68 books like Libra

In Princess a reader feels the fears, panic, and illusions in post-World War I Germany that led to the rise of Hitler and World War II. A young German-speaking American, in love with the daughter of a Jewish banking family, witnesses the explosive growth of racist nationalism, blaming Jews for war loss and economic disaster, and how a youth socially related to that family is turned into a furious, murderous Nazi. We also glimpse young Bertolt Brecht, singing scathing critiques of the nationalists, and a Bohemian artist much like George Grosz, representing the left opposition. The book helped me understand how a movement for the exact opposite of the Paris Commune’s ideals of “Freedom, equality, and fraternity,” could develop among frightened and ignorant people, a warning for all of us.

Moon Brow describes the social tensions between ideals of freedom, religion, and authoritarianism that provoked Iran’s 1978 revolution, but only increased under Islamic rule. Amir, a formerly rich, wild playboy, flogged by the morality police after a drunken orgy, joins the army to escape shame and find meaning for his life in the brutal and futile 10-year war against Iraq. Commanding artillery in the borderland, he encounters the mysterious, sprite-like woman he calls “Moon Brow,” who, after an Iraqi shell maims him, becomes a magical force in his PTSD hallucinations. Her true identity will come as a rebuke for his comparatively pointless existence, while his sister’s spurning of her rich, pretentious suitor will be another rebuke, of his machismo. A brilliant evocation of the illusions that sustain violence.

Gate of the Sun is one of the most acclaimed novels about the so-called “question of Palestine.”

Although fictional, it hews closely to real life; the author Elias Khoury, a Lebanese writer, was informed by the extensive time he spent talking to Palestinian refugees in various camps. The book is set in Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon and has an epic scope, weaving together different characters’ experiences of displacement and exile and spanning six decades from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Along the way, we engage with some of the most pivotal moments in recent Palestinian history: the original displacement of 1948 (known as the Nakba); the Arab defeat of 1967; the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila camps. Epic in every sense.

This is a vivid reimagining of the Stalinist plot to assassinate Leon Trotsky, ultimately successful in 1940, and its repercussions in the Communist world. Iván, a frustrated Cuban writer, discovers this story, suppressed in Cuba, when he meets an aged foreigner walking his Russian greyhounds. Sensing a mystery like Raymond Chandler’s The Man Who Liked Dogs, Iván teases information from the man, who turns out to be Ramón Mercader (b. Barcelona, 1913), Trotsky’s assassin.

We also follow Trotsky’s precarious exile in Turkey, Europe, and finally Mexico, his marital and other conflicts and his inability to protect his sons and ultimately himself from murder—and how Mercader, a fervent Communist idealist, is turned by his Stalinist masters into the robot-like agent programed to infiltrate Trotsky’s circle and kill him.

There are numerous books that seek to prove Oswald was the lone assassin, and Mailer’s is probably the most open-minded and convincing one. Rather than descend into name-calling against authors of more conspiratorial works, Mailer sticks to the topic of Oswald’s mysterious time in Russia. Based on interviews with former acquaintances and research gathered from Russia, the book uncovers fresh details about Oswald’s time there. While Mailer theorized that Oswald executed Kennedy to shake up the world and cement his place in history, he leaves the door open, if just ever so slighty, to other potential gunmen in Dallas.

Award-winning novelist Thomas Mallon explores the serendipitous world of Ruth Paine, the Quaker who befriended Lee and Marina Oswald in the fateful months leading up to the assassination. In this fast-paced nonfition read, Mallon takes the reader through the tumultuous nine months before the assassination and then along for the often-bizarre years following in which Paine’s largesse is interpreted and twisted by conspiracy theorists to somehow accuse her of being in the middle of a giant plot against Kennedy. 

Okay, this might seem like a bit of a strange choice to be included in a list of best “ripped from the headlines” crime novels, but it really isn’t. I mean, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, is probably the most famous big news headline of our times. 

I was totally blown away by King’s brilliant concept of using that legendary date in history to write this fascinating thriller about what “might have been” if someone could somehow go back in time and stop it from ever happening.

Like the other four books on my list, King takes a major real-life news story and uses it to create a fascinating work of fiction. I just love books like this!  

Written in a deeply personal, even spiritual manner that incorporates a vast amount of research, this book moved Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to visit the assassination site in Dallas for the first time more than four decades after the tragedy. Douglass particularly investigates Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement with American intelligence agencies and writes in a highly readable style that appeals to both average readers and researchers. He provides perspective on not just how Kennedy was killed, but why, as well as why the assassination is important to continue to research to this day.

With a healthy dose of gallows humour, Sarah Vowell explores glorious conundrums of American history, politics, and culture. As such, the book provoked me to appreciate how visiting sites of the significant dead has long been in the touristic imagination. The book takes you on a journey – part history lesson, part travelogue – through the black spots of American political violence. Through a bizarre road trip to places where American politicians met a bloody end, I found Vowell’s own thoughts on the American character both witty and quirky. I also love how she explodes myths and, consequently, exposes a profound level of hypocrisy in the quest for (American) political and cultural advantage.  

I find few dramas in history more intriguing than that of Abraham Lincoln, and it's sobering to realize just how close we came to missing his entire second act.

The so-called Baltimore Plot – a conspiracy to assassinate the newly elected president while en route to his first inauguration – has been written about before, but never as vividly and novelistically as in Daniel Stashower's The Hour of Peril. In telling this riveting story, Stashower brings into the spotlight a little-known figure named Kate Warne, perhaps the country's first female private detective.

Tough-minded and self-possessed beyond her years, Warne assists the celebrated Allan Pinkerton in a tense, nerve-racking effort to spirit the President-elect safely to Washington DC – and into arguably the most important role in American history.