Why am I passionate about this?

Louis P. Masur is a cultural historian who has written on a range of topics in American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Bruce Springsteen, from the first World Series to a photograph that shocked the nation. An award-winning teacher, Masur lectures frequently on various topics in American history. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Slate. The Sum of Our Dreams emerged out a course he teaches on the American Dream, which, somehow, he still believes in.


I wrote

The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

By Louis P. Masur,

Book cover of The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

What is my book about?

In The Sum of Our Dreams, Louis P. Masur offers a sweeping yet compact history of America from its…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of A People's History of the United States

Louis P. Masur Why did I love this book?

With lively prose, Zinn broadens our vision of American history by looking not at political leaders but the workers, women, enslaved and Native Americans who made the nation. This is a work of social history that focuses on class conflict and, while that is only one way to approach American history, Zinn provides a powerful narrative that has influenced a generation of students and was even mentioned by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

By Howard Zinn,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked A People's History of the United States as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE CLASSIC NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"A wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." –Howard Fast

Historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, itis the only volume to tell America's story from the…


Book cover of These Truths: A History of the United States

Louis P. Masur Why did I love this book?

Jill Lepore is a distinguished historian and staff writer for the New Yorker. In this volume, she focuses on the ideals of political equality and civil rights that shaped America. Deeply attuned to the struggles that have shaped the United States, the book offers a sweeping lyrical introduction to American history.

By Jill Lepore,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked These Truths as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths", Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, "on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching", writes Jill Lepore in a ground-breaking investigation into the American past that places truth at the centre of the nation's history.

Telling the story of America, beginning in 1492, These Truths asks whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them. Finding meaning in contradiction, Lepore weaves American history into a tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress…


Book cover of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Louis P. Masur Why did I love this book?

Loewen’s book, updated since its original publication, explodes some of the many myths and falsehoods contained in textbooks on American history. Whether stories of the first Thanksgiving or America and the Vietnam War, the book challenges interpretations presented as facts and facts that are contested. The result is an indispensable argument for trying to get the facts right when discussing American history.

By James W. Loewen,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Lies My Teacher Told Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important - and successful - history books of our time. Having sold over two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new introduction that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems.


Book cover of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Louis P. Masur Why did I love this book?

Howard Ziinn’s work led to a proliferation of Peoples’ Histories, and none are as important as this telling of history from the perspective of America’s indigenous people. Dunbar-Ortiz refocuses attention to the lives of Native Americans and their centuries-long struggle against settler colonialism and manifest destiny. The book is part of a Revisioning History series that includes works on Queer History, Disability History, and Black Women’s History.

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestseller

Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck

Recipient of the American Book Award

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
 
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortizoffers a history…


Book cover of Great Issues in American History, Vol. I: From Settlement to Revolution, 1584-1776

Louis P. Masur Why did I love this book?

There is no better way to understand American history than to read the sources out of which we understand the past and through which historians craft their narratives. This collection was published long ago and it only goes to 1981, but it provides an excellent selection of speeches, decisions, and reports that open a direct path to learning American history.

By Richard Hofstadter, Clarence L. Ver Steeg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Great Issues in American History, Vol. I as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This first volume of Great Issues in American History -- three volumes of documents that cover the history of America from its settlement to the present -- gives us a generous sampling from the major political controversies in the Colonial period. Included are such documents as Richard Hakluyt's "Discourse of Western Planting" (1584), "Letter from Christopher Columbus to the King and Queen of Spain" (undated, probably 1694), "The Third Virginia Charter" (1612), Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (1776) and "The Declaration of independence" (July 4, 1776). Each has an explanatory headnote, and there are brief general introductions that set the selections…


Explore my book 😀

The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

By Louis P. Masur,

Book cover of The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

What is my book about?

In The Sum of Our Dreams, Louis P. Masur offers a sweeping yet compact history of America from its beginnings to the current moment. For general readers seeking an accessible, single-volume account, one that challenges but does not overwhelm, and which distills and connects the major events and figures in the country's past in a single narrative, here is that book.

Evoking Barack Obama's belief that America remains the sum of its dreams, Masur locates the origin of those dreams of freedom, equality, and opportunity and traces their progress chronologically, illuminating the nation's struggle over time to articulate and fulfill their promise. Above all, however, Masur lets the story of America tell itself. Inspired by James Baldwin's observation that American history is longer, larger, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, he expands our notion of that history while identifying its individual threads. 

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Girl of Light

By Elana Gomel,

Book cover of Girl of Light

Elana Gomel Author Of Nine Levels

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into. Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.

Elana's book list on mountain climbing for non-climbers

What is my book about?

A girl of Light in a world of darkness.

In Svetlana's country, it’s a felony to break a mirror. Mirrors are conduits of the Voice, the deity worshiped by all who follow Light. The Voice protects humans of MotherLand from the dangers that beset them on all sides: an invading army of wolf-headed men on their borders and the infectious, ever-evolving, zombie-like Enemy that plagues them at home. When Svetlana meets Andrei, a traumatized and amnesiac soldier from another war, she embarks on a harrowing journey of adventure and self-discovery that leads her to question everything she was taught to…

Girl of Light

By Elana Gomel,

What is this book about?

A voice through Svetlana's mirror guides her beloved MotherLand from behind its' electric tower. The war with Wulfstan is not going as well as Sveta and her parents hope, but Sveta trusts the Voice. When her best friend Tattie goes missing, and Sveta saves Andrei, a soldier in summer uniform in the dead of winter, it takes Sveta through a crucible of Light, doubt, and back to the altar of true belief. Girl of Light unravels Sveta's beloved MotherLand in a war-torn adventure through monsters, missing eyes and broken mirrors.

Girl of Light is a dark fantasy with a Slavic…


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