This Summer’s Best New History Books

But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, by Chuck Klosterman
The author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs returns with a hilarious and thought-provoking new book that asks what our modern life might look like to a person several hundred years in the future. Using interviews with intellectual leaders like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kathryn Schulz, and Junot Díaz, Klosterman wonders how the future might look back see things like our understanding of gravity, our obsession with television, our style of government, and our music. A charming experiment in thinking about popular culture.

Way of the Reaper: My Greatest Untold Missions and the Art of Being a Sniper, by Nicholas Irving, with Gary Brozek
This intense account of sniper Nicholas Irving’s ten most significant kills takes the reader deep into an unknown world. Irving, now a mentor on the Fox show American Grit, tells the story of each kill in startling detail—highlighting the importance of skill, information gathering, luck, and weaponry. Way of the Reaper also discusses the longest shot of Irving’s career, achieved from more than half a mile away. Essential for anyone interested in modern warfare.

Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History, by John Dickerson
Any book that reminds us that the current presidential election is not the most tumultuous the country has ever seen is surely welcome. Whistlestop provides this reminder with a warm, humorous, and much-needed dose of history and context, taking us inside some of Dickerson’s favorite stories of candidates on the campaign trail. Stretching all the way back to the 19th century, the tales included in this book will make you laugh, think, and maybe even feel a little better about the long road November.

Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America, by Calvin Trillin
This powerful collection of essays spans Trillin’s entire career to date, beginning with the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. The stories included blend iconic moments in history—the title essay, “Jackson, 1964,” takes the reader along on the Mississippi Summer Project’s voter registration drive and onto an airplane with Martin Luther King, Jr. An important, fascinating, and challenging read.

The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, by Lawrence Wright
Comprised of 10 New Yorker pieces written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wright (The Looming Tower), The Terror Years chronicles the development of terror in the Middle East over the past two decades. Including stories on a pre-revolution Syrian film industry, the conflict in Gaza, al-Qaeda, and profiles of FBI and CIA officials, The Terror Years has received significant advance praise.

Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World, by Adrian Goldsworthy
The Pax Romana, during which peace supposedly reigned in the Roman Empire for over two centuries, is the subject of Goldsworthy’s latest. Just how exactly did the Romans maintain this peace? When there were rebellions, why did they occur, and why and how did they fail (because they almost always did)? How did conquered peoples adapt to their newfound status? Pax Romana examines a famous, yet little understood, time, and is an excellent read for anyone interested in ancient history.

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, by Larry Tye
Thiswidely-praised biography of Bobby Kennedy paints an intriguing portrait of a complex man and the world he lived in. Tracing Kennedy’s political career from his beginnings as counsel to Joseph McCarthy to the crusading work that made him, as the title puts it, a liberal icon, Tye reveals what his career reflects about the United States in the 1950s and ’60s. Bobby Kennedy pulls from hundreds of interviews, dozens of boxes of previously unexamined papers, unpublished memoirs, and government files to create the definitive biography of a much-loved figure.

The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War, by Arkady Ostrovsky
A fascinating insider’s look at post-Soviet Russia from The Economist‘s Moscow bureau chief, The Invention of Russia introduces readers to the key architects of modern Russia. Ostrovsky is particularly concerned with the role of the Russian media and the way it interacts with political (and business) interests, examining how propaganda has influenced the Russia of today. An important read for anyone interested in foreign affairs, The Invention of Russia won the 2016 Orwell Prize and was a Financial Times Book of the Year.

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg
The American Dream states that everyone is equal and that, with enough hard work and determination, anyone can make it big in America—especially if you’re white. Not necessarily so, argues Isenberg’s provocative book, a comprehensive study of four centuries of classicism in the Americas, from the Colonial Era to the modern day. Centuries ago, they were known as “waste people.” Today, they are mockingly referred to as “white trash.” In any era, they are the poor whites who, Isenberg argues, played a key role in the buildup to the Civil War, formed a backbone of the earliest days of the Republican Party, were at the center of Roosevelt’s New Deal, and have become a laughingstock of the reality TV-era, from COPS to Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.