I am just completing a two-week vacation. My greatest joy is finding a quiet place and devouring a book. Here鈥檚 a list of my favorite books that I read this summer.
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson. This is a superb retelling of the months before the U.S. Civil War. Nobody wanted a war, but the resupply of Fort Sumter in South Carolina provided the spark.
White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman. An unpacking of resentment from downward economic trajectory and loss of political power.
Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria. For followers of the 黑料社Trust Barometer there will be familiar themes of impact of technology, loss of belief in information and impact of globalization. A must read.
The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit Fox. The story of New York City's leading fence, who bought stolen goods including jewels and silks from local thieves. A portrait of 1880s Lower East Side New York.
The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld by Dan Slater. A crime busting Mayor of New York City in 1910 assembled a group of honest police who clean up the Jewish part of the Lower East Side. Prohibition follows and crime returns.
Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks. This is a very different take on the Civil rights movement the use of military training to prepare for non-violent opposition to segregation.
Porfirio Diaz by Paul Garner. A biography of Mexico's longest serving president. He went from radical reformer to ultra establishment in creating modern Mexico via foreign investment.
The World: A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore. This epic work catalogues the world's leaders from 700 BC to the present. The family strife makes Succession seem like child's play.
Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman, describes the evolution of the Democratic party's stance on civil rights post-World War II, led by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, later a presidential candidate in 1968.
Brave Companions: Portraits In History by David McCullough. This is a series of essays on important but lesser-known figures in history such as Alexander von Humboldt, who explored South America's flora and fauna in the early 1800s; or Harriet Beecher Stowe author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was the fountainhead of anti-slavery thinking.
Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen by William S. McFeely. This is a biography of Oliver Otis Howard, Civil War general and director of the Freedmen鈥檚 Bureau after the Civil War. I knew McFeely, a professor at Mount Holyoke College, because he was the father of my Exeter roommate Drake McFeely. Howard was an unsuccessful general but hugely important figure in post War policy on newly freed blacks.
The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America by H.W. Brands. This is a superb tale of the last great Indian war with Civil War hero William Sherman tasked with pacifying the West and Geronimo the Apache chief determined to fight back the white settlers.
I have loved every minute of my reading blitz. I have felt like an undergraduate again. Maybe it took turning 70 to go so hard at it.
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