• The best books on JFK - JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall
  • The best books on JFK - Prelude to Leadership: The Postwar Diary of John F. Kennedy by John F Kennedy
  • The best books on JFK - Profiles in Courage by John F Kennedy
  • The best books on JFK - Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History by Ted Sorensen
  • The best books on JFK - The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

The best books on JFK, recommended by Fredrik Logevall

Of the thousands of books written about JFK, America’s iconic 35th president, which ones should you read first? Fredrik Logevall, professor of history and international affairs at Harvard University, talks us through five key books, starting with the first volume of his biography, tracking JFK’s coming of age in the years that also saw America transforming from economic powerhouse to global superpower.

  • The Best Jimmy Carter Books - Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson Cowie
  • The Best Jimmy Carter Books - Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s by Meg Jacobs
  • The Best Jimmy Carter Books - Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President by Jimmy Carter
  • The Best Jimmy Carter Books - His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life by Jonathan Alter
  • The Best Jimmy Carter Books - Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace by Lawrence Wright

The Best Jimmy Carter Books, recommended by Robert Lieberman

For good books to understand Jimmy Carter and his presidency, it’s important to understand the context in which he was elected and served as president, argues political scientist Robert Lieberman. Here, he recommends five books on Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize: “Carter was who he seemed to be, which is not something you often say about successful politicians.”

  • The best books on New York History - The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto
  • The best books on New York History - New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore
  • The best books on New York History - Slavery in New York by Ira Berlin & Leslie Harris (editors)
  • The best books on New York History - Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey
  • The best books on New York History - New York and Los Angeles by David Halle (editor)

The best books on New York History, recommended by Louise Mirrer

Like several of the great cities of the world, New York’s openness to people born elsewhere and relative tolerance lay at the foundation of its success, though darker episodes in the city’s 400-year history also need attention. Historian Louise Mirrer, President of the New-York Historical Society, recommends books that are essential to understanding the essence of the Big Apple.

  • The best books on The Venetian Empire - Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630 by Brian Pullan & David Chambers
  • The best books on The Venetian Empire - The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice 1400-1617 by John Rigby Hale & Michael E. Mallett
  • The best books on The Venetian Empire - Venice: A Maritime Republic by Frederic Chapin Lane
  • The best books on The Venetian Empire - Venice: the Hinge of Europe by William McNeill
  • The best books on The Venetian Empire - The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage by Jan Morris

The best books on The Venetian Empire, recommended by Georg Christ

The Venetian Republic was one of the mightiest empires of early modern Europe, with its Terraferma dominions on land and a maritime empire, the Stato da Màr,  that stretched across the Mediterranean. Its unique strength lay in long-distance trade and, as historian Georg Christ explains, in some ways, it resembled a company more than a state. Here, he recommends books to better understand the Venetian empire, what it was and how it grew.

  • The best books on The Civil Rights Era - Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
  • The best books on The Civil Rights Era - God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights by Charles Marsh
  • The best books on The Civil Rights Era - Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow
  • The best books on The Civil Rights Era - The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle by Clayborne Carson, Darlene Clark Hine, David J. Garrow, Gerald Gill & Vincent Harding
  • The best books on The Civil Rights Era - The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and assisted by Alex Haley, Laurence Fishburne (narrator)

The best books on The Civil Rights Era, recommended by Lerone Martin

The struggle for Black freedom in America has been going on since the first enslaved Africans were brought to the continent, but it was the civil rights era of 1954 to 1968 that finally resulted in a raft of legislation that gave equal citizenship to Black people in the United States. Here, Professor Lerone Martin of Stanford University recommends the best books to understand the American civil rights movement, with a focus on some of the individuals who were key to its success.

  • The best books on American Naval History - US Navy: A Concise History by Craig L. Symonds
  • The best books on American Naval History - Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian W. Toll
  • The best books on American Naval History - Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • The best books on American Naval History - The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War by Samuel Eliot Morison
  • The best books on American Naval History - Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy by Trent Hone

The best books on American Naval History, recommended by John Kroger

The story of the American navy is deeply intertwined with that of the nation, says John Kroger—former Chief Learning Officer to the US Navy—although we don’t always afford naval history the attention it deserves. Here he selects five of the best books about American naval history and predicts a renewed focus on Pacific naval defenses in the coming decades.

