Programs & Events

Book Breaks

Book Breaks Archive

Steve Inskeep - "Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America"

James Traub - "True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America"

Anastasia C. Curwood - "Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics"

James G. Basker - "Black Writers of the Founding Era"

Matthew Davenport - "The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906"

Tomiko Brown-Nagin - "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality"

Frank J. Cirillo - "The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union"

Harold Holzer - "Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration"

Donald L. Miller and Kirk Saduski - "Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War against Nazi Germany"

Sarah Keyes - "American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail"

Brooke Barbier - "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father"

Bruce Henderson - "Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II"

Jeffrey Rosen - "The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America"

Diego Javier Luis - "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History"

Allen C. Guelzo - "Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment"

Steven Hahn - "Forging America: A Continental History"

Sarah Parry Myers - "Earning Their Wings: The WASPs of World War II and the Fight for Veteran Recognition"

Maurizio Valsania- "First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity"

Elizabeth Varon- "Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South"

Jonathan W. White - "Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade"

Mark Whitaker- "Saying It Loud: 1966―The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement"

Stacy Schiff - "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams"

Theresa Runstedtler - "Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA"

H.W. Brands - "Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics"

Ronald C. White - "On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain"

José Manuel Guerrero Acosta - "Unveiling Memories: Spain and the Hispanic Contribution to US Independence"

Edward L. Ayers —“American Visions: The United States, 1800–1860”

Ava Chin - "Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming"

Daniel Greene and Edward Phillips - "Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader"

Frank Scaturro and Alvin Felzenberg - "Grant at 200: Reconsidering the Life and Legacy of Ulysses S. Grant"

Jon Meacham - "And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle"

Drew Gilpin Faust - "Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury"

Brenda Stevenson - "What Sorrows Labour in My Parent's Breast? A History of the Enslaved Black Family"

Benjamin L. Carp - "The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution"

John Wood Sweet- "The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America"

Jean Pfaelzer- "California, a Slave State"

Glory Liu- "Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism"

Jonathan Eig - "King, A Life"

Natalia Molina - "A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community"

C. W. Goodyear - "President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier"

Matthew F. Delmont - "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad"

Walter Stahr - "Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival"

Chad Williams - "The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War"

Craig L. Symonds - "Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay"

Richard J. M. Blackett - "Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle"

Chloe Melas - "The Luck of the Draw: My Story of the Air War in Europe"

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink - "Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress"

Alice Baumgartner - "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War"

Beverly Gage - "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century"

Clayton Butler - "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction"

Jeremi Suri - "Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy"

Emily Bingham - "My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song"

Elliott West - "Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion"

Jacqueline Jones - "No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era"

Derek LeeBaert - "Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made"

Beth Bailey - "An Army Afire: How the U.S. Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era"

David P. Cline - "Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War"

Ken Burns - "Our America: A Photographic History"

Marc J. Selverstone - "The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam"

David Waldstreicher - "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys through American Slavery and Independence"

Samantha Seeley - "Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the Early United States"

Nicole Eustace - "Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America"

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham - "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans"

Ilyon Woo - "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom"

R. Isabela Morales - "Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom"

Jacob Soll - "Free Market: The History of an Idea"

Ty Seidule - "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Lost Cause"

Erin Kelly and Patsy Rembert - "Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir to the Jim Crow South"

Kostya Kennedy - "True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson"

Catherine Ceniza Choy - "Asian American Histories of the United States"

Paul Escott - "Black Suffrage: Lincoln's Last Goal"

Lucas Morel - "Lincoln and the American Founding"

Kermit Roosevelt III - "The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story"

Michael Mandelbaum - "The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower"

Bruce A. Ragsdale - "Washington and the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery"

Buzz Bissinger - "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II"

Steven A. Steinbach and Maeva Marcus - "With Liberty and Justice for All? The Constitution in the Classroom"

Carrie Gibson - "El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America"

Tamara Payne - "The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X"

T.H. Breen - "The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America"

Barbara Perry - "Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier"

Richard White - "Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University"

Roger Lowenstein - "Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War"

Eric Foner, Kathleen DuVal, and Lisa McGirr - "Give Me Liberty! An American History"

Jeff Nussbaum - "Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History"

Keith Pluymers - "No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic"

Justin Gage - "We Do Not Want the Gates Closed between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance"

Gary Gallagher - "The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis"

Peter Cozzens - "Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation"

Eric Rauchway - "Why the New Deal Matters"

Fay Yarbrough - "Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country"

Susan Schulten - "A History of America in 100 Maps"

Dorothy Wickenden - "The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights"

David Hackett Fischer - "African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals"

Elliott West - "The Essential West: Collected Essays"

Jeanne Theoharis - "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History"

Denver Brunsman - "The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World"

