Based on nicephoras's suggestion, use this primarily for books on American history writ large (anything to do with the New World). I think it might help to have a separate military history book rec thread. A couple of recs to start off in one of my main fields, modern US. Suburban Warriors, Lisa McGirr Profile of the rise of the New Right in Orange County. What distinguishes this book is that she actually went and did extensive oral histories of those involved in the Right from the "Draft Goldwater" movement on, rather than just speculating about their psychological makeup. The portrait that emerges is of a population that is strikingly modern and yet threatened by changes associated with the extreme transience of postwar Sunbelt suburbia. This book differs from many studies of the right by not focusing on leaders but on the movement culture of conservatism, and thus can begin to examine why people living in the most modern place in the nation embraced conservative political philosophies. Origins of the Urban Crisis, Thomas Sugrue Probably the most influential book of the past 10 years in modern American history. You cannot talk seriously about the problems of race and class in urban America without reading this book. A study of postwar Detroit, this book focuses on the structural barriers that created what is now known as the underclass, how housing, employment, and industrial location policies along with white racial ideologies combined to create barriers to African American success in the urban North. One of the big revelations of this book is the violence with which white homeowners defended all-white neighborhoods in the north and how urban pols played to these fears, damaging liberalism far before the riots and the Great Society.
As a white guy from Detroit (no, I'm not Eminem or Kid Rock) I can totally relate. Detroit is definitely, in my travels, the iconic city for urban decay. Sounds like a great book.
Though dated and maybe a piece of history itself, The Strange Career of Jim Crow C. Vann Woodward, is a must read. Richard Kluger's Simple Justice was not exactly history in the academic sense, but the detail of how Brown v. Board came to be is unbeatable.
Have you read Middlesex? It really weaves the history of Detroit intelligently and well into its fictional narrative.
Not a recommendation, but a complaint: I was in the Half-Price Books the other day, and I saw a civil war book called The Most Glorious 4th, about July 4, 1863. Kind of made me a little queasy.... But, I bought this at Border's to make me feel better... Of course, this begs the question: had the cavalry attack on the left flank been a success, how different would American and, for that matter, world history be?
The odd thing is that the CSA's generals were considered much better than the USA's, yet we still took the "L". I'll give the North Grant, just on the basis of the Vicksburg campaign, but after that, who is there? Nobody could touch Lee, and Jackson was perhaps better than him. Had Jackson not been shot by his own man.....
Niall Ferguson. (I disagree with a lot, no, most of his political ideas, but what I've read of his at least made me think.)
One of my favorites is The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester. It covers the US from 1932-1972. Excellent portrayal of the domestic side of US history from Roosevelt taking office through Nixon's first term. A paragraph from the prologue: "Foggy Bottom, the site of the present State Department Building, was a negro slum. The land now occupied by the Pentagon was an agricultural experiment station and thus typical of Washington's outskirts; "large areas close to the very heart of the nation's lawmaking," the Saturday Evening Post observed, "are still in farm hands." The government employed fewer than two thousand foreign service officers. It was an astonishing fact that the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy were all under one mansard roof, across the street from the White House in that ugly, smug mass of balusters, cupolas, and pillared porticoes known today as the Executive Office Building (my note: today known as the Old Executive Office Building). Indeed, after a fire gutted the President's oval office in 1929, he and his staff had moved in with them and no one had felt crowded. There was little pomp. The East Wing of the White House, which would later house military attaches and social secretaries, hadn't been built. The Secret Service had not yet closed West Executive Avenue to the public; it was just another city street, and on a normal day you could park there within an easy stone's throw of the oval office. If you called on the Secretary of State, he sometimes met you at the door. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArtur, on the same floor of the Executive Office Building, was separated from his sole aide by a single slatted door. When the general wanted help he called "Major Eisenhower, " and Ike came scurrying." Great stuff.
Lee and Jackson were great tacticians, but, IMHO, they failed strategically. Going head-to-head with Union armies in classic Napolean fashion was a big gamble to say the least, and it failed. Remember, the Confederacy didn't have to win the war, it only had to not lose.
History is ____________ written by people (sometimes w/ an agenda) who ____________. Fantasies are at least entertaining and harmless, most of the times.
Oh, I disagree with that. As Grant showed, if given enough men, he'd simply grind the confederacy to dust over the corpses of his own men. Which he did. The North had so much more industrial production that they would have overwhelmed the South with men and materiel eventually. Lee's only hope was to force a change of government or to capture vital northern territory. He didn't have the means to fight a defensive war.
It failed because JEB's cavalry were completely exhausted, due to Stuart's inattention to orders the entire week previous. Had it succeeded, it still would have depended upon joint cohesion and timing with Ewell and Longstreet, but I still content the Union center would not have collapsed, on the front or rear. After you finish reading Tom Carhart's book you'll understand.
I read Sears' history of Gettysburg last winter. I loved it..but in full disclosure, I hadn't read any of the other histories about that battle. What are other people's favorite about Gettysburg?
How ironic that the page calls Detroit the best example of "pre-Depression architecture"...because it sure is depressing now!
Sorry to lead in a different direction - Gary Nash's Red, White and Black, The Peoples of Early North America is one of my favorites. All three groups are presented as possessing some degree of agency, and as influencing the other two, while naturally contextualizing it within the dominance of the European.
This campaign in Pennsylvania has had probably more written about it than any other battle, but if you are looking for the best, I recommend: Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863. Shelby Foote. ~ On that subject, Gettysburg residents and Civil War preservationists are desperate to head off a gambling casino which is being pushed by Chance Enterprises close to battlefied. Our CW reenacting unit has given our entire yearly fund to the Civil War Preservation Trust in an effort to stop this casino development at Gettysburg. If you have ever been to Gettysburg, or wish your children to experience Gettysburg, I urge you to rally against this developer. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05163/519825.stm
The best book I read on the Revolutionary War was "George Washington's War-The Saga of the American Revolution," by Robert Leckie. I could not put the book down. Great read and we don't realize how indebted we are to our first president.