Here are 100 books that Hail to the Chiefs fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a kid, I was addicted to almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases. I liked collecting facts and snooping around other people’s lives, and my family, including extended family, totally indulged me by gifting me their history or factoid book collections. I remember one set my Grandma Sally gave me: Time Library of Curious and Unusual Facts. I cannot find the complete set anywhere these days, but it’s where I learned about spontaneous combustion and wealthy hoarders. Who wouldn’t want to know that stuff!
I love this book because it’s a collection of mini-biographies of contemporary writers, musicians, and artists from the 20th century, some I’d heard of and some I hadn’t, but they’re all weird.
Like, as I’m writing this, I just flipped to a random page and there’s a section on Michael Mann, who once owned the apartment I’m writing this in. And then I flip a little more and get five succinct and totally bizarre pages about Mao.
This international bestseller is an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece-the perfect introduction to the very core of Western humanism. Clive James rescues, or occasionally destroys, the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.
As a kid, I was addicted to almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases. I liked collecting facts and snooping around other people’s lives, and my family, including extended family, totally indulged me by gifting me their history or factoid book collections. I remember one set my Grandma Sally gave me: Time Library of Curious and Unusual Facts. I cannot find the complete set anywhere these days, but it’s where I learned about spontaneous combustion and wealthy hoarders. Who wouldn’t want to know that stuff!
My friend gave me this book during a pretty bad depressive episode I was having, and you know what? That friend really gets me!
It totally helped me feel less alone. I was surprised to learn that some suicide notes are really mean, and some are totally silly. I dunno; the book soothes me like the Wiki list of inventors killed by their inventions.
A collection of suicide notes accompanied by a brief description of who the individual was, what their note meant, and the circumstances which led up to their suicide
As a kid, I was addicted to almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases. I liked collecting facts and snooping around other people’s lives, and my family, including extended family, totally indulged me by gifting me their history or factoid book collections. I remember one set my Grandma Sally gave me: Time Library of Curious and Unusual Facts. I cannot find the complete set anywhere these days, but it’s where I learned about spontaneous combustion and wealthy hoarders. Who wouldn’t want to know that stuff!
OMG, ok, so this book is just court transcripts from really huge Supreme Court cases and the opinions on those cases. That’s it! And it’s just absolutely bananas.
I love reading transcripts of real people talking about heavy shit. Before I found this book I was under the mistaken impression that those materials weren’t made public, but I guess I was wrong.
Until The New Press first published May It Please the Court in 1993, few Americans knew that every case argued before the Supreme Court since 1955 had been recorded. The original book-and-tape set was a revelation to readers and reviewers, quickly becoming a bestseller and garnering praise across the nation.
May It Please the Court includes both live recordings and transcripts of oral arguments in twenty-three of the most significant cases argued before the Supreme Court in the second half of the twentiethcentury. This edition makes the recordings available on an MP3 audio CD. Through the voices of some of…
As a kid, I was addicted to almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases. I liked collecting facts and snooping around other people’s lives, and my family, including extended family, totally indulged me by gifting me their history or factoid book collections. I remember one set my Grandma Sally gave me: Time Library of Curious and Unusual Facts. I cannot find the complete set anywhere these days, but it’s where I learned about spontaneous combustion and wealthy hoarders. Who wouldn’t want to know that stuff!
I think this is the book I’ve had the longest out of the five I’m recommending, and I’m on my fifth copy because I either destroy them from overuse or give them away.
There are entries on people, but also on diseases and extinct animals, and my favorite section, dead sex practices. Ooh la la.
My mother wanted me to be a physician, but as a child I was very squeamish about human biology and knew that wasn't for me. In college I was exposed to economics and found it, and the policy debates about national health insurance, fascinating. So, maybe with my mother’s wishes in the back of my mind, I became a health economist. I was privileged to direct a large randomized trial called the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, which varied the cost of medical care to families. This project lasted more than a decade and got me so deep into the economics of health and medical care that I became a professor of health policy and management.
In individual chapters, this book describes every American President’s approach to health policy from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush (it omits Gerald Ford).
It describes their personal and familial interactions with health and medical care as well as their foibles and habits. It is a fascinating read, especially for those of an age who personally lived through some of these Presidents.
Even the most powerful men in the world are human - they get sick, take dubious drugs, drink too much, contemplate suicide, fret about ailing parents, and bury people they love. Young Richard Nixon watched two brothers die of tuberculosis, even while doctors monitored a suspicious shadow on his own lungs. John Kennedy received last rites four times as an adult, and Lyndon Johnson suffered a 'belly buster' of a heart attack. David Blumenthal and James A. Morone explore how modern presidents have wrestled with their own mortality - and how they have taken this most human experience to heart…
I became interested in Andrew Jackson as an undergraduate student who worked at his Nashville plantation, The Hermitage. Nearly thirty years later, I am still fascinated by Old Hickory. We wouldn’t be friends, and I wouldn’t vote for him, but I consider him essential to understanding the United States’ development between his ascension as a national hero during the War of 1812 and his death in 1845. That we still argue about Jackson’s role as a symbol both of patriotism and of genocide speaks to his enduring significance to the national conversation about what the United States has represented and continues to represent.
Instead of depicting Jackson as a western frontiersman—an interpretation that is no longer tenable given existing scholarship—Booraem situates Jackson within the geographical context of the Carolinas, where he was born and raised. He also destroys many of the myths about Jackson’s childhood, some of which continue to circulate among serious historians even today. No one has done a better job of tracing Jackson’s roots.
