My Favorite History Books and Biographies

Maybe the best of the best

Hoping that it will prove beneficial to someone out there  I have here compiled here my favorite history books and biographies. I’ve been reading such fare pretty much since I got out of the cradle. I'm a life long student of history. Where appropriate  I’ve grouped together books that are by the same author -- as you’ll see in the first eight paragraphs. I’ve not written complete reviews of the books as there’s enough here to wade through as it is. I’ve also not linked the books — at least not yet — because frankly that's pretty time-consuming. If you’re interested in anything here (and I hope you are) it’s simple enough to find them and more detailed reviews as well. Hopefully this will nudge some people towards a book or two that they’ll find as edifying as I did. I’m admitting right up front: There are omissions. I scoured my bookshelves for titles but some books I no longer have and have slipped my mind. I’m sure within minutes of posting this I’ll kick myself for excluding something but there are over fifty titles here. So again I hope this inspires  you, dear reader, to read one of these wonderful books.

Adam Hochschild is my favorite history author. I’ve had the privilege of seeing him give book talks three times. He’s written three books that I consider masterpieces of historical writing: To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918;  American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis; and Spain In Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. I’ve also very much enjoyed three other books of his: King Leopold’s Ghost; Bury the Chains; and Rebel Cinderella. Simply put he’ a serious scholar who can write like a novelist. Well he generally takes on sobering topics he presents them with a writer’s flair and gives readers hope and inspiration often based on a hero or two who emerge in the telling.

Robert Caro is for me the grand master of biography. The first four volumes of his projected five-volume bio of Lyndon Johnson are unparalleled. Master of the Senate was for me particularly impressive. Caro actually moved to where Johnson grew up in West Texas to better write about him. For the final installment he lived for a time in Vietnam because of course that’s the country sent so many American bombs. He grills interview subjects getting the minutest details to better understand the big picture. I also revere his book Working, something of a writer’s autobiography. I’ve tackled the massive Powerbroker and been enthralled but needed a break from it. I’ll be back.

Over the course of four books Rick Perlstein detailed the rise of the modern conservative movement. Those four were all brilliant books: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America; The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980. Comprehensive, balanced  and surprisingly entertaining. Taken together they’ve helped me better understand the political landscape of the last sixty years and what we are facing today.

Erik Larson writes popular history that reads like great fiction. My favorites of his books are The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz; Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania; and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. I look forward to reading each again.

Jeff Guinn has written two of the best contemporary history books I’ve ever read and on two topics of enduring fascination. Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. These are books that bring back to life two compelling if repellent individuals whose actions shocked the world. 

Richard Evans wrote the Third Reich Trilogy: The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; and The Third Reich at War. Between them they are pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about Hitler’s regime. Page-turning history.

Two great books from Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.  In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson chronicles the Great Migration through the lived experiences of Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South in search of freedom and opportunity, revealing both the hope and hardship of that journey. In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she broadens the lens, arguing that the United States is shaped by an unspoken caste system that underlies racial inequality, drawing parallels with India and Nazi Germany. Together, the books are eye-opening looks at the Black experience in the U.S. and I wish more people would read them.

Doris Kearns Goodwin. Another popular historian her book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of my favorite all-time books. She is also the author of Team of Rivals and Bully Pulpit both of which I enjoyed immensely. 

Barbara Tuchman Guns of August. It’s been awhile since I last read it. This is the book that helped me fall in love with reading history.

FDR by HW Brands. I’ve read many a book on Franklin Roosevelt but this the best one which is saying something given the quality of many of the bios about Roosevelt. 

King: A Life by Richard Eig. Not hagiography but an honest look at the great Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Will be the definitive book on King for years to come.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots by Alex Haley. The former is the amazing story of a former gangster who rose to become one of the most important and influential figures of the 20th century. The latter is one man’s story of where he came from.

Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfield. uncovers how the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, secretly surveilled and sought to undermine the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley, while also tracing how these conflicts helped shape the political rise of the odious Ronald Reagan. It reveals a hidden history of government overreach and political maneuvering that influenced campus activism and, to an extent, national politics.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. After seeing the film of the same name I walked out of the theater into a bookstore and bought this, one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. It’s a great companion to the film and vice verse.

All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery by Henry Mayer. I had the privilege of knowing Henry at the time this excellent biography came out so I got to talk to him about it a real honor. Garrison was an amazing man and this book does him justice.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. The best author biography I’ve ever read. The word thorough doesn’t even begin to define this marvelous book. All the details are worth pouring through.

Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff. I’ve read umpteen books on Watergate and this is the definitive and most comprehensive account. If you want to understand Watergate from a to zed, here’s your book.

All The President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein. Like the movie it inspired their Washington Post reports to this real time history  is a seminal work in it’s field. Admittedly this is not technically history being written as events unfolded but it certainly serves as it now

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin. The story of Patty Hearst, her kidnapping, her abrupt conversion into a revolutionary, her time on the run, her arrest, trial and use of white privilege to avoid jail time have always fascinated me. For years I yearned for a book like this and what a delight when it came out and was as good as the subject necessitated. Amazing stuff, superbly written and illuminating.

Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets by Michael Korda traces the lives of British and American soldier-poets—like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon—to show how World War I shattered romantic ideals of war and gave rise to a new, starkly honest poetry shaped by trauma, disillusionment, and firsthand experience. I loved this book. It was heart-breaking and illuminating and even inspiring. 

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot. I’ve bought this book four times. Once for me and three times as gifts. This is a kaleidoscopic look at San Francisco from the Summer of Love through the AIDS crisis. It encompasses such ionic figures as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, Bill Walsh, Dianne Feinstein and the Zodiac killer. Fascinating times and this is the book that best sums them up.

Grant by Ron Chernow. Chernow has cranked out a half dozen or so popular biographies including ones on Alexander Hamilton (the inspiration of a noted musical) and George Washington. His book on Grant was the one I found most engaging and revelatory. I knew Grant rose from the ranks to be a great general and was subsequently a poor president but Chernow’s book filled in a lot of blanks and gave me a greater appreciation for Grant and the understanding that he wasn’t such a bad prez after all.

Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow by Leon Litwack. Not an easy read as it details some of the lynching that were — tragically — part of the Black experience in the South for nearly a hundred years. I found it indispensable when I was a teacher. Scholarly yet written with compassion.

The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II by David Nasaw. I only recently finished this excellent book that centers around the effects the “Good War” had on Americans, particularly of course, those who served. The war reverberated throughout the country for years after and as we see, PTSD is not a recent phenomenon.

Kent State: An American Tragedy by Brian Vandermark. Another book I only recently finished it is a granular but readable look at the murder of four students in May 1970, an event that to some marked the end of the Sixties.