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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorDead Presidents: An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation's Leaders
Brady Carlson · 336 pages
In *Dead Presidents*, NPR host Brady Carlson takes listeners to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials to tell the death stories of our greatest leaders. Mixing biography and travelogue, Carlson explores whether William Henry Harrison really died of a cold, why Zachary Taylor's remains were exhumed 140 years after his death, and how what killed James A. Garfield wasn't an assassin's bul
Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
Matthew Algeo · 262 pages
From Missouri to New York and back again, this recounting of an amazing journey chronicles the road trip of a former president and his wife and their amusing, failed attempts to keep a low profile. Diners, bellhops, and cabbies shouted out “Hiya, Harry!” whenever they recognized the former president, and, out for his daily constitutional on the streets of New York, Harry even stumbled into the sid
How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country
Daniel O'Brien · 254 pages
"Make no mistake: Our founding fathers were more bandanas-and-muscles than powdered-wigs-and-tea. As a prisoner of war, Andrew Jackson walked several miles barefoot across state lines while suffering from smallpox and a serious head wound received when he refused to polish the boots of the soldiers who had taken him captive. He was thirteen years old. A few decades later, he became the first popul
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
Bill Bryson · 381 pages
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
David Foster Wallace · 353 pages
A collection of stories from David Foster Wallace is occasion to celebrate. These stories -- which have been prominently serialized in Harper's, Esquire, the Paris Review, and elsewhere -- explore intensely immediate states of mind, with the attention to voice and the extraordinary creative daring that have won Wallace his reputation as one of the most talented fiction writer of his generation.Amo
America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum, Rich Bloomquist, Steve Bodow, Tim Carvell, Eric Drysdale, J.R. Havlan, Scott Jacobson, Tom Johnson, Rob Kutner, Chris Regan, Jason Reich, Jason Ross · 227 pages
Offers tongue-in-cheek insight into American democracy with coverage of such topics as the republican qualities of ancient Rome, the antics of our nation's founders, and the ludicrous nature of today's media.
A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020
David Sedaris · 576 pages
Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Steve Sheinkin · 265 pages
The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House
Kate Andersen Brower · 336 pages
America's First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and
The Mental Floss History of the United States: The (Almost) Complete and (Entirely) Entertaining Story of America
Erik Sass, Mangesh Hattikudur, Will Pearson · 426 pages
Smarter than a history teacher, funnier than the Founding Fathers, and more American than Alaska, an almost (but not entirely) comprehensive primer on American history (or at least, the good stuff). Chapters include interactive worksheets, and the book features a selection of "best of" lists, such as the 10 most notorious mobsters and 7 most corrupt presidents.
So You Want to Be President?
Judith St. George, David Small · 52 pages
Presents an assortment of facts about the qualifications and characteristics of U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Bill Clinton.
Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid
J. Maarten Troost · 304 pages
The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China--a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained. Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit
Trail Fever: Spin doctors, rented strangers, thumb wrestlers, toe suckers, grizzly bears, and other creatures on the road to the White H
Michael Lewis · 299 pages
A wickedly funny and astute chronicle of the 1996 presidential campaign - and how we go about choosing our leaders at the turn of the century. Beginning with the primaries, Lewis traveled across America - a concerned citizen who happened to ride in candidates' airplanes (as well as rented cars in blinding New Hampshire blizzards) and write about their adventures. Among the contenders he observed:
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
Candice Millard · 440 pages
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.The River of Doubt--it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis · 304 pages
In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award--winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals--Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison--confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation.The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade
The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln · 32 pages
The most famous speech in American history. President Lincoln gave this very brief one-page address at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, PA on November 19, 1863, four months after the battle. This publication contains the final speech and a transcription of one of the several known early drafts.
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
Jon Meacham · 518 pages
The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
Scott Miller · 422 pages
The era leading up to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 was defined by enormous expansion in American industry and muscle-flexing abroad as well as the potent rise of labor unrest and revolutionary ideas such as anarchy. The growth of railroads, steel output, consumer goods, patents and sheer American ingenuity enriched the captains of industry, while the laborers, assembly-l
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War
Daniel Stashower · 368 pages
In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America'
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Vincent Bugliosi · 1,632 pages
Polls reveal that over 75 percent of Americans believe there was a conspiracy behind Lee Harvey Oswald; some even believe Oswald was entirely innocent. In this absorbing and historic book--the first ever to cover the entire case--Vincent Bugliosi shows how we have come to believe such lies about an event that changed the course of history. Bugliosi is perhaps the only man in America capable of "pr
The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House
Laton McCartney · 351 pages
Mix hundreds of millions of dollars in petroleum reserves; rapacious oil barons and crooked politicians; under-the-table payoffs; murder, suicide, and blackmail; White House cronyism; and the excesses of the Jazz Age. The result: the granddaddy of all American political scandals, Teapot Dome.In The Teapot Dome Scandal, acclaimed author Laton McCartney tells the amazing, complex, and at times ribal
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives
Kenneth C. Davis · 295 pages
Here are the stories of five enslaved people who witnessed the birth of America: Billy Lee, valet to George Washington; Ona Judge, who escaped from Martha Washington; Isaac Granger, servant of Thomas Jefferson; Paul Jennings, who witnessed the War of 1812 in James Madison's White House; and Alfred Jackson, "owned" by Andrew Jackson. These true stories explore our country's great, tragic contradict