Drawing on dozens of new sources, celebrated historical biographer Hendrik Booraem illuminates the adventurous, fighting life of the father of the Democratic party. Beginning with the dramatic story of the Jackson-Crawford clan's immigration from Ireland and culminating with Jackson's entrance into the legal world, Young Hickory brings Andrew Jackson into sharp focus by examining the events that made him.
I have been interested in history and in particular military history for my entire life. Since 2006 I have been a George Washington interpreter. I portray the great man in first person live presentations and in documentary film. I have devoted a great deal of time in study of him. As a result of my studies of Washington, I felt compelled to write a book about him. I wanted to capture aspects of him not covered in most books or in film. Four of the books I reviewed involve George Washington.
In Kevin J. Hayes's book, we learn what Washington's reading habits were.For instance, it is known that he read the classic Gulliver’s Travels.How could that be known you might ask?Hayes got access to the original books in Washington’s library.He found a pattern.Looking through the books page by page he found editorial marks and corrections.Washington was a natural editor.Looking through Gulliver’s Travels Hayes found the tell-tale editorial marks, therefor he knew Washington had read it.
It is known from Washington’s writings that he owned many military textbooks.During the Revolution he asked the man managing Mount Vernon to inventory the books in the library.None of the military books were listed, therefor Washington traveled with them in the campaign.
Not surprisingly there are many books on agriculture.But one of the things I found of interest was that his favorite type of leisure…
When it comes to the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton are generally considered the great minds of early America. George Washington, instead, is toasted with accolades regarding his solid common sense and strength in battle. Indeed, John Adams once snobbishly dismissed him as "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation." Yet Adams, as well as the majority of the men who knew Washington in his life, were unaware of his singular devotion to self-improvement.
Based on a comprehensive amount of research at the Library of Congress, the collections at Mount Vernon, and rare book…
I was a classroom teacher for 15 years who transitioned to writing children’s books. Starting with picture books, I now write graphic novels. My target audience is 2nd-5th graders and they really get my wacky sense of humor. My passion for silly comedy, from Abbott and Costello to the Marx Brothers, started at an early age and infuses my mission to help reluctant readers become enthusiastic and proficient readers. I feel strongly about this goal because I was once a reluctant reader and I can appreciate what these kids might be going through.
Do you remember when learning about American history was mostly dry and boring?
I do…but that’s not the case anymore. This fact-based graphic-novel series of biographies make Washington and other Presidents come alive with wacky, slapstick humor that’s just right for middle-grade kids!
The true events of George Washington’s tumultuous and heroic life – from birth to death – are hilariously presented in jump-off-the-page illustrations and told through irreverent dialogue and silly jokes. All the big battles are here, but there’s no list of endless names and dates.
The father of our country was admirable and flawed, after all he was a slaveholder, but learning about him has never been more interesting.
"A delightful, educational spin on history-and plenty of jokes," said School Library Journal.
"Sheer joy," praised Booklist in a starred review.
Finalist for the 2019 Excellence in Graphic Literature Award in Middle Grade Nonfiction
U.S. history comes to life like never before in this full-color graphic novel! We all know that George Washington was our first President and a hero of the American Revolution. But did you also know that he didn't want to be president, never thought he would fight in a war, and had teeth so bad that he hated to smile?
Over the last eight years, I’ve conducted as many onstage interviews with leading presidential historians as anyone else in the country. To prepare for them, I read presidential biographies thoroughly and constantly. The fact that my work has been strongly endorsed by people in presidential history circles with the stature of Ken Burns, David McCullough, James Baker, Jon Meacham, and Douglas Brinkley should be a strong indication that my opinion about this subject matters.
It’s the best cradle-to-grave biography of Lincoln, quite an accomplishment, given that over 16,000 books have been written on him. The book goes deep on a special interest I have in our 16th president: his long and winding faith journey. White’s passion for his subject serves to energize the reader.
“If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”—USA Today
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD
Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as…
A French emperor, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III who dreamed of an empire in Latin America and invaded Mexico; an Austrian aristocrat, the Habsburg Ferdinand Maximilian, ruling Mexico as a monarchy; Benito Juárez, who was born into an impoverished Mexican village but later became president, defying and defeating these European emperors. These are the extraordinary characters and events that led me to fall in love with Mexico’s history, and write my book, The Last Emperor of Mexico.
Mexican history is full of abrupt reversals. The life of Santa Anna, many times president and dictator of Mexico, is a wonderful example. Infamous in the United States for the Battle of the Alamo, where he gave no quarter to the defenders fighting for Texan independence, the general was vilified in Mexico for the far more heinous crime of losing Texas, once Mexican territory.
Two years later, his political career over, he lost his leg repelling French marines who were trying to seize the port of Veracruz. Santa Anna was now the saviour of Mexico, returning to power in 1841 and, for good measure, having his amputated leg buried with full military honours. Soon, however, he was forced to limp from office while an angry mob exhumed the leg, dragging it round Mexico City to humiliate their former leader. Yet this was far from the last time he held power.…
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1794-1876) is one of the most famous, and infamous, figures in Mexican history. Six times the country's president, he is consistently depicted as a traitor, a turncoat, and a tyrant-the exclusive cause of all of Mexico's misfortunes following the country's independence from Spain. He is also, as this biography makes clear, grossly misrepresented. Drawing on seventeen years of research into the politics of independent Mexico, Will Fowler provides a revised picture of Santa Anna's life, with new insights into his activities in his bailiwick of Veracruz and in his numerous military engagements. The Santa Anna…
