The Best History Books of November 2017

Obama: An Intimate Portrait, by Pete Souza
You’ll never get a more intimate glimpse of the Obama White House. In more than 300 photos taken by Chief Official White House Photographer Souza, we see our 44th President in moments of relaxed intimacy as well as stressful emergency. Each photo is accompanied by explanatory captions that give just enough background to make them meaningful—and often powerful. You don’t have to be a fan of Obama’s policies or politics to find this deep dive into life in the White House completely absorbing. Obama’s administration was historic simply by its existence, and this beautifully-designed collection of stunning photos offers a powerful record of an era.

What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, by Dan Rather
These days, Dan Rather is remembered as a steady and intelligent force in journalism at a time when “steady” and “intelligent” seem like too much to hope for. In this collection of essays, Rather brings gravitas to the subject of patriotism, a term and concept he argues is frequently, often willfully misunderstood, or even twisted into something perverse. Rather takes a quiet approach, exploring the importance of arts, the press, and service to your country in essays that are deeply felt and smartly written. The end result is a book thatwill prompt conversations about what it means to be a patriot in modern-day America.

Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics, by Lawrence O’Donnell
MSNBC’s O’Donnell makes a persuasive argument that our modern-day political morass of our politics can be traced firmly back to 1968, the year Nixon was elected to his first term. O’Donnell examines all the dominoes, beginning with Eugene McCarthy’s decision to run against Lyndon Johnson, which he argues spurred Johnson to make the unusual decision not to seek a second term, setting in motion a series of events that ended with Nixon triumphant and the liberal wing of the Republican Party extinguished. O’Donnell backs up his writing with in-depth research and detailed sources, making this the sort of history book that illuminates much more than just a single event.

Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, by Donna Brazile
Brazile is a divisive figure, but one thing is certain: when the Democratic National Committee was hacked during the 2016 presidential election and chaos threatened to swallow the party, she was in the room. Brazile now offers an insider’s account of that upheaval, and makes it clear that whatever you think happened, the reality was much worse. She paints a picture of a party in disarray, already boiling with in-fighting and scandal when the Russian-led efforts to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump hit. Brazile argues that covering up the events or pretending things are fine won’t help anyone, and sets out to do her part by offering an intriguing warts-and-all account of what happened as she understands it.

Hellfire Boys: The Birth of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service and the Race for the World’s Deadliest Weapons, by Theo Emery
World War I was a redefining conflict in many ways, not least of which was the demonstration of how scientific advancement and technological innovation could make the horrors of war that much more horrifying. Emery considers an obscure element of the first World War: the scramble the United States undertook to gear up its poison gas capabilities. The U.S. had a very small and ill-equipped military machine when war was declared in 1917, and the combination of patriotic fervor and can-do spirit that produced a humming poison gas infrastructure in a very short time is both haunting and terrifying—and new ground even for seasoned World War I buffs.

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture, by Brian Dear
If you think the internet and web culture started in the 1990s with Netscape and AOL, you’re missing a whole lot of history. Some of it is widely-known, but some of it remains more or less untold. That’s the case with the teaching platform PLATO, invented in the 1960s and used at the University of Illinois. Via phone lines and a central server, PLATO was more or less a small, self-contained internet of sorts, and had a huge role in the development of hacker culture, as students learned how to use and misuse the system for their own entertainment and education. A fascinating look at a moment in time that seems impossibly ahead of the curve, considering it took place decades before the internet arrived on home computers.

Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom, by Russell Shorto
Shorto takes a refreshingly personal approach to familiar history, examining six figures from Revolutionary times (some, like George Washington, quite famous; others, more obscure), weaving their personal stories together. The result is an intimate story that explains the worldview of people for whom the concept of equality and personal freedom was new and somewhat confusing. Shorto treats each of his chosen figures as fully-formed people, even bringing a new intimacy and some surprising revelations to Washington, a historical figure too often treated as nearly inhuman in his nobility and perfection of motive. It’s important to be reminded that the world of 1776 was much different than today, and many of the things we now take as self-evident had to be explained and sold to people of the times.

All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor’s Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor, by Donald Stratton with Ken Gire
The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor occurred 75 years ago, and Donald Stratton was there, serving on the U.S.S. Arizona. This riveting firsthand account of the attack begins long before it, with Stratton’s childhood, offering a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the men who joined the service before the war—and how it changed in the wake of the attack. With corroboration and additional research from Gire, Stratton offers an informative and gripping account of an event that shaped America, and continues to affect our nation’s military, politics, and social structures.

Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission, by Bret Baier with Catherine Whitney
Just about everyone is familiar with Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned about the rising influence of the “military-industrial complex.” Baier and Whitney explore the final days of Eisenhower’s administration as he prepared to turn power over to the young John F. Kennedy, cognizant that Kennedy had, in part, leveraged the public’s fear of the Soviet Union in order to win the election. The time for a thorough reexamination of Eisenhower’s presidency in these telling final weeks is long overdue; any student of politics seeking insight into 2017’s transfer of power will benefit from reading this book.

Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink, by Anthony McCarten
McCarten, whose book is the basis of the new film about Winston Churchill starring Gary Oldman, traces the development of the iconic British Prime Minister over the course of his lengthy career. Before World War II Churchill was in the political wilderness, considered something of a bombastic failure, but the war brought him back in, and he rose to the occasion as have few other figures in history. McCarten offers up the eyebrow-raising theory that Churchill was seriously considering making a peace accord with Hitler before ultimately deciding peace was impossible, and his contrasting analysis of Churchill and Hitler’s rhetorical styles is fascinating.