28 books like Habeas Corpus in Wartime

This is a groundbreaking analysis of how free Blacks and women fought for racial equality before the Civil War and how that fight shaped the Fourteenth Amendment. Professor Masur focuses on states such as Ohio and Illinois where laws discriminating against blacks were commonplace. The political effort to repeal these laws brought together an unprecedented coalition that included many future leaders of Reconstruction, but the critical point is that the people who were the objects of the discrimination found ways to make their voices heard even though they could not vote.

This is the best book ever written about constitutions. Bagehot was a journalist and brought a common-sense take to constitutional history that lawyers often lack. He focuses on how the Victorian Constitution and how it evolved from England’s history, but also compares that set of customs and institutions to the American Constitution in the aftermath of the Civil War. It’s a quick read that will really get you thinking.  

Professor Larson is America’s leading expert on treason and wrote this book for non-lawyers. He starts with treason in England, discusses the views of the Founding Fathers, and then goes through many entertaining treason cases or examples. Some involve familiar historical names like Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and Jefferson Davis. Others involve notorious celebrities such as Tokyo Rose and Jane Fonda. A fun book on a serious subject. 

For all the drama of the Philadelphia Convention, it would have been an empty exercise had the American people not ratified the charter that it produced. Pauline Maier’s Ratification tells the surprisingly dramatic story of the state-by-state ratification process, one that encompasses not only the famous figures of the period but also everyday citizens. Maier’s book on the Declaration of Independence, American Scripture, is also excellent.

Mass formation psychosis causes people to lose contact with reality. Case-in-point: the apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln. The author presents a cogent case against the 16th president’s policies of “internal improvements,” high tariffs, and a national central bank (the failed and rejected Hamiltonian policies of the Whig party and Henry Clay). Lincoln insisted upon instituting mercantilism—a strong central government that dispenses special privileges to wealthy and influential corporations, who then support the central government, contravening the Constitution. In a reality stranger than fiction, he killed an estimated 620,000-750,000 Americans in a war upon the Southern states and their right to secede against tariff tyranny; disabled the sovereignty of the states; and did away with habeas corpus by arresting any who objected to his policies, setting precedents that have gutted an intimidated America ever since.

This is a fast-paced mystery with a fun twist on the themes of discovered powers and secret magical communities.

While at work in a funeral home, Cassie Black discovers she is somehow bringing the dead to life.

In this world, the undead are charming and magic is replenished by cake, which is just loads of fun to imagine (and makes me want to go bake something in hopes it might unlock my own secret powers).

I really enjoyed the way this story juxtaposes light and dark themes, staying pretty amusing throughout while exploring some painful topics like childhood trauma without traumatizing the reader.

The main character becomes accidentally involved in international intrigue when he breaks into a house formerly owned by his father, which has become a government establishment. He becomes the target of both the British security services and the Russians, who believe he knows more than he does about the secret work carried on at the establishment. The book deals with his adventures and means of evading both Moscow and MI5.

I like and recommend this book, and others by this author, because of the theme of an ordinary individual being drawn into intention intrigue and finding his life in danger, together with what he does to evade capture both by the enemy and the police. Household also wrote his books with a cynical humour at times which I find absorbing.

Lady Jane Grey is an enticing character. Famous as a nine-day-queen, her story is a poignant segment of the brutal succession battle that tore the English crown apart for too many years. I’ve tended to see her as a tiny, tragic protestant foreshadowing of the far more ruthless Elizabeth to come and not thought much more about her, but this novel really brought her awful story to life. Told from the perspective of a fictional girl employed as Jane’s companion in her days in the Tower of London, it gives us a fresh and very real insight into her fate. A light but poignant read, this will draw you into another world and carry you through to the inevitably sad sending.

Lace-making and swordsmanship, and a deadly personal feud; swashbuckling hist-fic with a well-researched core about cultural conflict in 17th century Spain. The story opens in London, in 1609, then moves to Seville, where a young woman tries to reclaim her inheritance from a man devoted solely to fencing and himself. I married into a traditional Spanish family; I know Seville. Deborah Swift captures the summer heat and dust, and the pervading sensation that violence is just one stone's throw away in a page-turning novel that made me think more deeply about Moorish Andalucía, what happened in the past here – and is still happening. Quality fiction.

I love this book because it gives us the stories of two intelligent young women caught up in the turmoil of the civil war, told in their own words. Both belonged to royalist families, and they endured the hardships and dangers that came from being on the losing side.

Halkett’s vivid memoir focuses on her early life as a spirited young woman who engaged in forbidden and risky romantic liaisons. She even joined one lover in a hazardous plot that enabled the king’s younger son (the future James II) to escape from the Tower of London. It reads like the storyline of a historical novel!