The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Stephen Kinzer · 390 pages

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

Robert Middlekauff · 736 pages

Recounts the events leading up to the Revolution and discusses the major leaders, campaigns, and battles of the war.

My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams

Abigail Adams, John Adams · 528 pages

A collection of letters between Abigail and John Adams written from 1762 to 1801 covering topics of revolution, independence, and nation building, along with those that reflect their love for one another.

Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

Julian Sancton · 384 pages

1776

David McCullough · 393 pages

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild · 375 pages

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.

Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship

Jon Meacham · 518 pages

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Walter Isaacson · 599 pages

Chronicles the founding father's life and his multiple careers as a shopkeeper, writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, business strategist, and political leader, while showing how his faith in the wisdom of the common citizen helped forge an American national identity based on the virtues of its middle class.

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert F. Kennedy

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Gary J. Bass · 499 pages

A full-length account of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in Pakistan's brutal 1970s military dictatorship argues that they encouraged China's military presence in India, illegally supplied weapons used in massacres and embraced military strategies that have negatively impacted geopolitics for decades. By the author of Freedom's Battle.

Seize The Hour: When Nixon Met Mao

Margaret MacMillan · 384 pages

In 1972 Nixon amazed the world by going to China. The first trip ever by a US President marked the end of deep freeze in Sino-American relations. Was Nixon the supplicant to the Middle Kingdom? Has the US been at a disadvantage ever since? Will the 21st century see co-operation or China challenging American dominance?

The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman & the Destruction of Hitler's Germany 1941-45

Michael R. Beschloss · 377 pages

As Allied soldiers fought the Nazis, Franklin Roosevelt and, later, Harry Truman fought in private with Churchill and Stalin over how to ensure that Germany could never threaten the world again. Eleven years in the writing, drawing on newly opened American, Soviet and British documents as well as private diaries, letters and secret audio recordings, Michael Beschloss's gripping narrative lets us e

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

James Barr · 464 pages

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

Peter Hopkirk · 570 pages

An account of the encounter last century between the British in India and Tsarist Russia in Central Asia which became known as the "Great Game". When the encounter began the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2000 apart. By the end, the gap had shrunk in places to 20 miles.

Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power

Robert Dallek · 752 pages

With the publication of his magisterial biography of John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life, Robert Dallek cemented his reputation as one of the greatest historians of our time. Now, in this epic joint biography, he offers a provocative, groundbreaking portrait of a pair of outsize leaders whose unlikely partnership dominated the world stage and changed the course of history.More than thirty years af

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David

Lawrence Wright · 396 pages

A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day. With his hallmark insight into the forces at play in the Middle East and his acclaimed journalistic skill, Lawrence Wright takes us thr

Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine

Eugene Finkel · 336 pages

Embers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

Fredrik Logevall · 839 pages

A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Michael Dobbs · 464 pages

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just how close we came to Armageddon.Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Ned Blackhawk · 596 pages

War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals

David Halberstam · 544 pages

"More than twenty-five years ago Halberstam told the riveting story of the men who conceived and executed the Vietnam War. Today the author has written another chronicle of Washington politics, this time exploring the complex dynamics of foreign policy in post-Cold War America.". "Halberstam evokes the internecine conflicts, the untrammeled egos, and the struggles for dominance among the key figu

Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game & the Race for Empire in Central Asia

Karl Ernest Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac · 647 pages

"The world's oldest established imperial rivalry had its start during the Napoleonic age when British agents came upon the tracks of Russian rivals in snowbound Tibet, and then again in mythic Bokhara, deep in Central Asia. Was the Tsar planning to invade India, or even worse, was Russia bent on global dominion? To foil these real or imagined schemes, the British twice invaded Afghanistan, and in

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

Janet Wallach · 419 pages

Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. T

The Chinese Opium Question in British Opinion and Action

Wenzao Wu · 196 pages