Author: Tim Graczewski
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William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1995) by Alan Taylor
“William Cooper’s Town” isn’t a great book – it’s three great books. As the author, Alan Taylor, spells out in the introduction, “‘William Cooper’s Town’ is a hybrid of three usually distinct genres: biography, social history, and literary analysis.” The first is a fascinating biography of an eighteenth century social climber and speculator, William Cooper.…
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Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2003) by William Taubman
Nikita Khushchev was an unlikely giant of the twentieth century. His improbable decades-long march to supreme leadership of a world girdling communist empire was matched only by his improbably well-orchestrated fall from power in 1964. The riddle that Tubman seeks to unwrap in this excellent single-volume biography is: How exactly did someone like Khrushchev, this…
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Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (2012) by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
I am a Navy reservist and served as one of the primary economic development officers at NATO’s Regional Command – South headquarters in Kandahar from September 2009 to September 2010. Thus it was with more than passing interest that I read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s recent journalistic expose, “Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan,”…
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The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974) by Bernard Bailyn
Few people remember the name Thomas Hutchinson today, but he was once the most hated man in America. And, if Bernard Bailyn, one of the most distinguished historians of revolutionary America, is to be believed, he is also one of the most misunderstood and wrongfully maligned men in American history. Several notable pieces seek to…
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Paul Revere’s Ride (1994) by David Hackett Fischer
David Hackett Fischer writes delightful books. He expertly combines the breezy readability of a master popular historian with the professional craftsmanship and deep primary research of a top rate academic. The end result is a narrative that is at once a dazzling adventure tale and a groundbreaking piece of historiography. The adventure tale aspect of…
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1776 (2007) by David McCullough
“The Spirit of ’76” has many positive connotations in contemporary America: liberty, freedom, and bravery foremost among them. Archibald Willard’s 19th century painting of the same name – depicting three ragged but steely-eyed and steadily advancing American soldiers…a fifer, a drummer and a flag bearer – remains an enduring symbol of national pride and power.…
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King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) by Adam Hochschild
A century before the campaign to support Darfur and the anti-Apartheid struggle of the 1980s there was the Congo, an international humanitarian movement propelled by celebrity endorsements (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain) and stoked by graphic images of the atrocities that happened there, which horrified and outraged and inspired action. Adam Hochschild tells…
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Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) by David Hackett Fischer
David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a stunning academic achievement. Each of the four migrations Fischer examines receives book-length treatment and authoritative analysis. It’s remarkable to discover just how distinct each of these “great migrations” was—and how each has left a lasting cultural imprint on its respective geographic region long…
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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee
My mother-in-law passed away this year after a long and courageous battle with uterine cancer. I picked up this Pultizer-prize winner in an attempt to educate myself as she went through a battery of surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy. “The Emperor of All Maladies” is a truly remarkable book, charting the course of humanity’s battle with…
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