The best books about American history that read like you’re binge-watching a Netflix miniseries

Reading this book was a journey that I can’t forget.

One aspires to be the main subject of this piece of non-fiction – a young WWII soldier who survived, first being lost at sea in shark-infested waters and then in a vicious POW camp. The details and context of the story hooked me in, and I learned details about the Pacific front that left me aghast. I’m not a WWII scholar, and you don’t need to be one to love this book.

The author takes you by the hand and presents history to you as the story progresses. She also adroitly makes this a story about a man and his personality, with all its imperfections. It’s not a series of unfortunate events – it’s the unflinching character profile of one man and his unyielding will to live, mostly out of spite!  

I never leaned toward crime stories, but this true telling of America’s first serial killer, while simultaneously recounting one of the grandest expositions in American history, was too good to put down.

I was shocked by how quickly I devoured this book. It’s the closest you can get to time-traveling to 1890s Chicago. It’s the near-impossible feat of building the greatest World’s Fair of all, and also the gruesome story of a killer building a “murder house” and luring single women into it.

This is the book that inspired Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Dicaprio to almost make it a series on Hulu, just saying.

I learned that he was the only of America’s Founding Father to not come from a well-to-do family.

The book makes him into such a three-dimensional, yet exceptional portrait of a man, Even down to his extramarital affair, the first sex scandal in America. I felt like I could have a beer with this guy by the time the book was over. It breathes life into the exciting time that was colonial America before, during and immediately after the war for independence. It makes the events seem less like a bygone era, and more like a bunch of dudes threatening each other.

Most of all, it casts slavery into a realistic light, pulling no punches on how hypocritical many colonists considered each other for having slaves.

A treasure trove of artwork, photos, and most of all, a record of the women of Disney history. Expertly and lovingly researched.

This book chronicles Disney animation behind-the-scenes throughout its entire run, decade by decade. Sometimes arduous, sometimes creative, but generally positive. Who would have thought that among the women of the Ink & Paint department were actual chemists mixing colors?! These women have been widely unsung, making them the true underdogs of Disney animation. And I’m always a sucker for an underdog.

Not to mention the few women early on who rose through the ranks to become designers and even animators, lest they be forgotten. This book breathed vibrant life into a wing of Disney animation that I personally had never explored before.  

This book looks like it’s only for die-hard fans, but it’s actually an extremely humanizing and thoughtful trip through the growth of genius.

Jim Henson has become so larger-than-life it’s too easy to “other” him. But this account of the first 28-ish years of his life really set the stage for his future success, and helped me understand how the dots were connected from a boy in Mississippi to a guest on The Tonight Show.

As a creative person, I “get” him now. And I also deeply understand his older self and how that man’s movements through life were based on his early development.