Ron Chernow’s Grant is a long yet readable, well-rounded biography of the 18th president of the United States. Ulysses S. Grant remains one of the best yet underrated American presidents. A perennial underdog, Grant was filled with failures, missteps, and terrible judgement of character. Yet
A. Scott Berg’s Wilson is a comprehensive biography by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Berg. Heavily referenced and loaded with minute detail, Wilson is highly readable and quite balanced. As a great historian should do, A. Scott Berg does a great job for the most part
Debunking Howard Zinn – Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America is a thorough analysis of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Mary Grabar goes through Howard Zinn’s connections with socialist or communist society to paint a plain picture of
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn follows an “ordinary” day in a Soviet Union “special camp”. Ivan Denisovich (Shukov) is eight plus years into his ten year sentence at a labor camp. Wrongfully arrested but happy to be alive, Shukhov
With All Due Respect is a memoir by native South Carolina and Indian American Nikki R. Haley. The memoir focuses on Haley’s tenure as South Carolina’s governor and her amazing job as United States ambassador for the United Nations. Haley grew up in rural South
The Moonstone is a mystery novel published in 1868 by the Victorian author Wilkie Collins. In his day, Collins was well-loved and on par with Charles Dickens. But over time Collins’ fame faded. Only more recently has his works been rediscovered. This is the first
The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For is a collection of speeches by masterful historian David McCullough. Many of these speeches were college commencement addresses, including one he gave at Hillsdale College. This collection is best enjoyed as an audio book
Craig Harline’s A World Ablaze The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation is a thorough yet readable biography of Martin Luther. This book handles the big moments of Luther’s fast rise to infamy. But it also covers a lot of the
Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69 is a thorough, readable accounting of the toils and overspending it took to complete the Transcontinental Railroad. Starting with the support of President Abraham Lincoln, the Transcontinental Railroad began
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov follows three brothers, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexey (Alyosha). Each represents a different level of religious and philosophical belief. Their father, Fyodor Pavlovich is a sensualist and all around “dirty old man” who continuously failed his sons from their