It’s time again for my annual list of my ten favorite reads from the past year. This year, instead of ranking them, I’m just going to give a list of books I enjoyed reading in the past year and would commend to you.
 
– Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War by S. C. Gwynne
With strong prose and a reliance on first-hand sources, Gwynne walks the reader through the last desperate year of the the Confederacy’s existence and tells the story of the men; Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, who brought it crashing down. This book is worth reading just first the powerful picture it paints of Lincoln’s walk through the newly captured Richmond.
 
– The Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades by Roger Crowley
There is in my opinion no finer modern pop-historian than Roger Crowley. In his latest work Crowley, recounts end of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, what was in many ways the final act of the crusades. Crowley’s story-telling is as usual, first rate, and this is a great place to start for anyone interested in the Crusades and the history of the Holy Land.
 
– Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts
There are few other figures whose life shaped the 20th century like that of Winston Churchill. In this new biography, Roberts draws from Churchill’s own writings and from the writings of friends and contemporaries to draw a very personal picture of this monumental life.
 
– Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
Cal Newport is a computer science professor who has written several books about doing serious work in our constantly interrupting digital world. I’ve found many of his recommendations to be helpful for pushing back against the digital noise in my life.
 
– One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs
There was no moment when humanity has been closer to a nuclear exchange between superpowers than during the 12 days in October 1962 that have become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Relying on recently declassified documents and newly released memoirs, Dobbs unwinds the tale from American, Russian, and Cuban perspectives winding the tales together to create a timeline of the events leading up to and back from the brink.
 
– My Father Left me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home by Michael Brendan Dougherty
In this delightful (and short) work, Michael Brendan Dougherty tells the story of his complicated relationship with the land of his heritage and it is a beautiful exploration of what it means to be rooted in a place.
 
– Hoover: and Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte
The only thing most Americans remember about Hoover is that he was president when the Great Depression started. This does a a great disservice to an incredible man. Herbert Hoover was a rags to riches story, a brilliant engineer and a hero on two continents for saving millions of lives before he ever considered running for the presidency, he was one of the longest lived ex-presidents after his defeat and lived to become the “Grand Old Man” of the resurgent GOP. This work is a great introduction to his life.
 
– Khrushchev: A Career by Edward Crankshaw
Nikita Khrushchev was born a peasant in a 19th century Ukraine that was still very medieval. He would rise through the high-stakes world of Soviet politics to become the leader of a nuclear superpower and has the distinction of being the only soviet leader looked on favorably by the peoples he governed and was the only pre-Gorbachev Soviet leader to retire peacefully. The English writer Edward Crankshaw who was a contemporary of Khrushchev writes a solid telling of what we know of his life.
 
– Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney
In this significant work, Washington Examiner editor Tim Carney travels the length and breadth of America and asks the question “why are so many people and communities struggling?” The answer he sees with shocking regularity has far less to do with economic conditions and everything to do with the decay of social connections and institutions. Carney makes the case that this decay isn’t fixed by new government programs and builds a framework for facing the challenges facing by modern America.
 
– Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr by Ron Chernow
The name Rockefeller is synonymous with wealth in the United States. In Titan, biographer Ron Chernow examines complex life and legacy of a man who spent the first half of his life building the largest business empire the world had ever seen and the second half of his life defining modern philanthropy.

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