Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (109 page)

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Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. The historian’s re-creation of the Pacific fighting in which he was a participant as a U.S. Marine.

McCullough, David.
Truman.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the man who had to replace FDR and who dropped the first atomic bombs.

McElvaine, Robert S.
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941.
New York: Times Books, 1993. A sweeping history of the era.

Mencken, H. L.
A Choice of Days.
New York: Vintage, 1980. This is a collection of pieces from three autobiographical works by the American journalist and social critic.

Morgan, Ted.
FDR: A Biography.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. A sound and accessible one-volume biography.

Persico, Joseph E.
Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage.
New York: Random House, 2001. Richly detailed history of FDR’s use of spies; addresses many intriguing questions and convincingly argues that FDR did not “allow” Pearl Harbor.

Powers, Richard Gid.
Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover.
New York: Free Press, 1987. A solid and unbiased account of the life of one of America’s most powerful men, the director of the FBI.

Rhodes, Richard.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an epic account of the politics and people behind the creation of the first atomic bombs and the dropping of those bombs on Japan.

Shlaes, Amity.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.
New York: HarperCollins, 2008. A conservative economics writer’s skeptical view of why the intervention of the New Deal did not “tame” the Great Depression.

Stinnett, Robert.
Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Using newly declassified documents, the author argues that the Japanese attack plans were known and that America’s leaders deliberately wished to push Japan into war, at the cost of thousands of American lives.

Taylor, A. J. P.
The War Lords.
New York: Penguin, 1976. A collection of lectures given by a prominent British historian, this book offers neat capsule biographies of the five men who conducted World War II: Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt.

Terkel, Studs.
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.
New York: Pantheon, 1970. Life in the worst years of the Depression, as told to the journalist.

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“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II.
New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Toland, John.
Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire.
New York: Random House, 1970. Monumental Pulitzer Prize–winning account of Japan’s rise and the Pacific War, from the invasion of Manchuria to the atomic bombings that ended the war.

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Adolf Hitler.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. A best-selling life of Hitler by a popular historian.

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Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982. Widely admired and well-documented account of the controversial attack.

Watt, Donald Cameron.
How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War.
New York: Pantheon, 1989.

Wyden, Peter.
Day One: Before Hiroshima and After.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

CHAPTER 7. COMMIES, CONTAINMENT, AND COLD WAR

Blair, Clay.
The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953.
New York: Times Books, 1987.

Brady, James.
The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea.
New York: Crown, 1990. A well-known journalist’s vivid memoir of the Korean War, the often overlooked conflict in which as many American soldiers died in a little more than three years as in all of the Vietnam era.

Caute, David.
The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. Excellent history of the anticommunist fears.

Garrow, David J.
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
New York: Morrow, 1986. A balanced and honest award-winning biography of the civil rights leader and the movement he led.

Halberstam, David.
The Fifties.
New York: Villard, 1993. A deft assessment of the social and historical currents in postwar America.

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The Children.
New York: Random House, 1998. A social history of the civil rights movement, focusing on many of the lesser-known heroes of the era.

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The Coldest War: America and the Korean War.
New York: Hyperion, 2007. A masterful narrative history of the “hidden war” in recent American history.

Kluger, Richard.
Simple Justice: The History of
Brown v. Board of Education
and Black America’s Struggle for Equality.
New York: Knopf, 1976. Standard scholarly work on this subject.

Miller, Merle.
Plain Speaking.
New York: Putnam, 1974. This “oral history” of Harry S Truman presents a vivid picture of the president, who has grown in stature as time has passed.

Newhouse, John.
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.
New York: Knopf, 1988. A companion to the PBS television series detailing the history of nuclear arms and superpower rivalries.

Oakley, J. Ronald.
God’s Country: America in the Fifties.
New York: Dembner Books, 1986. Nice social history of the decade, presenting a view that not all was well in this “happier, simpler time.”

Tanenhaus, Sam.
Whittaker Chambers.
New York: Random House, 1997. The definitive biography of the key figure in one of the most controversial and divisive cases in American history—the charges of communist espionage brought against Alger Hiss by Whittaker Chambers, who became one of the Americans most hated (by his enemies) and revered (by his allies).

Weinstein, Allen.
Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case.
New York: Random House, 1997. An updated version of a complete, detailed history of the sensational spy case, with material drawn from files of the former Soviet spy agencies, the KGB and the GRU (military intelligence).

CHAPTER 8. THE TORCH IS PASSED

Barrett, Lawrence I.
Gambling with History: Reagan in the White House.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983. Written by one of
Time
magazine’s correspondents, this was among the first books to assess the Reagan years negatively, and it provides a useful history of his earliest days in office.

Belin, David.
Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy.
New York: Scribners, 1988. Unlike more sensational accounts, this book about the assassination by an investigator who worked for the Warren Commission convincingly negates most of the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s murder.

Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward.
All the President’s Men.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Two journalists’ account of the uncovering of the Watergate cover-up.

Beschloss, Michael R., ed.
Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret Tapes, 1964–1965.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Tapes recorded in the Oval Office during the crucial decision-making period when the Vietnam war was escalated.

Bilton, Michael, and Kevin Sim.
Four Hours in My Lai.
New York: Viking, 1992. In-depth account of the atrocity in Vietnam by two television producers who interviewed soldiers involved in this massacre of civilians.

Cannon, Lou.
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.
New York: Public Affairs, 2000. By a California reporter who covered Reagan for more than twenty-
five years, an excellent single volume on Reagan’s White House years.

Caro, Robert.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate.
New York: Knopf, 2002. The third volume in a prizewinning series about Johnson. This volume covers the twelve years that Johnson served in the Senate until his selection as Kennedy’s vice president.

Carroll, Peter N.
It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. A broad historical and cultural overview of the “me decade.”

Caute, David.
The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968.
New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Portrait of the year that changed America.

Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz.
The Kennedys: An American Drama.
New York: Summit, 1984. Although it takes a tabloid approach, this book presents a damning and documented account of the rise of this powerful American regal family. Particularly interesting for its discussion of the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

Davis, John H.
The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. Another gossipy look, by a relative of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Includes a lot of rumor and speculation, buttressed by documented reve-
lations.

Dickstein, Morris.
Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties.
New York: Basic Books, 1977. An examination of American politics in the period, through the literature and culture of the era.

Eichenwald, Kurt.
The Informant.
New York: Broadway, 2000. An exhaustive account of price fixing, influence peddling, and corporate corruption during the 1980s at the Archer Daniels Midland Company.

Epstein, Edward Jay.
Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth.
New York: Viking, 1966. One of the first and most influential assaults on the Warren Commission’s findings.

FitzGerald, Frances.
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.
Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1972. A now classic book on understanding the roots of the United States’ involvement and failure in Vietnam.

Friedan, Betty.
The Feminine Mystique.
New York: Norton, 1963. The classic document on which the modern American feminist movement was built.

Gitlin, Todd.
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.
New York: Bantam, 1987. Written by an organizer of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of an era that has been victimized by clichés.