault on the civilian population of Nanking, China, by the Japanese in 1937.
Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. The Fords: An American Epic. New York: Summit, 1987. Well-told overview of the man who transformed America’s auto industry and with it the country, and his heirs.
Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The New York Years, 1928–1933. New York: Random House, 1985.
———. FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933–1937. New York: Random House, 1986.
———. FDR: The War President, 1940–1943. New York: Random House, 2000. These three volumes (part of five total by the late historian [no relation to present author]) form a comprehensive overview of FDR’s rise to the presidency.
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Excellent account of the toll taken on average Americans on the Great Plains by the great dust storms and drought that crushed the nation’s agricultural heart in the 1930s.
Flood, Charles Bracelen. Hitler: The Path to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. A biography that documents Hitler’s rise to unquestioned power in the aftermath of World War I and the Depression.
Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. London: Oxford University Press, 1989. Intriguing social history by a World War II veteran and leading writer of military history.
Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: Norton, 1991. Detailed biography of America’s “top cop,” who held virtually unchecked public power for fifty years.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Great Crash 1929. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955. The famous economist explains, in layman’s language, the speculative bubble that led to the crash (updated introduction added in 1997).
———. A Life in Our Times: Memoirs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. An autobiography by the economist, diplomat, and historian, especially interesting for Galbraith’s experiences as a member of the bombing survey team that toured both Germany and Japan after the war and concluded that American saturation bombing was inconclusive in both instances.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time—Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Everything a biography should be: the characters of history come to life vividly in this brilliantly written history of life inside the White House during World War II.
Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Knopf, 1946. The classic account of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima.
Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1942. A fascinating and very readable collection of literary criticism, focusing on major American writers of the 1930s and 1940s.
Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Viking, 1989. With extensive illustrations and maps, a comprehensive account of the “largest single event in human history,” as the author calls it.
Ketchum, Richard M. The Borrowed Years: 1938–1941, America on the Way to War. New York: Random House, 1989. An excellent history of America as it waited to enter the war in Europe, concluding with a convincing re-creation of the days that led up to Pearl Harbor.
Kurzman, Dan. Fatal Voyage: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis. New York: Atheneum, 1990. The harrowing story of the fate of the Navy cruiser that carried the vital parts of the atomic bomb and was then torpedoed, with tremendous loss of American life.
Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: Norton, 1971. Sympathetic, fascinating portrait by a family intimate.
Leckie, Robert. Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. A massive updated single-volume history of the war.
Madigan, Tim. The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. New York: St. Martin’s, 2001. A harrowing case study of the deadliest urban riot in American history.
Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Brilliant narrative panorama of America from the Depression to the Watergate era.
———. American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978. This splendid biography of MacArthur is admiring but not blind to the general’s shortcomings. MacArthur’s life as a soldier—as well as his father’s before him—covers almost every facet of American military involvement from the Spanish-American War to the Korean War.
———. Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. The historian’s re-creation of the Pacific fighting in which he was a participant as a U.S. Marine.
McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the man who had to replace FDR and who dropped the first atomic bombs.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941. New York: Times Books, 1993. A sweeping history of the era.
Mencken, H. L. A Choice of Days. New York: Vintage, 1980. This is a collection of pieces from three autobiographical works by the American journalist and social critic.
Morgan, Ted. FDR: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. A sound and accessible one-volume biography.
Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage. New York: Random House, 2001. Richly detailed history of FDR’s use of spies; addresses many intriguing questions and convincingly argues that FDR did not “allow” Pearl Harbor.
Powers, Richard Gid. Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: Free Press, 1987. A solid and unbiased account of the life of one of America’s most powerful men, the director of the FBI.
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an epic account of the politics and people behind the creation of the first atomic bombs and the dropping of those bombs on Japan.
Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. A conservative economics writer’s skeptical view of why the intervention of the New Deal did not “tame” the Great Depression.
Stinnett, Robert. Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Using newly declassified documents, the author argues that the Japanese attack plans were known and that America’s leaders deliberately wished to push Japan into war, at the cost of thousands of American lives.
Taylor, A. J. P. The War Lords. New York: Penguin, 1976. A collection of lectures given by a prominent British historian, this book offers neat capsule biographies of the five men who conducted World War II: Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt.
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Pantheon, 1970. Life in the worst years of the Depression, as told to the journalist.
———. “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Toland, John. Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1970. Monumental Pulitzer Prize–winning account of Japan’s rise and the Pacific War, from the invasion of Manchuria to the atomic bombings that ended the war.
———. Adolf Hitler. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. A best-selling life of Hitler by a popular historian.
———. Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982. Widely admired and well-documented account of the controversial attack.
Watt, Donald Cameron. How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War. New York: Pantheon, 1989.
Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
CHAPTER 7. COMMIES, CONTAINMENT, AND COLD WAR
Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New York: Times Books, 1987.
Brady, James. The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea. New York: Crown, 1990. A well-known journalist’s vivid memoir of the Korean War, the often overlooked conflict in which as many American soldiers died in a little more than three years as in all of the Vietnam era.
Caute, David. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. Excellent history of the anticommunist fears.
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: Morrow, 1986. A balanced and honest award-winning biography of the civil rights leader and the movement he led.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Villard, 1993. A deft assessment of the social and historical currents in postwar America.
———. The Children. New York: Random House, 1998. A social history of the civil rights movement, focusing on many of the lesser-known heroes of the era.
———. The Coldest War: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion, 2007. A masterful narrative history of the “hidden war” in recent American history.
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Knopf, 1976. Standard scholarly work on this subject.
Miller, Merle. Plain Speaking. New York: Putnam, 1974. This “oral history” of Harry S Truman presents a vivid picture of the president, who has grown in stature as time has passed.
Newhouse, John. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf, 1988. A companion to the PBS television series detailing the history of nuclear arms and superpower rivalries.
Oakley, J. Ronald. God’s Country: America in the Fifties. New York: Dembner Books, 1986. Nice social history of the decade, presenting a view that not all was well in this “happier, simpler time.”
Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers. New York: Random House, 1997. The definitive biography of the key figure in one of the most controversial and divisive cases in American history—the charges of communist espionage brought against Alger Hiss by Whittaker Chambers, who became one of the Americans most hated (by his enemies) and revered (by his allies).
Weinstein, Allen. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. New York: Random House, 1997. An updated version of a complete, detailed history of the sensational spy case, with material drawn from files of the former Soviet spy agencies, the KGB and the GRU (military intelligence).
CHAPTER 8. THE TORCH IS PASSED
Barrett, Lawrence I. Gambling with History: Reagan in the White House. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983. Written by one of Time magazine’s correspondents, this was among the first books to assess the Reagan years negatively, and it provides a useful history of his earliest days in office.
Belin, David. Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy. New York: Scribners, 1988. Unlike more sensational accounts, this book about the assassination by an investigator who worked for the Warren Commission convincingly negates most of the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s murder.
Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Two journalists’ account of the uncovering of the Watergate cover-up.
Beschloss, Michael R., ed. Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret Tapes, 1964–1965. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Tapes recorded in the Oval Office during the crucial decision-making period when the Vietnam war was escalated.
Bilton, Michael, and Kevin Sim. Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking, 1992. In-depth account of the atrocity in Vietnam by two television producers who interviewed soldiers involved in this massacre of civilians.
Cannon, Lou. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Public Affairs, 2000. By a California reporter who covered Reagan for more than twenty-
five years, an excellent single volume on Reagan’s White House years.
Caro, Robert. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. New York: Knopf, 2002. The third volume in a prizewinning series about Johnson. This volume covers the twelve years that Johnson served in the Senate until his selection as Kennedy’s vice president.
Carroll, Peter N. It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. A broad historical and cultural overview of the “me decade.”
Caute, David. The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Portrait of the year that changed America.
Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. The Kennedys: An American Drama. New York: Summit, 1984. Although it takes a tabloid approach, this book presents a damning and documented account of the rise of this powerful American regal family. Particularly interesting for its discussion of the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
Davis, John H. The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. Another gossipy look, by a relative of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Includes a lot of rumor and speculation, buttressed by documented reve-
lations.
Dickstein, Morris. Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. New York: Basic Books, 1977. An examination of American politics in the period, through the literature and culture of the era.
Eichenwald, Kurt. The Informant. New York: Broadway, 2000. An exhaustive account of price fixing, influence peddling, and corporate corruption during the 1980s at the Archer Daniels Midland Company.
Epstein, Edward Jay. Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth. New York: Viking, 1966. One of the first and most influential assaults on the Warren Commission’s findings.
FitzGerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1972. A now classic book on understanding the roots of the United States’ involvement and failure in Vietnam.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963. The classic document on which the modern American feminist movement was built.
Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam, 1987. Written by an organizer of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of an era that has been victimized by clichés.
Hackworth, Col. David H., and Julie Sherman. About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. A fascinating best-selling account of a soldier who fought in both Korea and Vietnam and became something of a renegade in Southeast Asia.
Haing Ngor. A Cambodian Odyssey. New York: Macmillan, 1987. A riveting first-person account of the aftermath of the fall of Cambodia to communists, by the doctor turned actor who portrayed the character of Dith Pran in the film The Killing Fields.
Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972. The classic account of the intellectuals and academics surrounding Kennedy who pushed America into Vietnam.
Hersh, Seymour M. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. New York: Random House, 1970. The journalist who broke the story and won the Pulitzer Prize recounts the entire episode.
———. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit, 1983. A harshly critical account of the president and his powerful adviser and their approach to the wars in Southeast Asia.
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking Penguin, 1983. An indispensable one-volume overview of the war in Vietnam.
Langguth, A. J. Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. An excellent narrative history of the whole war by a former New York Times war correspondent.
Lukas, J. Anthony. Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. New York: Viking, 1976. A full and comprehensive account of the Watergate years, and the definitive work on the fall of Nixon.
Malcolm X, with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove, 1964. A contemporary American classic: the story of a young man who rose from crime to become one of the most influential Americans in a generation.
Miller, Merle. Lyndon: An Oral Biography. New York: Putnam, 1980. The president’s own words on his life and administration.
Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Random House, 1993. Unambiguously and convincingly argues the case for Oswald’s being the lone assassin in the killing of JFK.
Safire, William. Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Safire, who was a speechwriter for Nixon and later a columnist for the New York Times, presents a vivid view of Nixon in power before the fallout from Watergate.
Scheer, Robert. With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War. New York: Random House, 1982. A disturbing examination of Reagan’s stance regarding arms and the “winnability” of a nuclear war.
Schieffer, Bob, and Gary Paul Gates. The Acting President. New York: Dutton, 1989. A television newsman’s overview of eight years of Reagan that provides a useful capsule of the period, including the Iran-contra situation.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. A partisan insider, the famous historian writes a fascinating view of Kennedy’s presidency.
Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999. One of the first books to examine the history of AIDS; highly critical of the medical and political response to the crisis.
Smith, Hedrick. The Power Game: How Washington Works. New York: Random House, 1988. A fascinating portrait of the real reins of power in Washington and how they are manipulated; especially useful in assessing the failures and successes of the Reagan administration.
Srodes, James. Allen Dulles: Master of Spies. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999. Massive biography of the man who essentially created the CIA and, with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, guided American foreign policy during the cold war.
Sumners, Harry G. Vietnam War Almanac. New York: Facts on File, 1985. An encyclopedic reference guide to the war, complete with maps, historical introduction, and a detailed chronology.
The Tower Commission Report: The Full Text of the President’s Special Review Board: Introduction by R. W. Apple, Jr. New York: Bantam, 1987. The damning examination of Reagan’s failures in allowing the Iran-contra scandal to occur.
White, Theodore. America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956–1980. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. A compilation of the author’s “Making of” series, assessing the presidents of the past thirty-five years.
Wyden, Peter. Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. This compelling narrative account tells the complete story of the disastrous invasion of Castro’s Cuba.
CHAPTER 9. FROM THE EVIL EMPIRE TO THE AXIS OF EVIL
Bennett, William J. Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and Terrorism. New York: Doubleday, 2002. A defense of the post–September 11 war against terror in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.
Beschloss, Michael R., and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. An exhaustive account of what may have been the biggest story of the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bovard, James. Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. New York: St. Martin’s/Palgrave, 2000. A provocative indictment of the abuses of citizens by government agencies.
Bobbitt, Philip. The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History. New York: Knopf, 2002.
———. Terror and Consent: The Wars of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Bugliosi, Vincent. The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose the President. New York: Thunder’s Mouth/Nation, 2001. A highly partisan view of the role of the Supreme Court in deciding the 2000 election.
Cassidy, John. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. An economist explains the severe downturns in recent American history.
Clarke, Richard A. Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. New York: Free Press, 2004. The controversial account by a member of the security team under Clinton and Bush of the failures preceding the 9/11 attacks.
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. New York: Twelve/Grand Central, 2009. An in-depth look at the Columbine massacre that debunks many of the commonly held notions about the two high school boys who were responsible.
Dionne, E. J., Jr., and William Kristol, eds. Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2001. A collection of the court decisions and editorial commentary by prominent journalists and scholars on both sides of the legal divide.
Drew, Elizabeth. The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 2000. A veteran Washington correspondent’s revealing look at the role of campaign financing in American politics.
Dwyer, Jim, and Kevin Flynn. 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. Times Books/Henry Holt, 2005. Often heart-wrenching journalistic account of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. Brilliantly examining the underside of the “new economy,” a reporter works in America’s world of minimum-wage jobs.
Eichenwald, Kurt. Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. The Enron story, by an award-winning financial reporter.
Farmer, John. The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. New York: Riverhead/Penguin, 2009. Written by a member of the Presidential Commission in the aftermath of revelations that the commission did not get full information during its investigations.
Ferguson, Charles H. No End in Sight: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos. New York: Public Affairs, 2008. Based on a documentary film showing the mismanagement of the invasion and ensuing occupation of Iraq.
Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. New York: Knopf, 2008. The New York Times correspondent’s coverage of the first chaotic years of the Iraq War.