  • The best books on The US Cabinet - The Process of Government under Jefferson by Noble Cunningham
  • The best books on The US Cabinet - The Politics of the US Cabinet by Jeffrey E. Cohen
  • The best books on The US Cabinet - Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  • The best books on The US Cabinet - Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
  • The best books on The US Cabinet - The Man Who Ran Washington by Peter Baker & Susan Glasser

The best books on The US Cabinet, recommended by Lindsay Chervinsky

In contrast to many other countries, the secretaries who serve in the United States cabinet aren’t chosen from among the country’s elected officials but entirely reflect the president’s personal choices. Here, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, talks us through the role of the cabinet and recommends which books to read to understand more about it.

  • Best Books on the History of the American South - American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia by Edmund S Morgan
  • Best Books on the History of the American South - Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin
  • Best Books on the History of the American South - Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps by Amy Murrell Taylor
  • Best Books on the History of the American South - The Souls of Black Folk by W E B Du Bois
  • Best Books on the History of the American South - The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward

Best Books on the History of the American South, recommended by Edward Ayers

To understand the America of today, you must understand the American South of the past, says historian Edward Ayers, Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Here, he recommends five books to get started with, and also explains what his own books were aiming to contribute to the field of Southern history.

  • The best books on 9/11 - The Osama bin Laden I know by Peter Bergen
  • The best books on 9/11 - The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
  • The best books on 9/11 - The Least Worst Place by Karen Greenberg
  • The best books on 9/11 - Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke
  • The best books on 9/11 - Cover Up by Peter Lance

The best books on 9/11, recommended by Yosri Fouda

Who was Osama bin Laden? How critical was he to the 9/11 attacks on the United States? What happened in the first 100 days at Guantanamo Bay? Who was in charge of the United States when George W Bush went into hiding? What should we make of all the conspiracy theories that have sprung up around the events of that day? Yosri Fouda, the veteran Egyptian investigative reporter, author and TV host talks us through his choice of the best books on 9/11.

  • The best books on Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire by Peter Onuf
  • The best books on Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry that Forged a Nation by John Ferling
  • The best books on Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles
  • The best books on Thomas Jefferson - Madison and Jefferson by Andrew Burstein & Nancy Isenberg
  • The best books on Thomas Jefferson - "Those Who Labor for My Happiness": Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello by Lucia Stanton

The best books on Thomas Jefferson, recommended by Andrew Burstein

Thomas Jefferson is famous for having written the Declaration of Independence, with its ringing claim that “all men are created equal”.  In modern times he has been castigated for hypocrisy, given his ownership of slaves and his failure to campaign for abolition. Here, historian Andrew Burstein discusses Jefferson’s wider political career and whether it is fair to judge his attitude to slavery by contemporary standards.

  • The best books on Benjamin Franklin - The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood
  • The best books on Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius: the Boston Years by Arthur Bernon Tourtellot
  • The best books on Benjamin Franklin - The Puritans: A Transatlantic History by David D. Hall
  • The best books on Benjamin Franklin - The Enlightenment in America by Henry May
  • The best books on Benjamin Franklin - William Penn’s Legacy: Politics and Social Structure in Provincial Pennsylvania 1726-1755 by Alan Tully

The best books on Benjamin Franklin, recommended by D.G. Hart

The Founding Fathers of the United States were a remarkable bunch of people, but Benjamin Franklin might have been the most remarkable of them all. Coming from humble stock, he became a businessman, scientist, diplomat and politician—a giant of the Enlightenment. Historian D.G. Hart sheds some light on his character and background and puts him in his broader social and political context.

  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War by Tera Hunter
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism by Erik McDuffie
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain

The best books on African American Women’s History, recommended by Keisha N. Blain

Black women’s stories are often untold, but their critical role in American society and politics is finally being broadly acknowledged. Black activists today are building upon the legacy of African American women who have been using every open avenue to seek social justice for centuries. And “no matter how many obstacles are erected to impede them,” says award-winning historian Keisha N. Blain, Black women “are unstoppable.”

  • The best books on Abraham Lincoln - Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer
  • The best books on Abraham Lincoln - Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words by Douglas L Wilson
  • The best books on Abraham Lincoln - Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills
  • The best books on Abraham Lincoln - Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory by Harold Holzer
  • The best books on Abraham Lincoln - They Knew Lincoln by John E Washington

The best books on Abraham Lincoln, recommended by Ted Widmer

He came from humble beginnings and never went to high school. Going into the presidency, he had limited political experience and lacked business, legislative and military achievements. The one thing he did not lack was a moral compass, says historian and author Ted Widmer. He picks the best books on the ups and downs and Shakespearean-style plot twists that were the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.

