History & Foreign Affairs

Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism Jeff Gramm · 2016 · read Aug 2026Hedge fund manager and Columbia professor Jeff Gramm's history of shareholder activism, told through eight case studies built… The History of Money: A Story of Humanity David McWilliams · 2024 · read Aug 2026Irish economist David McWilliams's sweeping global history of money — from clay tablets in Mesopotamia and ancient Babylon… Biological War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen · 2026 · read Jul 2026Annie Jacobsen's companion to Nuclear War: A Scenario — a minute-by-minute account of how a biological attack or lab-released… The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Craig Whitlock · 2021 · read Jul 2026Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock's Pentagon Papers-style exposé of the war in Afghanistan — built on… The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters Gregory Zuckerman · 2013 · read Jul 2026Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman's inside account of the American shale boom — how a handful of risk-addicted… Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan · 2026 · read Jul 2026New York Times White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's inside account of the first year-plus of Trump's… The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court Jeffrey Toobin · 2007 · read Jun 2026Jeffrey Toobin's group portrait of the Rehnquist-to-early-Roberts Supreme Court (covering roughly 1990–2007), built on interviews… Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection John Green · 2025 · read Jun 2026John Green's narrative history of tuberculosis, braiding the disease's social and scientific past with the present-day story of… The Oath: The Obama White House and The Supreme Court Jeffrey Toobin · 2012 · read Jun 2026Jeffrey Toobin's account of the fraught relationship between the Obama White House and the Roberts Supreme Court — sequel to The… End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America Chris Jennings · 2026 · read Apr 2026Chris Jennings's 2025 reconstruction of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff — Randy Weaver, the ATF firearms charges, the… State of Denial Bob Woodward · 2006 · read Jan 2026Woodward's 2006 third Bush book, covering the Iraq War's deteriorating execution from 2003 through 2005 — the gap between… Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang · 2025 · read Jan 2026Dan Wang's 2025 book on China's "engineering state" — the deliberate national-level capacity to build at scale across… Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq Bob Woodward · 2004 · read Jan 2026Bob Woodward's 2004 inside account of the 16 months between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion of Iraq — the specific NSC meetings,… Bush at War Bob Woodward · 2002 · read Dec 2025Bob Woodward's 2002 inside account of the George W. All the President’s Men Carl Bernstein · 1974 · read Dec 2025Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's 1974 reconstruction of their Washington Post Watergate reporting — the foundational text of… The Last of the President's Men Bob Woodward · 2015 · read Dec 2025Bob Woodward's 2015 reconstruction of the Nixon White House through Alexander Butterfield — Nixon's deputy assistant who revealed… The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century Tim Weiner · 2025 · read Dec 2025Tim Weiner's history of the CIA from 9/11 to the present — the post-9/11 expansion, the torture program, the bin Laden hunt, the… Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare John Lechner · 2025 · read Dec 2025John Lechner's investigation of the Wagner Group and its successors — the Russian-state-aligned private military company that… After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made Ben Rhodes · 2021 · read Dec 2025Former Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes's reflection on the post-Trump-1 international landscape — Hungary,… 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation Andrew Ross Sorkin · 2025 · read Oct 2025Andrew Ross Sorkin's narrative reconstruction of the 1929 stock-market crash and its immediate aftermath — the specific days, the… Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Graham Allison · 2017 · read Aug 2025Harvard scholar Graham Allison's framework book on the structural risk of war between a rising power (China) and a ruling power… The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World Noam Chomsky · 2024 · read Jul 2025Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson's 2024 compact restatement of Chomsky's long-running structural critique of US foreign policy —… Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror Michael V. Hayden · 2016 · read Jun 2025General Michael Hayden's memoir from his vantage as director of NSA (1999-2005) and CIA (2006-2009) — the operational and legal… Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat John P. Carlin · 2018 · read Jun 2025Former DOJ National Security Division head John Carlin's account of building the legal framework for treating state-actor cyber… Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company Patrick McGee · 2025 · read Jun 2025FT reporter Patrick McGee's investigation of Apple's deep operational integration with China — not as a vendor relationship but… Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs Luis Elizondo · 2024 · read May 2025Former Pentagon intelligence official Luis Elizondo's memoir of his time running AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification… Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Clint Hill · 2016 · read May 2025Clint Hill's memoir of his career on the presidential Secret Service detail across five administrations — most famously the agent… Countdown 1960: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the 312 Days that Changed America's Politics Forever Chris Wallace · 2024 · read May 2025Chris Wallace's day-by-day reconstruction of the 1960 presidential campaign — Kennedy vs. Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation Brenda Wineapple · 2024 · read May 2025Brenda Wineapple's narrative history of the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" — Dayton, Tennessee; Bryan vs. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America Nancy Isenberg · 2016 · read Mar 2025Nancy Isenberg's history of poor white Americans from English colonization forward — the language ("waste people," "lubbers,"… Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator Jung H. Pak · 2020 · read Feb 2025Former CIA senior analyst Jung Pak's analytical biography of Kim Jong Un — drawing on the intelligence-community methods she was… Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past Steve Benen · 2024 · read Feb 2025MSNBC producer Steve Benen's argument that the Republican Party's most effective post-2020 move has been the systematic rewriting… A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them Timothy Egan · 2023 · read Feb 2025Timothy Egan's narrative history of the 1920s second Klan — particularly its Indiana stronghold under D.C. Autocracy, Inc. Anne Applebaum · 2024 · read Jan 2025Anne Applebaum's 2024 argument that the world's autocracies are no longer isolated regimes but a functioning international… A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times Mark T. Esper · 2022 · read Dec 2024Mark Esper's memoir from his year-plus as Trump's last Senate-confirmed Secretary of Defense — covering the Soleimani strike, the… Impeachment: An American History Jeffrey A. Engel · 2018 · read Dec 2024Jeffrey Engel, Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, and Peter Baker's joint historical treatment of the four impeachments preceding the… Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Adam Higginbotham · 2019 · read Nov 2024Higginbotham's reconstruction of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — the reactor's design flaws, the night of the explosion, the heroic… Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space Adam Higginbotham · 2024 · read Nov 2024Adam Higginbotham's reconstruction of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster — the engineering, the institutional dynamics,… War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Powerbrokers Benjamin R. Teitelbaum · 2020 · read Oct 2024Ethnomusicologist-turned-political-anthropologist Benjamin Teitelbaum's strange and well-sourced book on Steve Bannon's… Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI Yuval Noah Harari · 2024 · read Oct 2024Harari's 2024 book — his first major work since 21 Lessons — reframing human history as a sequence of information networks, with… The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West Malcolm W. Nance · 2018 · read Sep 2024Former Navy intelligence officer Malcolm Nance's 2018 case that Russia is running a coordinated, decades-old influence operation… Fascism: A Warning Madeleine K. Albright · 2018 · read Sep 2024Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's 2018 part-memoir, part-comparative-history of fascism — drawing on her childhood… How Did We Get Here?: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump Robert Dallek · 2020 · read Aug 2024Veteran presidential historian Robert Dallek's structural narrative of the presidency from TR through Trump — treating the… They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency Malcolm W. Nance · 2022 · read Aug 2024Former Navy counter-terrorism instructor Malcolm Nance's argument that the post-2020 American radical right — Oath Keepers, Three… Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers Andy Greenberg · 2019 · read Aug 2024Wired's Andy Greenberg on Sandworm — the GRU Unit 74455 hacking group — responsible for the Ukraine power-grid attacks, the… Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service Carol Leonnig · 2021 · read Aug 2024Carol Leonnig's institutional history of the US Secret Service from JFK through Obama-Trump-Biden — focused on the agency's… Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America Heather Cox Richardson · 2023 · read Jul 2024Heather Cox Richardson's synthesis of her Letters from an American newsletter into a structural history of American democracy… When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s John Ganz · 2024 · read Jul 2024John Ganz's argument that the early 1990s — Pat Buchanan's campaign, David Duke's near-success, the LA riots, the rise of… World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century Dmitri Alperovitch · 2024 · read Jun 2024Crowdstrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch's hawkish strategic argument that the US is in a contest with China for the 21st… First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance Annie Jacobsen · 2021 · read May 2024Jacobsen's narrative of an Army platoon's deployment in Afghanistan — a court-martial story interwoven with the technology of… Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America Annie Jacobsen · 2014 · read May 2024Jacobsen's history of the postwar US program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians — many of… Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Annie Jacobsen · 2011 · read May 2024Jacobsen's history of the Nevada Test Site / Groom Lake — the U-2, A-12, SR-71, F-117, drone-development programs — built on… Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History Of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, And Assassins Annie Jacobsen · 2019 · read May 2024Jacobsen's history of CIA paramilitary operations — from OSS founder William Donovan through Ground Branch through post-9/11… Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis Annie Jacobsen · 2017 · read May 2024Jacobsen's history of the US government's serious, decades-long investment in psychic-research programs — remote viewing at SRI… The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency Annie Jacobsen · 2015 · read Apr 2024Annie Jacobsen's comprehensive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, from its 1958 Sputnik-shock founding… Nuclear War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen · 2024 · read Apr 2024Annie Jacobsen's minute-by-minute scenario of a North Korean nuclear strike on the United States and the resulting full exchange… Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism Jeffrey Toobin · 2023 · read Mar 2024Jeffrey Toobin's retelling of the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh's biography as a prequel to contemporary right-wing… A