This is the main Book List. These suggestions from the ACC Library are also eligible — all campuses can share through interlibrary loan — as are those on the Pulitzer and Bancroft lists.
Check Google Books, where some books (not all) are available for free. For those that aren’t, check ACC Library (free), read at the University of Texas Libraries (also free in-house) or Amazon (for cheap used copies).
Occupational Themes:
Politics, Military-Diplomatic, Race, Culture, and Sports Are In The Broader Chronological Category Below. These Occupational Lists Dovetail Well With Those That Already Know Their Career Path Or Those Exploring A Particular Path. Feel Free to Contact Me If You Have A Particular Major/Career Choice Not Listed Below And You’d Like Me To Find You A Book (I’ll Have To Make The Book Choice, Though).
Architecture-Drafting / Construction:
Roth & Roth-Clark, American Architecture: A History (Chapters 6-11)
Bill Addis, Building: 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering & Construction (Chapters 7-9) EVC Library
Art & Music:
Ch. Molesworth, The Capitalist & the Critic: J.P. Morgan, Roger Fry & the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City: Urban Vision & the Ashcan School
Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History
Business / Economics / Finance:
Benjamin Waterhouse, The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States (Ch. 6-12)
T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of the Cornelius Vanderbilt
Maury Klein, The Life & Legend of Jay Gould
Roger Lowenstein, America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929
Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World Pulitzer Prize Winner
Michael Bernstein, The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery & Economic Change in America, 1929-39
Dirk Philipsen, The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World, and What to Do About It
Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World
Matthew Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom & the Forces of Capital
Joseph Stiglitz, Free Fall: America, Free Markets & the Sinking of the World Economy
Computer Science:
Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma
James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman, A Mind At Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
T.R. Reid, The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip & Launched a Revolution
Annie Jacobsen, The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Military Research Agency Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Theodore Roszak, From Satori to Silicon Valley (e-Book)
Culinary Arts:
Steckel & Rese, Backbone of History: Nutrition & Healthcare & Nutrition in Western History
Education:
Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession
Keith Erekson, Politics & the History Curriculum: The Struggle Over Standards in Texas & the Nation
Johann Neem, Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of Childhood in America
Engineering / Automotive:
Tom McNichol, AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War
Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night: A Novel Novel
Simon Winchester, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World (Ch. 5-10)
Edwin Black, Internal Combustion: How Corporations & Governments Addicted the World To Oil & Derailed Alternatives
John Heitmann, The Automobile & American Life
David McCullough, Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
Tom Crouch, A Dream of Wings: Americans & the Airplane, 1875-1905
Pete Davies, American Road: Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age
Michael Hiltzik, Colossus: The Turbulent, Thrilling Saga of the Building of Hoover Dam
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (900 pages)
Amy Shira Teitel, Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA
William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Eric Schlosser, Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident & the Illusion of Safety Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Environmental Science / Agriculture / Disasters
Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History
Michael Lewis, ed., American Wilderness: A New History
Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt & the Crusade for America
Timothy Egan, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America
John Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 & How It Changed America
Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those That Survived the Dust Bowl National Book Award
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains In the 1930s Bancroft Prize
Paul Conkin, A Revolution Down On the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture Since 1929
Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm A Factory: The Industrial Ideal In American Agriculture
Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon & the Our Gamble Over Earth’s Future
Richard Rhodes, Energy: A Human History
Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Rachel Unger, Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History
Health Sciences
Alfred Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
John Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic In History
Gina Kolata, The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic & the Search for the Virus That Caused It
Kim Nielson, A Disability History of the United States
Richard Hollingham, Blood & Guts: A History of Surgery
Roy Porter, A Cambridge History of Medicine
Gerald Imber, Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double-Life of Dr. William Seward Halsted
Mary Cronk Farrell & Diane Carlson Evans, Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific
Kevin Brown, Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution
Gwyn MacFarlane, Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth
Lynda Van Devanter, Home Before Morning: A Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam
David Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story Pulitzer Prize
David Oshinsky, Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine & Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital
Robert Baker, Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics From the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution
Sarah Dubow, Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America Bancroft Prize
Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973
James Wynbrandt, The Excruciating History of Dentistry
Keith Wailoo, Pain: A Political History
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People & the AIDS Epidemic
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Pulitzer Prize
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
Journalism / Communication
Christopher Daly, Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism Chapters 6-14
Matthew Algeo, The President is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
Jim Kuypers, Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States
James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News — And Divided a Country
Law Enforcement-Criminal Justice / Firefighting
Wadman & Allison, To Protect & Serve: A History of Police in America
Peter Enns, Incarceration Nation: How the U.S. Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World
Lardner & Reppetto, NYPD: A City & Its Police (Chapters 10-16)
Bruce Chadwick, Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD
Humbert Nelli, The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the U.S.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime & the Making of Modern Urban America
Bruce Hensler, Crucible of Fire: Nineteenth-Century Urban Fires & the Making of the Modern Fire Service
Psychology
Michael Wertheimer, A Brief History of Psychology
B.R. Hergenhahn, An Introduction to the History of Psychology
Sanitation
Susan Strasser, Waste & Want: A Social History of Trash
General Broad Topics:
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas In America National Book Award
Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in America Beveridge Prize & Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Alexander Keyssar, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?