  • The best books on Migrant Workers - No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor by Cindy Hahamovitch
  • The best books on Migrant Workers - Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom by Mireya Loza
  • The best books on Migrant Workers - Managed Migrations: Growers, Farmworkers, and Border Enforcement in the Twentieth Century by Cristina Salinas
  • The best books on Migrant Workers - Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program by Verónica Martínez-Matsuda
  • The best books on Migrant Workers - The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl by Sarah Wald

The best books on Migrant Workers, recommended by Mireya Loza

American society and American history marginalized migrant workers for too long. New scholarship shows that migrant workers were central to America’s cultural and economic development. Mireya Loza, a historian at Georgetown University and author of Defiant Braceros, talks us through the best books about migrant workers—and why their stories are integral to understanding the past and present of United States.  

  • The best books on The Gilded Age - The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by Richard White
  • The best books on The Gilded Age - Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1896 by Charles Postel
  • The best books on The Gilded Age - A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells
  • The best books on The Gilded Age - Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha Sandweiss
  • The best books on The Gilded Age - The Search for Order, 1877-1920 by Robert Wiebe

The best books on The Gilded Age, recommended by Richard White

America’s Gilded Age, roughly from the end of the Civil War to the First World War, saw the United States go from being a rural, agricultural society to an urban and industrial one. National wealth soared and disparities between rich and poor exploded. Here, historian Richard White talks about how the Gilded Age transformed America and picks out some parallels with our own age that are not hard to see.

  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - The American Supreme Court by Robert G. McCloskey
  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court by R. Kent Newmyer
  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic by R. Kent Newmyer
  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - The Dred Scott Case by Don Fehrenbacher
  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality by Richard Kluger
  • The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States - Justice Lewis F. Powell: A Biography by John Jeffries

The best books on The Supreme Court of the United States, recommended by Michael Klarman

It may be nice to think of America’s Supreme Court justices as neutral interpreters of the law, but the reality is that they are a reflection of the cultural and historical moment in which they operate. Legal scholar and author Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School, recommends the best books to learn more about the Supreme Court of the United States and its history.

  • The best books on Impeachment - High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump by Frank O. Bowman III
  • The best books on Impeachment - Impeachment in America by N. E. H. Hull & Peter Charles Hoffer
  • The best books on Impeachment - Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment by United States Congress
  • The best books on Impeachment - Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems by Raoul Berger
  • The best books on Impeachment - Impeachment: A Handbook by Charles L. Jr. Black

The best books on Impeachment, recommended by Michael J. Gerhardt

In the 1998 Clinton impeachment proceedings, only one legal scholar was called as a joint witness: Michael J. Gerhardt, now a Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a prolific expert on subjects of constitutional history, the legislative process, and impeachment. With the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump well underway, he recommends five books crucial to understanding the subject.

  • The Best Fourth of July Books - The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
  • The Best Fourth of July Books - The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff
  • The Best Fourth of July Books - The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
  • The Best Fourth of July Books - American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier
  • The Best Fourth of July Books - Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America by Jack Rakove

The Best Fourth of July Books, recommended by Gordon S. Wood

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. In its assertion that all men are created equal, the declaration was a milestone in the journey towards the more democratic world we have today. But it was still a product of the 18th century colonial society that created it. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood talks us through five books, including his own, for understanding the history we celebrate on the Fourth of July.

  • The best books on White Supremacy - What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America by Peggy Pascoe
  • The best books on White Supremacy - Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race by Matthew Frye Jacobson
  • The best books on White Supremacy - Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America by Alexandra Minna Stern
  • The best books on White Supremacy - From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton
  • The best books on White Supremacy - The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas by Monica Muñoz Martinez

The best books on White Supremacy, recommended by Kathleen Belew

Defined by University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew, white supremacy is a “broad system of laws, norms and customs that create a society with unequal opportunities for people based on race”. It persists to this day, and has surprising intersections with issues of labor and women’s reproduction. Here, she recommends books for coming to grips with the history of this complex topic.