Why am I passionate about this?

In a family of readers, my older sister was fascinated by the American Revolution, so I became a reader under that influence, gulping down biographies for kids. I trained as an academic historian but never really wanted to write academic history. Instead, I wanted to bottle that what-if-felt-like magic that I'd felt when I read those books as a kid. I became a journalist but still felt the pull of the past. So I wound up in that in-between slice of journalists who try to write history for readers like me, more interested in people than in complex arguments about historical cause and effect. 


I wrote...

The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

By James Tobin,

Book cover of The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

What is my book about?

My book is the story of the greatest comeback in American political history, an intimate saga long buried in half-truth…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

James Tobin Why did I love this book?

I finished this book with the feeling that I had walked the roads and ridden the rails of the great migration of Black Americans out of the South in the decades after World War I.

I grew up as a white kid in the suburbs of Detroit, a city profoundly shaped by that migration. Yet I had never really understood that history—and certainly never felt it deeply—until I got to know Wilkerson's remarkable main characters: three real people who represented the stories of millions.

By Isabel Wilkerson,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Warmth of Other Suns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official…


Book cover of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

James Tobin Why did I love this book?

When I read this book as a student, I knew exactly the kind of book I would want to write if I ever got the chance—a book that would bring people of the past to life as Edmund Morris had with T.R. The author first imagined the work as a screenplay, and it shows on every page.

The chapters unfold like scenes in a great, ambitious movie. Roosevelt is set free from his cartoonish reputation and emerges as a complex, brilliant, protean figure, fascinating in each stage of his extraordinary life.

By Edmund Morris,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

“A towering biography . . . a brilliant chronicle.”—Time

This classic biography is the story of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age forty-two to become the youngest President in history.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize,…


Book cover of What It Takes: The Way to the White House

James Tobin Why did I love this book?

For my money, this book is the best work of journalism—certainly of political journalism—of its time, meaning the last half-century.

Six politicians, including two presidents—the first George Bush, and Joe Biden—emerge not as mere ambitious strivers but as tragic heroes, each as much the victim as the master of America's predatory political culture. I felt I knew each of them and what they'd been through as intimately as if I'd been their brother.

By Richard Ben Cramer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked What It Takes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Quite possibly the finest book on presidential politics ever written, combining meticulous reporting and compelling, at times soaringly lyrical, prose." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race -- and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist…


Book cover of King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

James Tobin Why did I love this book?

This book gave me a world I'd barely known about, a villain who personified evil and a cast of characters from the famous (but murderous) explorer Henry Morton Stanley to uncelebrated people of conscience who fought Leopold's monstrous scheme.

So it's a fabulous story, but along the way, it also taught me a great deal about the history of Africa, a continent about which we Americans know so little.

By Adam Hochschild,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked King Leopold's Ghost as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, King Leopold's Ghost is the true and haunting account of Leopold's brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver.

In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce…


Book cover of The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966

James Tobin Why did I love this book?

Before I picked up this book, I would have told you that West Point cadets were the last kind of people I'd care to read about, which just goes to show how shallow stereotypes can be.

Atkinson's deep research and vivid storytelling are enthralling. I finished the book with an emotional comprehension of the war in Vietnam that I had never had before.

By Rick Atkinson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Long Gray Line as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestseller about West Point's Class of 1966, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Rick Atkinson.

"A story of epic proportions [and] an awesome feat of biographical reconstruction."―The Boston Globe

A classic of its kind, The Long Gray Line is the twenty-five-year saga of the West Point class of 1966. With a novelist's eye for detail, Rick Atkinson (author of the Liberation Trilogy) illuminates this powerful story through the lives of three classmates and the women they loved―from the boisterous cadet years, to the fires of Vietnam, to the hard peace and internal struggles that followed the…


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The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

By James Tobin,

Book cover of The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

What is my book about?

My book is the story of the greatest comeback in American political history, an intimate saga long buried in half-truth and myth—Franklin Roosevelt's ten-year climb from paralysis to the White House.

The book reveals the twisted chain of accidents that left FDR paralyzed, how polio changed the Roosevelts' troubled marriage into a political partnership, and how his greatest victory was not over polio itself but over the ancient stigma attached to the disabled. The reader will suspect that FDR became president not so much in spite of polio but because of it.

Book cover of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Book cover of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Book cover of What It Takes: The Way to the White House

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Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

By Shawn Jennings,

Book cover of Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

Shawn Jennings Author Of Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Shawn's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Can there be life after a brainstem stroke?

After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience. 

With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…

Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

By Shawn Jennings,

What is this book about?

Can there be life after a brainstem stroke?

After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.

With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…


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Interested in the Great Migration, Teddy Roosevelt, and soldiers?

Teddy Roosevelt 46 books
Soldiers 113 books