History & Foreign Affairs

Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, The Untold Story Jeffrey Kluger · 2025 · read Sep 2026Mercury put Americans in space and Apollo put them on the Moon, but the program in between is where NASA learned how. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War Michael Dobbs · 2008 · read Sep 2026What nearly started a nuclear war in October 1962? Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism Jeff Gramm · 2016 · read Aug 2026The fight between the people who own a company and the people who run it is a century old. The History of Money: A Story of Humanity David McWilliams · 2024 · read Aug 2026Money is a relationship as much as it's a tool. Biological War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen · 2026 · read Jul 2026Take the minute-by-minute format of Nuclear War: A Scenario and swap the bomb for a recombinant, antibiotic-resistant plague with… The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Craig Whitlock · 2021 · read Jul 2026Three administrations told you the war in Afghanistan was going well while saying privately that it was being lost. The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters Gregory Zuckerman · 2013 · read Jul 2026Who turned shale rock into an American energy boom? Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan · 2026 · read Jul 2026Picture a classified defense meeting derailed by someone arriving with stone samples for the Rose Garden. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court Jeffrey Toobin · 2007 · read Jun 2026For decades the conservative campaign to remake the Supreme Court kept running into moderates, above all Sandra Day O'Connor. Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection John Green · 2025 · read Jun 2026Tuberculosis is curable, preventable, and still the deadliest infectious disease in the world. The Oath: The Obama White House and The Supreme Court Jeffrey Toobin · 2012 · read Jun 2026Two Harvard Law Review alumni, and two opposite ideas of what the Court is for. End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America Chris Jennings · 2026 · read Apr 2026Ruby Ridge usually gets told as a botched federal raid. State of Denial Bob Woodward · 2006 · read Jan 2026Who pushed Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld? Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang · 2025 · read Jan 2026China is an engineering state that builds relentlessly, and the United States is a lawyerly society that's good at stopping… Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq Bob Woodward · 2004 · read Jan 2026Seventy-two days after 9/11, George W. Bush at War Bob Woodward · 2002 · read Dec 2025The Situation Room, the war cabinet, and roughly the first 100 days after September 11. All the President’s Men Carl Bernstein · 1974 · read Dec 2025A 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee, two young Washington Post reporters, and a source who would only meet in… The Last of the President's Men Bob Woodward · 2015 · read Dec 2025Through Alexander Butterfield, the aide who oversaw installing Nixon's taping system, you see a president well beyond the… The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century Tim Weiner · 2025 · read Dec 2025The CIA of 2001 was an agency in crisis, with overseas stations closed and technology too outdated to collect what it needed. Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare John Lechner · 2025 · read Dec 2025Wagner looks like a uniquely Russian invention. After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made Ben Rhodes · 2021 · read Dec 2025If you've ever wondered what American democracy looks like from outside, Rhodes looks for the answer in Orbán's Hungary, Putin's… 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation Andrew Ross Sorkin · 2025 · read Oct 2025On October 28, 1929, the market fell about 13 percent, and National City Bank found itself holding some 71,000 shares from a… Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Graham Allison · 2017 · read Aug 2025Allison's case is that when a rising power challenges a ruling one, it usually ends in war, and America and China are on that… The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World Noam Chomsky · 2024 · read Jul 2025Democracy and human rights are the language, and economic and geopolitical dominance is the policy. Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror Michael V. Hayden · 2016 · read Jun 2025Hayden's case is that spy agencies should work right up to the edge of what the law allows, and that your privacy, a value he… Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat John P. Carlin · 2018 · read Jun 2025If thieves broke into Boeing and carried out its schematics, the response would be swift. Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company Patrick McGee · 2025 · read Jun 2025Apple's move to China sounds like a story about outsourcing. Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs Luis Elizondo · 2024 · read May 2025According to Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon has known about UFOs since the 1940s and hidden from you that craft under non-human… Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Clint Hill · 2016 · read May 2025Clint Hill is remembered for one moment: climbing onto the back of the limousine in Dallas to shield the President and Mrs. Countdown 1960: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the 312 Days that Changed America's Politics Forever Chris Wallace · 2024 · read May 2025When you watch a presidential race run on television, private planes and slick advertising, you're watching what 1960 started, in… Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation Brenda Wineapple · 2024 · read May 2025A Tennessee schoolteacher's prosecution for teaching evolution was a small-town case. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America Nancy Isenberg · 2016 · read Mar 2025America was never the classless society of its founding myth. Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator Jung H. Pak · 2020 · read Feb 2025Kim Jong Un was supposed to fall quickly after taking power in 2011. Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past Steve Benen · 2024 · read Feb 2025Benen's case is that rewriting the recent past has become Republican strategy rather than spin, and that a false version only… 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 2025Who brought down the 1920s Klan at the height of its power? Autocracy, Inc. Anne Applebaum · 2024 · read Jan 2025Communist states were tied together by ideology. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times Mark T. Esper · 2022 · read Dec 2024During the 2020 George Floyd protests, Trump asked whether troops could just shoot protesters in the legs, according to Mark… Impeachment: An American History Jeffrey A. Engel · 2018 · read Dec 2024Three presidents, three case chapters, and one argument: impeachment runs on politics more than law, and it goes nowhere unless… Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Adam Higginbotham · 2019 · read Nov 2024What blew apart Reactor No. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space Adam Higginbotham · 2024 · read Nov 2024Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, and the story usually stops at the booster O-rings. War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Powerbrokers Benjamin R. Teitelbaum · 2020 · read Oct 2024Traditionalism, an anti-modern spiritual school rooted in René Guénon and Julius Evola, has had a tiny following for a century. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI Yuval Noah Harari · 2024 · read Oct 2024Information isn't the same thing as truth. The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West Malcolm W. Nance · 2018 · read Sep 2024Voter databases hacked, Democratic officials' emails leaked, bots spreading pro-Trump disinformation: in Nance's account, 2016… Fascism: A Warning Madeleine K. Albright · 2018 · read Sep 2024Fascism, for Albright, is less an ideology than a method for taking and keeping power. How Did We Get Here?: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump Robert Dallek · 2020 · read Aug 2024Every president from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan gets credit here for real strengths. They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency Malcolm W. Nance · 2022 · read Aug 2024TITUS, the Trump Insurgency in the United States: that's Nance's name for the movement around the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and… Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers Andy Greenberg · 2019 · read Aug 2024Most hacking you hear about steals data or spreads disinformation. Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service Carol Leonnig · 2021 · read Aug 2024The Secret Service is the agency that can't afford a single failure. Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America Heather Cox Richardson · 2023 · read Jul 2024Richardson's argument is that America has always carried two traditions, one leaning toward authoritarianism and one reaching for… When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s John Ganz · 2024 · read Jul 2024The politics people blame on 2016 were already loose in the early 1990s. World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century Dmitri Alperovitch · 2024 · read Jun 2024Picture a Chinese invasion of Taiwan just after the 2028 US presidential election, which is where the book begins. First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance Annie Jacobsen · 2021 · read May 2024In 2012, 82nd Airborne paratroopers in Afghanistan were collecting fingerprints, iris scans and DNA from civilians and dead… Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America Annie Jacobsen · 2014 · read May 2024Which Germans do you hire after World War II, and which do you try and hang? Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Annie Jacobsen · 2011 · read May 2024About 75 miles from Las Vegas sits a base whose Cold War history, from nuclear testing to the U-2 and A-12 Oxcart, outstrips the… Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History Of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, And Assassins Annie Jacobsen · 2019 · read May 2024Covert paramilitary action is the president's third option, the hidden hand, if you will, between diplomacy and war. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis Annie Jacobsen · 2017 · read May 2024Why would the CIA, the DIA and the Army spend decades funding research into ESP and psychokinesis? The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency Annie Jacobsen · 2015 · read Apr 2024DARPA was a Cold War answer to Soviet technological advances, created under Eisenhower in 1958. Nuclear War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen · 2024 · read Apr 2024It starts with a North Korean thermonuclear strike on the Pentagon, a submarine-launched missile into California's Diablo Canyon… Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism Jeffrey Toobin · 2023 · read Mar 2024On April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the end of the Waco siege, Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma… A Little History of Economics Niall Kishtainy · 2017 · read Feb 2024From Plato and Aristotle to Piketty, Stiglitz and Sen, in about 40 short chapters, each built around a thinker or a concept. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism Rachel Maddow · 2023 · read Nov 2023Members of Congress used their free mailing privileges to send Nazi propaganda to millions of Americans. The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb James W. Kunetka · 2015 · read Sep 2023Before he ran the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers oversaw construction of the Pentagon. Debt: The First 5,000 Years David Graeber · 2011 · read Jul 2023The barter story sounds sensible, and economists have told it since Adam Smith. The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent (Forbidden Bookshelf) Frederick Lewis Allen · 1935 · read Jun 2023Between the depression of the 1890s and the crash of 1929, American financiers and industrial capitalists built a huge corporate… The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets Matthew Connelly · 2023 · read May 2023The United States was a republic with few formal secrets for roughly its first 150 years. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Richard Rothstein · 2017 · read Apr 2023Near Detroit, a developer built a wall between a white development and a Black neighborhood to win federal backing. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge Terence McKenna · 1992 · read Apr 2023McKenna's claim is that psilocybin mushrooms were humanity's original tree of knowledge, and that early hominids who ate them… The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin Steven Lee Myers · 2014 · read Feb 2023From a poor Leningrad childhood and the KGB to near-total control of the Russian state. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth Beth Allison Barr · 2021 · read Feb 2023Written out of the record: that's where Barr says the women who led in the ancient and medieval church ended up. Drift Rachel Maddow · 2012 · read Feb 2023Wars the public barely feels: that's the result, in Maddow's account, of war-making power drifting since Vietnam from Congress to… Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology Chris Miller · 2022 · read Feb 2023Oil is the resource you'd expect great powers to fight over. The January 6th Report Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol · 2022 · read Jan 2023The House select committee's final report is an answer to one question, what caused January 6, and its answer is one man, Donald… For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America Jonathan D. Cohen · 2022 · read Dec 2022State lotteries let politicians raise money without raising your taxes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Kristin Kobes Du Mez · 2020 · read Nov 2022Kristin Kobes Du Mez's argument is that white evangelical support for Donald Trump wasn't a betrayal of evangelical values. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism Anne Applebaum · 2020 · read Oct 2022Why do educated, often prosperous people who once championed liberal democracy end up backing nationalists and would-be autocrats? The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump Bob Woodward · 2022 · read Oct 2022Twenty interviews, one from the 2016 campaign and the rest from the presidency, in Donald Trump's own voice. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 - 2021 Peter Baker · 2022 · read Oct 2022Four years, told as one story, from the inauguration to January 6. Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America Kurt Andersen · 2020 · read Sep 2022In 1971 about 175 companies had lobbyists in Washington, and by the Reagan years nearly 2,500 did. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History Kurt Andersen · 2017 · read Sep 2022Gold-seekers and religious zealots, both betting on extraordinary outcomes, made the colonies in Kurt Andersen's telling, and his… A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 Eric Foner · 1990 · read Aug 2022Reconstruction was a real chance to remake American society, with Black citizenship, political equality and land for the… 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari · 2018 · read Jul 2022After Sapiens on the past and Homo Deus on the future, Yuval Noah Harari turns to the present you're living in. Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow Yuval Noah Harari · 2015 · read Jul 2022Obesity now kills more people than starvation, old age more than disease, and suicide more than murder. The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Mehrsa Baradaran · 2017 · read Jul 2022Black banks were promoted as a way to close the racial wealth gap. The Original Watergate Stories The Washington Post · 2012 · read Jun 2022This collection opens with the Washington Post's 18 June 1972 story on burglars arrested at the Democratic National Committee… Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Eric Foner · 1988 · read Jan 2021In Eric Foner's history, Reconstruction starts in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation rather than at the war's end, and freed… Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari · 2011 · read Nov 2020What put Homo sapiens in charge of the planet? The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery Eric Foner · 2010 · read Aug 2020From his youth in Kentucky and Indiana to the presidency, Lincoln's thinking on slavery kept moving. Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth Brian Stelter · 2020Fox News used the word hoax more than 900 times in the first half of 2020.