Little History of Economics Niall Kishtainy · 2017 · read Feb 2024Kishtainy's contribution to the Yale "Little Histories" series — a friendly, chronological tour of economic thought from… Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism Rachel Maddow · 2023 · read Nov 2023Rachel Maddow's history of the 1930s-40s American fascist movement — German-American Bund, America First, Charles Lindbergh,… The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb James W. Kunetka · 2015 · read Sep 2023A dual biography of Leslie Groves (the Army engineer who ran the Manhattan Project) and J. Debt: The First 5,000 Years David Graeber · 2011 · read Jul 2023Anthropologist David Graeber's sweeping argument that the standard economic origin story (barter → money → credit) is exactly… The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent (Forbidden Bookshelf) Frederick Lewis Allen · 1935 · read Jun 2023Frederick Lewis Allen's 1935 history of American finance from roughly 1900 through the 1929 crash — a contemporaneous account by… The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets Matthew Connelly · 2023 · read May 2023Columbia historian Matthew Connelly's argument — built from a massive computational analysis of declassified documents — that the… The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Richard Rothstein · 2017 · read Apr 2023Richard Rothstein's documentary case that American residential segregation is de jure — created and maintained by federal, state,… Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge Terence McKenna · 1992 · read Apr 2023Terence McKenna's argument that psychoactive plants — particularly psilocybin mushrooms — played a central role in human… The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin Steven Lee Myers · 2014 · read Feb 2023A New York Times Moscow correspondent's comprehensive biography of Vladimir Putin — KGB officer, deputy mayor, prime minister,… The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth Beth Allison Barr · 2021 · read Feb 2023A Baylor historian (and Southern Baptist pastor's wife) argues that "biblical womanhood" — the complementarian package of… Drift Rachel Maddow · 2012 · read Feb 2023Maddow's first book, arguing that the United States has gradually decoupled the use of military force from democratic… Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology Chris Miller · 2022 · read Feb 2023Miller's history of the semiconductor industry from postwar invention to present-day US-China conflict — argued as the central… The January 6th Report Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol · 2022 · read Jan 2023The final report of the House Select Committee, documenting the multi-front effort by Trump and allies to overturn the 2020… For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America Jonathan D. Cohen · 2022 · read Dec 2022A historian's account of how state-run lotteries went from constitutionally banned vice to ubiquitous fixture of state finance… Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Kristin Kobes Du Mez · 2020 · read Nov 2022A historian's argument that the Trump-evangelical alignment wasn't a sellout but the predictable endpoint of a 75-year project to… Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism Anne Applebaum · 2020 · read Oct 2022Applebaum's part-memoir, part-analysis of how former liberal-democratic allies — many of them personal friends across Poland,… The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump Bob Woodward · 2022 · read Oct 2022The audio (and transcribed) record of Woodward's twenty interviews with Trump — material that fed Rage and Fear, presented here… The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 - 2021 Peter Baker · 2022 · read Oct 2022Peter Baker and Susan Glasser's comprehensive single-volume history of the Trump presidency — broader and more measured than the… Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America Kurt Andersen · 2020 · read Sep 2022Andersen's companion-volume argument that the explosion of inequality since the 1970s wasn't drift or accident but a deliberate,… Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History Kurt Andersen · 2017 · read Sep 2022Andersen's argument that America has always been disproportionately credulous — built by religious utopians, hucksters, and… A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 Eric Foner · 1990 · read Aug 2022Foner's own condensed version of his 1988 magnum opus — the same revisionist argument, made more portable. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari · 2018 · read Jul 2022Harari's present-focused volume (after Sapiens on the past and Homo Deus on the future), tackling the immediate disruptions — AI,… Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow Yuval Noah Harari · 2015 · read Jul 2022Picking up where Sapiens ended, Harari argues that humanity's next project — having largely solved famine, plague, and war — is… The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Mehrsa Baradaran · 2017 · read Jul 2022Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran's history of Black banking in America — from Reconstruction's Freedman's Savings Bank through… The Original Watergate Stories (Kindle Single) (The Washington Post Book 1) The Washington Post · 2012 · read Jun 2022A Kindle Single compilation of the original Washington Post Watergate stories — the Woodward-Bernstein bylines as they ran in the… Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Eric Foner · 1988 · read Jan 2021Foner's canonical 1988 history of the Reconstruction era, treating it as a genuinely revolutionary moment — a serious attempt at… Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari · 2011 · read Nov 2020Harari's sweeping single-volume history of Homo sapiens from cognitive revolution to the present, structured around three… The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery Eric Foner · 2010 · read Aug 2020A Pulitzer-winning study of how Lincoln's positions on slavery evolved over his lifetime — from a moderate anti-extensionist to… Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth Brian Stelter · 2020Former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter's 2020 history of Fox News and its symbiotic relationship with the Trump White House —…