Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
I greatly enjoyed the compact On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (reviewed here), which gave a brief look at twenty ways tyranny begins to appear in government. So, I was hoping for something similar in Timothy Snyder‘s On Freedom (published 2025). He gave a nice explanation of what freedom means and entails, but it was not
John Adams loved life. He was awkward and yet confident. He was strident and yet humble. He was honest. There is no contrary side to that: he was honest. I earnestly enjoyed my reread of John Adams by David McCullough (published 2001) because his life was so ordinary and yet extraordinary at the same time.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (published 2024, Random House) is a sweeping overview of some of the many nations of Native Americans throughout history. It begins by looking at the societies that thrived long before European contact and continues looking at major nations through to today. It is a comprehensive
In The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency, David M. Rubenstein documents his number of interviews with historians, writers, and presidents themselves as they discuss what the presidency means to the presidents of the United States of America. When Rubenstein interviews an historian, it is one who has studied the particular president at length.
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Regency Britain by Ian Mortimer (published 2022) is a thorough overview of thesoc Regency era, including a look at the social strata, food, dwellings, entertainment, and so much more. It would have been helpful to read this before jumping in to my most recent Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer obsession!
From Jesus to Christianity by L. Michael White (HarperOne, 2004) can be best summed up by the subtitle: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith. This was the book I didn’t know I looking for when I read the superficial Between the Testaments: From Malachi to Matthew. With
Between the Testaments: From Malachi to Matthew by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent S. Brown (published 2002) is an overview of the changing Jewish traditions and events from 600 B.C. to the life of Jesus Christ. It detailed the history of Jews returning to the homeland from Babylon after the exile and the varying degrees of
Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Flexner (published 1974) is a one-volume abridgement to Flexner’s comprehensive four-volume biography about our first president. I did not find this volume wanting in anyway, and I found both the writing and the content to be straight-forward and relevant as I learned about Washington’s life. The stories in Flexner’s
It is perfect timing to discuss the history of authoritarianism in the world! On Tyranny: Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (first published in 2017) is a brief overview of the things that have happened in the past century that led to the regimes with totalitarian leaders, including the events in Nazi
The Tyranny of Printers by Jeffrey L. Palsey (University of Virginia Press, 2001) is a scholarly history of, as the subtitle says, Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. With an abundance of research and a readable set of examples in each chapter that focus on specific newspaper printers and situations, the book opened my
In Predicting the President: The Keys to the White House (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), historian Allan Lichtman lays out the historical reasons the presidents won their elections in history since the 1800s, using his own system of “keys” to predict which candidate or political party will win for the upcoming election. Even after reading the
I really enjoyed reading The Embattled Vote in America by Allan Lichtman (Harvard University Press, 2018). It began with an examination of the Constitution and how it does not guarantee the right to vote to any particular people. The book continued by discussing the different ways voting has changed through the years of of the
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