We just can’t escape people, it seems. FDR, the gold standard, and the Great Depression, J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and the violence in 1960s Berkeley, When America’s secret government ran amok, Friendly fire and bumbling generals in WWII, “The greatest catastrophe in human history”, The fateful year when the world stepped back from war, The amateur scientist who helped deliver radar and the atomic bomb, From the ashes of the Holocaust, a gift of lessons for living, One woman’s obsessive quest to learn how her grandmother died in the Holocaust, Bomber Command’s most successful attack on Nazi Germany was not on its cities, The WWII technology breakthrough with the proximity fuse, The secret mission to stop the Nazi atomic bomb, A story of an anti-Nazi commando worthy of Hollywood, Why the U.S. failed to speak out against the rise of Hitler’s Germany, How German radar technology helped Britain win World War II, A new spin on why the Normandy invasion succeeded, How the Allies fooled the Nazis with a corpse and assured victory, A scholar surveys armed conflict through the ages, A gripping history of China in World War II, The truth about the French Resistance, dug out of old records, “Survival is sweet revenge:” The odyssey of a Holocaust survivor, The sad story of FDR’s complicity with the Holocaust, Conspiracy theories, fake news, and other delusions in American history, America revealed through the lens of a single mid-sized city, When religion dominated the views of American conservatives, The conflict between the U.S. and Al Qaeda, Berkeley in 1969: Black Panthers, the FBI, and the Vietnam War, Teddy Roosevelt: progressive, champion of primary elections, and a racist, The ugly US-Iran war, past, present, and future, Life in the maelstrom of Hurricane Katrina, Teacher training, normal schools, and “bad teachers”, The case that helped put the FBI on the map, A stirring account of the watershed 2008 election, Early 20th-century America viewed through the life of one extraordinary woman, Economic inequality deconstructed in a brilliant historical study, An entertaining history of the post office, When a U-boat sank the Lusitania and changed history, Historical perspective on “the vast Right-Wing conspiracy”. It’s no fluke that Stamped from the Beginning has been on bestseller lists in the recent months. The twins were forced to play racist caricatures throughout their careers. As James Bradley makes clear in The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia, FDR steadfastly resisted the aggressive, well-funded campaign of the China Lobby to force the U.S. government to embargo oil sales to Japan in the late 1930s. Historical nonfiction mixed with memoir is such a fascinating combination. Read the review. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang—They shaped twentieth-century Chinese history, A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer – Kim Jong Il’s North Korea from the inside out, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman—An amazing true story of Israeli spies in the country’s War of Independence, Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden – A survivor’s eye-opening tale of life in the North Korean gulag, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden – Blaine Harden: how North Korea came to be what it is today, A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa—Escape from North Korea: a first-person account, Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives by Sunil Khilnani – Indian history portrayed through biography, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 by Kevin Peraino – Mao, Truman, and the birth of Modern China, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom by John Pomfret – A revealing history of U.S.-China relations, China in World History by Paul S. Ropp – Chinese history in less than 200 pages. While all that is present in The Splendid and the Vile, Larson’s focus is on the emotional reality of life in and around 10 Downing Street during that fateful year. At over 1,000 pages, this is an epic portrait of King’s rise to greatness, the strengths and weaknesses of the man behind the movement, and a country on the verge of revolution. This book is the story of Edward Oscar Heinrich, who has been called (you guessed it) “the American Sherlock Holmes.” Heinrich cracked at least 2,000 cases in his 40 year career and pioneered forensic science as we know of it today. The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. Or try this excellent list of Nonfiction/Historical Fiction Book Pairs. 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