Book reviews and excerpts from exceptional books about history, current affairs and religion
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Recommended books found: 451
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The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
by Hampton Sides
Hardcover: Apr 2024
Paperback: May 2025
From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this ...
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The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America
by Mark Whitaker
Hardcover: May 2025
Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the first major study of Malcolm X's influence in the sixty years since his assassination, exploring his enduring impact on culture, politics, and civil rights.
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Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown
by Candace Fleming
Hardcover: Apr 2025
How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious ...
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Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
by Sophie Gilbert
Hardcover: Apr 2025
From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of early aughts pop culture.
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Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis
by Suzanne Cope
Hardcover: Apr 2025
The gripping, true, and untold history of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during World War II, told through the stories of four spectacularly courageous women fighters.
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America, América: A New History of the New World
by Greg Grandin
Hardcover: Apr 2025
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.
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Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words
by Anne Curzan
Hardcover: Mar 2024
Paperback: Mar 2025
A kinder, funner usage guide to the ever-changing English language and a useful tool for both the grammar stickler and the more colloquial user of English, from linguist and veteran professor Anne Curzan
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Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age
by Leah Sottile
Hardcover: Mar 2025
An investigation of the New Age movement in America that aims to understand its appeal to women and the self-proclaimed prophetesses, like Love Has Won's Amy Carlson, who've created kingdoms for themselves within it.
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Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights
by Ashley Hope Pérez
Hardcover: Mar 2025
A dazzling YA anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators.
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The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
by David Grann
Hardcover: Apr 2023
Paperback: Feb 2025
Winner: BookBrowse Nonfiction Award 2023
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The ...
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Bloodbath Nation
by Paul Auster
Hardcover: Jan 2023
Paperback: Feb 2025
An intimate and powerful rumination on American gun violence by Paul Auster, one of our greatest living writers and "genuine American original" (The Boston Globe), in an unforgettable collaboration with photographer Spencer Ostrander
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The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History
by Karen Valby
Hardcover: Apr 2024
Paperback: Feb 2025
The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now.
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Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor
by Ronald Drabkin
Hardcover: Feb 2024
Paperback: Feb 2025
In the spirit of Ben Macintyre's greatest spy nonfiction, the truly unbelievable and untold story of Frederick Rutland—a debonair British WWI hero, flying ace, fixture of Los Angeles society, and friend of Golden Age Hollywood stars—who ...
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Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis
by Tao Leigh Goffe
Hardcover: Jan 2025
A groundbreaking investigation of the Caribbean as both an idyll in the American imagination and a dark laboratory of Western experimentation, revealing secrets to racial and environmental progress that impact how we live today.
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Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland
by Scott Shane
Hardcover: Sep 2023
Paperback: Dec 2024
A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane....
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Around the World in Eighty Games: From Tarot to Tic-Tac-Toe, Catan to Chutes and Ladders, a Mathematician Unlocks the Secrets of the World's Greatest Games
by Marcus du Sautoy
Hardcover: Nov 2023
Paperback: Nov 2024
An award-winning mathematician explores the math behind the games we love and why we love to play them.
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On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe
by Caroline Dodds Pennock
Hardcover: Jan 2023
Paperback: Oct 2024
A landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492
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The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hardcover: Oct 2024
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don't—shape our realities.
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The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
by Wright Thompson
Hardcover: Sep 2024
A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long.
The reviewer of each book decides which categories it belongs in - but we're only human, mistakes happen. If you see a book that you think is in the wrong place, tell us!
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