Fox, Justin. The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. A reporter’s unsparing look at contemporary Indian life on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989 (updated 1995). A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist’s account of Middle East politics; excellent background on the history of the region and America’s involvement in regional politics.
Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. New York: Metropolitan, 2001.
Gordon, Michael R., and General Bernard E. Trainor. Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. New York: Pantheon, 2006. Excellent overview by the Pentagon correspondent (Gordon) and military columnist (Trainor) of the New York Times.
Halberstam, David. War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals. New York: Scribner, 2001. Masterful account by the late journalist of two presidents, their relationships with the military, and their wars, in post-Vietnam America.
Heilemann, John, and Mark Halperin. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Two journalists’ inside account of the 2008 presidential campaign.
Hersh, Seymour M. Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. The award-winning investigative journalist’s account of the abuses inside an Iraqi prison under U.S. Army control.
Kean, Thomas H., and Lee Hamilton. The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States with Reporting and Analysis by the New York Times. New York: St. Martin’s, 2004. Must-read account of the official investigation into 9/11.
Kessler, Ronald. The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002. Covers the FBI’s history from its inception to the September 11 attacks; insightful history by an investigative reporter formerly with the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Krakauer, Jon. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. New York: Doubleday, 2009. The tragic death in Afghanistan of a former NFL player, by friendly fire, and the cover-up of the incident.
Lewis, Charles, and the Center for Public Integrity. The Buying of the President 2004: Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers—and What They Expect in Return. New York: HarperPerennial, 2004. Nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Public Integrity investigates the money behind the campaigns.
Lewis, Michael. Liar’s Poker. New York: Norton, 1989. Excellent account of the changes in policy that led to the financial excesses and, later, the crash of 1987.
———. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: Norton, 2010. Behind the scenes at the 2008 market meltdown.
Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of the Bush War Cabinet. New York: Viking, 2004. Account of the men who influenced the decision to go to war in Iraq.
Maraniss, David. First in His Class: The Biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. A political biography that ends on the night when Bill Clinton declared his candidacy for the presidency.
Mayer, Jane. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Hard-hitting exposé of the Bush war on terror policy decisions that led to waterboarding and other dubious and possibly illegal techniques.
Mitchell, Greg. So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq. New York: Union Square Press, 2008.
———. Why Obama Won: The Making of a President 2008. New York: Sinclair, 2009.
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Three Rivers, 2004.
O’Rourke, P. J. Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Tries to Explain the Entire U.S. Government. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991. A cuttingly funny humorist takes on pork-barrel politics as a practice in modern America.
Packer, George. The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. A veteran New Yorker writer, and a self-described “pro-war liberal,” Packer details the history of infighting that led to the disastrous decision making in the Iraq war.
Palast, Greg. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth About Globalization, Corporate Cons, and High Finance Fraudsters. London: Pluto, 2002. The generally overlooked downside of the rise in the world economy and powerful institutions like the World Bank by a “muckraking” investigative reporter.
Paulson, Henry M. On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. New York: Grand Central, 2010.
Phillips, Kevin. Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. New York: Broadway, 2002. A conservative historian assesses the impact of wealth on democracy in America, which has rarely served the common man.
Pollack, Kenneth M. The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. New York: Random House, 2002.
Remnick, David. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. New York: Random House, 1993. A prizewinning journalist’s acclaimed history of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin, 2006. By a Washington Post Pentagon correspondent, the title says it all.
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis—and Themselves. New York: Viking, 2009.
Spence, Gerry. From Freedom to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. An attack of the forces of government and corporate “tyranny” by the renowned criminal defense attorney who defended Randy Weaver.
Stephanopoulos, George. All Too Human: A Political Education. Boston: Little, Brown, 1999. A fascinating insider’s view of the Clinton campaign and White House by a former “true believer.”
Toobin, Jeffrey. A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Widely regarded as a balanced and definitive account of the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal that culminated in only the second presidential impeachment trial in history.
———. Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. New York: Random House, 2001. The Bush-Gore controversy over Florida, a journalistic account.
Wills, Garry. A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Instructive essay looking at tradition of anti-government attitudes in America and how the mood has grown more violent.
———. Under God: Religion and American Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990. Original look at religion and politics, especially since the 1988 election and the rise of the evangelical right.
Woodward, Bob. The Commanders. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. An account of the decision making that led to the Persian Gulf War, by the famous Watergate journalist, who is managing editor of the Washington Post.
———. Shadow: Five Presidencies and the Legacy of Watergate. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. An exploration of how changes that followed the Watergate scandal affected the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
———. Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. A lucid, brief, and revealing—if mostly laudatory—examination of the way the Federal Reserve works and how its chairman Alan Greenspan amassed, and used, his extraordinary power.
Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006. Excellent history of the terrorist organization and western intelligence failures that led to 9/11.