David Rubenstein, The American Story: Conversations With Master Historians
Craig Fehrman, Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents & The Books They Wrote
Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America
Thomas Madden, Empires of Trust (U.S. & Classical Rome)
Kurt Anderson, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire — A 500-Year History
David Greenberg, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency
Jeffrey Meikle, American Plastic
Allan Brandt, Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall & Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America Bancroft Prize
Scott Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters
Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism
Darren Dochuk, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity & Crude Made Modern America
Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas
Penne Restad, Christmas in America
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk
Garrett Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself While the Rest of Us Die
General: Politics, Immigration, Military-Diplomacy, Culture, Race, Sports:
In Roughly Chronological Order
Henry Louis Gates, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy & the Rise of Jim Crow
Martha Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted On Equality for All
Ralph Andrist, The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present
Kevin Kinney, The American Irish: A History
David Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 & the Rise of White Supremacy
Carl Van Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President [Garfield]
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Immigration From Emigrant Perspective) Pulitzer Prize
Robert Cherny, Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen & Socialist
Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat Bancroft Prize
Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Novel
Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands
James Haley, Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii
Murray Morgan, Skid Road (Informal History of Seattle)
Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s
Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (Teddy Roosevelt Biography)
John J. Miller, The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football
Gerard Helferich, Theodore Roosevelt & the Assassin: Madness, Vengeance, and the Campaign of 1912
Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race
Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
Lars Anderson, Carlisle v. Army: Dwight Eisenhower, Jim Thorpe, Pop Warner & the Forgotten Story of Football’s Greatest Battle
David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America
Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War Bancroft Prize
Victor Villaseñor, Rain of Gold (Parallel Stories of Mexican Immigration to the U.S.) Novel
Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era
David Kennedy, Birth Control In America: The Career of Margaret Sanger Bancroft Prize
David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War & American Society Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (aka August 1914)
John MacGavock Grider? War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator
Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Thomas Boghardt, The Zimmerman Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy & America’s Entrance Into World War I
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson & the Fight for the League of Nations
Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America’s War Against Russia
Thomas Mullen, The Last Town on Earth (American Town During WWI Flu Epidemic) Novel
Chad Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era
Adrienne Danette Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans & World War I
James McCeachin, Farewell to the Mockingbirds
Edward G. Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918
Mitchell Yockelson, Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I
David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Great War & the 20th Century
Paul Fussell, The Great War & Modern Memory
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration National Book Critics Circle Award
Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Daniela Spenser, The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia & the United States in the 1920s
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise & Fall of Prohibition
Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever? Tennessee vs. John Scopes
Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial & America’s Continuing Debate Over Science & Religion Pulitzer Prize Winner
Arthur and Lila Weinberg, Clarence Darrow: A Sentimental Rebel
Jean Baker, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion
Susan Ware, Still Missing: Amelia Earhart & the Search for Modern Feminism
Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance
Kiran Laus Patel, The New Deal: A Global History
Michael Bernstein, The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery & Economic Change in America, 1929-39
Douglas Brinkley, Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt & the Land of America
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression
Studs Terkel, Hard Times
Lois Scharf, Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of American Liberalism
John Kasson, The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple & 1930s America
John Keegan, The Second World War
James Lacey, The Washington War: FDR’s Inner Circle & the Politics of Power That Won World War II
Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust
Armando Lucas Correa, The German Girl: A Novel NOVEL
Robert Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning & Decision
James Scott, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle & the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program & America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
Don Mitchell, The Lady Is A Spy: Virginia Hall, World War II Hero of the French Resistance
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach NOVEL
Tim Newark, Mob Allies: The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance With the Mob in World War II
Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (Vol. 1 of Liberation Trilogy) Pulitzer Prize Winner
Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (Vol. 2)
Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3)
Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day (D-Day)
Alwyn Featherston, Battle For Mortain: The 30th Infantry Division Saves the Breakout, August 7-12, 1944
Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Codes & Guerillas, 1939-1945
James McCaffrey, Going for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers in the War Against Nazi Germany
Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men & Women in World War II
Kathryn Atwood, Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance & Rescue
Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Liza Mundy, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Codebreakers of World War II
Denise Kiernan, Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
James Hornfischer, The Fleet at Floodtide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-45
