Earlier this month I wrote about my interest in history in the third grade, an interest that has continued, as you'll see from this list of books I read in 2024 and recommend to you.
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (How we started to get where we are now)
Geoffrey Pullum, The Truth About English Grammar
Ron Chernow: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Seamus Heaney, Poems, 1965-1975
Karen Yin, The Conscious Style Guide
Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Tana French, The Searcher, The Hunter (Two cracking good yarns)
Cathleen Schine, They May Not Mean to But They Do (Delightful novel on the complexities of parents and children)
Matthew Crenson, Baltimore: A Political History (How we started and how we got where we are now, locally)
Anne Curzan, Says Who?
Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign
Ben Yagoda, About the Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
And so far in 2025:
Jon Meachem, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Most recently, 500 pages of David and Jeanne Heidler, Henry Clay: The Essential American
Currently, 500 pages of Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, Paper of Wreckage: An Oral History of The New York Post, 1976-2024
And pending: 500 pages of J.H. Plumb on Sir Robert Walpole
Just finished Doris Goodwin's Unfinished Love Affair. Good portrait of LBJ, but some fawning of others. Beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteAny list that includes the poems of Seamus Heaney is a great list
ReplyDeleteI read Last Call a few years back and really liked it. I noted the attitudes towards immigrants which Okrent followed up with The Guarded Gate. I also liked his portrayal of a shrinking ruling group trying to slow the change in America.
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