C. Patrick Burrowes - "Liberia & the Quest for Freedom"

Ricardo A. Herrera - "Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778"

Megan Kate Nelson - "Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America"

Marcia Chatelain - "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America"

Linda Colley - "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen"

Paul Ortiz - "An African American and Latinx History of the United States"

Noah Feldman - "The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America"

Robert W. Lee - "A Sin by Any Other Name: Reckoning with Racism and the Heritage of the South"

David Eltis - "Atlas of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade"

John Avlon - "Lincoln and the Fight for Peace"

Mary Sarah Bilder - "Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution"

Keisha N. Blain - "Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America"

Garrett M. Graff - "Watergate: A New History"

Jeanne Theoharis - "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks"

Woody Holton - "Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution"

Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross - "A Black Women's History of the United States"

Jonathan W. White - "A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House"

Jia Lynn Yang - "One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965

Akhil Reed Amar - "The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation: 1760-1840"

Susan Nagel - "Patriotism and Profit: Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler & the Rivalry for America's Capital City"

Alan Taylor - "American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850"

Alaina E. Roberts - "I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land"

Jim Downs - "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine"

Michael S. Neiberg - "When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance"

Claire Bellerjeau and Tiffany Yecke Brooks - "Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution"

Allen C. Guelzo - "Robert E. Lee: A Life"

Melanie Kirkpatrick - "Lady Editor: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Making of the Modern American Woman"

Joseph J. Ellis - "The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783"

Bruce Levine - "Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice"

Claude A. Clegg III - "The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama"

H. W. Brands - "Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution"

Mary Sarotte - "Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate"

John Demos - "The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World"

Louis Menand - "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War"

Caroline Janney - "Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox"

Carol Berkin - "Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte"

Carl Smith - "Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City"

Jeff Shesol - "Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War"

Johann Neem - "Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America"

Ada Ferrer - "Cuba: An American History"

Fredrik Logevall - "JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956"

Garrett Graff - "The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Julie Winch - "Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America From Settlement to the Civil War"

Gordon Chang - "The Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad"

Adrian Brettle - "Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World"

Clint Smith - "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America"

Jessica Marie Johnson - "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World"

Anna Malaika Tubbs - "The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation"

Jane Hong - "Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion"

David Armitage - "The Declaration of Independence: A Global History"

Tamika Nunley - "At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C."

Matthew Costello - "The Property of the Nation: George Washington's Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President"

Max Edelson - "The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence"

Carolyn Eastman - "The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity"

Robert Watson - "George Washington's Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and Nation"

David Head - "A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution"

Van Gosse - "The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War

Martha Saxton - "The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington"

Alexander Keyssar - "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?"

John Avlon - "Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations"

Richard Haass - "The World: A Brief Introduction"

Kate Masur - "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction"

Mia Bay - "Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance"

Catherine Kerrison - "Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America"

Sophie White - "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana"

Thavolia Glymph - "The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation"

Ed Ayers - "The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America"

Ilisa Barbas and Molly Rogers - "To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes"

Kabrina Baumgartner - "In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America"

Brandon Byrd - "The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti"

Amanda Bellows - "American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination"

Mary Beth Norton - "1774: The Long Year of Revolution"

James Oakes - "The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution"

Victoria Phillips - "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy"

Marcus Nevius - "City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856"

Serena Zabin - "The Boston Massacre: A Family History"

Colin Calloway - "The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation"

Brenda Stevenson - "What Is Slavery?"

Susan Eisenhower - "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions"

David Blight - "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom"

David S. Reynolds - "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times"

Kariann Yokota - "Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation"

Lonnie Bunch - "A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump"

Manisha Sinha - "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition"

Chris Brown - "Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism"

Harold Holzer - "The Presidents Vs. The Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News"

Rick Atkinson - "The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777"

Richard J. M. Blackett - "The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery"

Richard Brookhiser - "Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea"

Elaine Weiss - "The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote"

Alan Taylor - "Thomas Jefferson's Education"

Catherine Clinton - "Stepdaughters of History: Southern Women and the American Civil War"

Martha Jones - "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All"

Caroline Winterer - "American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason"

Kellie Carter Jackson - "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence"

Carol Berkin - "Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence"

James Shapiro - "Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future"

Khalil Gibran Muhammad - "The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America"

Martha Hodes - "Mourning Lincoln"

Allen Guelzo - "Gettysburg: The Last Invasion"

Daina Ramey Berry & Leslie Harris - "Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas"

Ted Widmer - "Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington"

Elizabeth Varon - "Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War"

Peniel Joseph - "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr."

Richard Stengel - "Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle against Disinformation and What We Can Do about It"

John Barry - "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History"

Annette Gordon-Reed - "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family"

Eric Foner - "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Made the Constitution"