Books like Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

01

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Erik Larson · History

Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile covers Winston Churchill's first year as British Prime Minister — from May 1940, when he replaced Neville Chamberlain three days after Germany's invasion of the Low Countries, through May 1941.

A kindred history read.

02

The Devil in the White City

Erik Larson · History

The Devil in the White City tells two stories that unfolded simultaneously in Chicago in 1893.

A kindred history read.

03

Killers of the Flower Moon

David Grann · History

In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in northeastern Oklahoma were being murdered.

A kindred history read.

04

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · Biography

Unbroken follows Louis Zamperini from his juvenile delinquency in Depression-era California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he ran the 5,000 meters at nineteen and briefly caught Hitler's attention.

A kindred history read.

05

Into Thin Air

Jon Krakauer · Memoir

Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer's firsthand account of the May 1996 Everest expedition that killed eight climbers in a single afternoon.

A kindred history read.

06

The Guns of August

Barbara Tuchman · History

The Guns of August covers the first month of the First World War — from the funeral of King Edward VII in May 1910 to the stalled offensives of September 1914 — with a level of narrative authority and moral clarity that has made it the defining popular history of the war's opening disaster.

Both dig into world war i.

07

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Anne Fadiman · Memoir

Anne Fadiman's account of Lia Lee, a Hmong child in Merced, California who suffered from severe epilepsy, and the catastrophic failure of understanding between her family and the American medical system that treated her, is one of the most important works of narrative nonfiction about medicine, immigration, and cultural translation.

Both dig into tragedy.

08

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann · History

Charles Mann's 1491 sets out to correct a widespread misconception: that the Americas before Columbus were a mostly empty wilderness populated by small, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers living in gentle harmony with an untouched nature.

A kindred history read.

09

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann · History

Where 1491 ends, 1493 begins.

A kindred history read.

10

1776

David McCullough · History

David McCullough's 1776, published in 2005, covers a single year of the American Revolution — from the winter siege of Boston through Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the surprise victory at Trenton.

A kindred history read.

11

A Man on the Moon

Andrew Chaikin · History

A Man on the Moon is Andrew Chaikin's exhaustive narrative history of the Apollo program, from the first lunar orbit of Apollo 8 in 1968 through the final mission, Apollo 17, in 1972.

A kindred history read.

12

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn · History

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, first published in 1980, retells American history from the perspective of those who rarely appear in conventional textbooks: Native Americans, enslaved people, industrial workers, women, immigrants, and dissidents of various kinds.

A kindred history read.