David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust
J. Samuel Walker, Prompt & Utter Destruction: Truman & the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan, 2nd ed.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman & the Surrender of Japan
Doug Stanton, In Harm’s Way: the Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis & the Extraordinary Story of its Survivors
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1985 edition)
N. Scott Momaday, The House of Dawn PULITZER PRIZE WINNER FOR FICTION
Michael Dobbs, Six Months in 1945: From World War to Cold War
Arnold Brackman, Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial
Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America
Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men
David McCullough, Truman
Thomas Burns, The Origins of the National Security Agency
Mark Landis, Joseph McCarthy: The Politics of Chaos
Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier & President
Robert Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War
Evan Thomas, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World
Donald Neff, Warriors At Suez
Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
Kati Marton, True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy
Kemp Dixon, Chasing Thugs, Nazis & Reds: Texas Ranger Norman K. Dixon
Hardesty, Eisman & Khrushchev, Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the American & Soviet Space Race
Jack Colhoun, Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba & the Mafia, 1933-66
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (JFK’s Cabinet)
Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Aleksandr Fursenko & Tim Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro & Kennedy, 1958-64: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys & the Dawn of a New America Pulitzer Prize Winner
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965
John Lewis, Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
Peniel Joseph, The Sword & the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X & Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dwonna Goldstone, Integrating the Forty Acres: The Fifty-year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas
Clayton Carson (ed.), The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald & the Assassination of JFK Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater & the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Robert Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Robert Caro, Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Paul Conkin, Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon B. Johnson
Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President
Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson & His Times, 1961-1973
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Alondra Nelson, Body & Soul: The Black Panther Party & the Fight Against Medical Discrimination
Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story
Howard Bingham & Max Wallace, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States
H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam
Gerard J. Degroot, A Noble Cause?: America and the Vietnam War
Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vietnam Memoir)
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War Novel
Andres Tijerina, A War Remembered (Vietnam Memoir from ACC-Pinnacle History Professor)
Ezell Ware, Jr., By Duty Bound: Survival & Redemption in Vietnam (Ware was a Vietnam Vet from Austin)
Frederik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire & the Making of America’s Vietnam Pulitzer Prize Winner
James Hershberg, Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in the Vietnam War
Robert S. Litwak, Detente & the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy & the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976
Nancy Gibbs & Michael Duffy, The Preacher & the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House
Michael Cohen, American Maelstrom: the 1968 Election & the Politics of Division
Kyle Longley, LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval
Robert Dallek, Nixon & Kissinger Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons & Foreign Policy
Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier & the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement
Richard W. Etulain, ed., Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography w/ Documents (Analyze Documents)
Susan Ferriss & Ricardo Sandoval, Fight in the Fields: César Chávez & the Farmworker’s Movement
Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994
John D. Marks, The CIA & the Cult of Intelligence
John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
H.W. Brands, Into the Labyrinth: The U.S. & the Middle East, 1945-1993
George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (Texas Congressman in Afghanistan in the 1980s)
Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton & the Generals
Robert Kagan, Of Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
Andrew Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East
Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America National Book Award Winner
Jon Meacham, Destiny & Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
Ping Fu, Bend, Not Break: A Life In Two Worlds
Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos
Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black & White Roots of Mexican Americans
David McComb, The City in Texas: A History
Jan Reid, Let the People In: The Life & Times of Anne Richards
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Lawrence Wright, Looming Towers: Al-Qaeda & the Road to 9/11 Pulitzer Prize General Non-Fiction
Lawrence Wright, The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 & Osama bin Laden Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Deborah Potts Hoffman, American Umpire
Barry Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses – And Misuses – of History
Tim Neftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Anti-Terrorism
Marcus Luttrell & James Hornfischer, Service: A Navy SEAL at War
Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq
Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General Petraeus & the American Military Adventure In Iraq
Richard Haas, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy & the Crisis of the Old Order
Ta-Nahesi Coates, We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy
Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized
Steve Kornacki, The Red & the Blue: The 1990s & the Birth of Political Tribalism
Jonathan Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland
Off Limits Even If On ACC Library List or Pulitzer List:
good books but too likely to have been read elsewhere
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
Erik Larson, Devil in the White City (Chicago 1893 World’s Fair)
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Daniel J. Brown, Boys in the Boat: 9 Americans & Their Epic Quest for Gold @ the 36 Berlin Olympics
Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers
Bernstein & Woodward, All the President’s Men (Watergate)
Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken
The Autobiography of Malcolm X