What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorGumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers
Nick Offerman · 399 pages
The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the best-selling Paddle Your Own Canoe pays tribute to inspiring mischief makers, from George Washington to Willie Nelson, while expounding on such topics as religion, handcrafting and meat.
Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother
Carrie Young · 122 pages
This collection of essays details the author's mother's experiences during her 1904 trek to North Dakota, and her life as a landowner, wife and mother.
Rizal Without the Overcoat
Ambeth R. Ocampo · 186 pages
"Through writing about history, Ocampo writes on Rizal as if he happened yesterday. In the clean, cool style of a good journalist...Ocampo is one historian who has never known to impose dogmas and definitive treatises. Reading Ocampo's history is like sitting down with a friend who shares what he has learned. But what he does best is to share the certainty of his doubts. Which probably makes him l
History's People: Personalities and the Past
Margaret MacMillan · 304 pages
"In this year's highly anticipated Massey Lectures, internationally acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan gives her own personal selection of the great figures of the past, women and men, who have changed the course of history and even directed the currents of their times--and sometimes with huge consequences, as in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, and Thatcher. She also acknowledges people such as R
Eminent Victorians
Lytton Strachey · 319 pages
“He has chosen for the subjects of his full-length portraits, not artists nor men of original genius, but three men, and one woman, of action—Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Arnold, and General Gordon. But with these full-length portraits he gives smaller sketches of many of their contemporaries—of Gladstone. Sidney Herbert, Lord Hartington, Lord Acton and Lord Cromer; of Keble and Clou
American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
Walter Isaacson · 285 pages
What are the roots of creativity? What makes for great leadership? How do influential people end up rippling the surface of history? In this collection of essays, the author reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has
The Power of Art
Simon Schama · 448 pages
Taking eight famous painters and their great masterpieces, this book takes you back to the intense moment in history when these works were conceived and born. In each case the artist is backed into a corner, and given a chance to confound his rivals, enemies and critics.
Henry VIII: The King and His Court
Alison Weir · 647 pages
"Henry VIII, renowned for his command of power and celebrated for his intellect, presided over one of the most magnificent - and dangerous - courts in Renaissance Europe. Never before has a detailed, personal biography of this charismatic monarch been set against the cultural, social, and political background of his glittering court and the splendor of his many sumptuous palaces. Alison Weir brin
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
M.T. Anderson · 464 pages
National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson delivers a brilliant and riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. In September 1941, Adolf Hitler s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history almost three years of bombardment and starvation that cu
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Doris Kearns Goodwin · 910 pages
The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. Legislative stalemate paralyzes the country. Corporations resist federal regulations. Spectacular mergers produce giant companies. The influence of money in politics deepens. Bombs explode in crowded streets. Small wars proliferate far from our shores. A dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life. These unnervingly familiar headli
Profiles in Courage
John F. Kennedy · 266 pages
Profiles eight historical figures who demonstrated particular integrity in the face of opposition, including John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, and Robert A. Taft.
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
Jon Meacham · 518 pages
A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
Robert W. Merry · 576 pages
In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny -- extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive. Robert Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures. - Jacket f
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill
Candice Millard · 381 pages
At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India a
First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies
Kate Andersen Brower · 398 pages
Brower draws on a wide array of untapped, candid sources to tell the stories of the ten remarkable women who have defined the role of First Lady of the United States since 1960. From Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama, she offers new insights into this privileged group, and shares stories exploring everything from the first ladies political crusades to their rivalries with Washington figures; from t
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe
Nancy Goldstone · 352 pages
Four accomplished sisters who rose from near obscurity to become the most powerful women in EuropeSet against the backdrop of the turbulent thirteenth century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily.From a cultured c
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty
John M. Barry · 472 pages
The Generals: Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and the Winning of World War II
Winston Groom · 512 pages
Groom tells the intertwined and uniquely American tales of George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and George Marshall. These three remarkable men-of-arms who rose from the gruesome hell of the First World War to become the finest generals of their generation during World War II redefined America's ideas of military leadership and brought forth a new generation of American soldier. Against the backdrop
Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant
Shrabani Basu · 229 pages
"The tall, handsome Abdul Karim was just twenty-four years old when he arrived in England from Agra to wait at tables during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. An assistant clerk at Agra Central Jail, he suddenly found himself a personal attendant to the Empress of India herself. Within a year, he was established as a powerful figure at court, becoming the queen's teacher, or Munshi, and instructing
Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
William C. Davis · 816 pages
The definitive look at the key people & events behind this spring’s blockbuster film The Alamo!Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis--the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history--and about what really happened in that ba