Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik's 3 favorite reads in 2026

• 2024
• 2025
• 2026

Apparently you CAN go home again, if that home is the world of Theodor Seuss Geisel a.k.a. Dr. Seuss.

In 2025, more than three decades after his passing, archivists at the Geisel Library (University of California San Diego) came upon the early stages of a previously unfinished Seuss project, a rhymed riff about the fifty United States, complete with rough sketches and finalized manuscript.

On the cusp of the country’s 250th birthday, they knew just what had to be done. Complete the task. Publish the fun. Following the author’s notes, they showcased the iconic Cat in the Hat as narrator (accompanied by a pair of Little Cats) for a breezy “let’s assemble it” read.

The characters sing and paste together a wall map puzzle of the states, from empty outline to the finished fifty. Think it’s easy? Take heed of the book’s opening riff: “To sing the 50 United States, you have to use your brain.” Over 30 colorful pages they do just that, with the upbeat conclusion: “To sing the 50 United States … you sing them from your heart!”

Just as in the original Dr. Seuss book days, this leaves readers with a warm and welcome smile.

In 2019, British historian/novelist Paul M.M. Cooper began issuing an elaborately detailed and emotionally stirring podcast about long-gone civilizations, explaining where they came from, how they triumphed, and why they ultimately faded to dust. Cooper accomplished the rare trick of making sense of long stretches of human history while still taking time to focus on the surviving words of some of the people involved.

After some 20 hefty podcast episodes, Cooper adapted thirteen of his sagas into book form, having them now run essentially chronologically. For those not familiar with the podcast, it is a great form of introduction. For those who have heard them all, the book is a valuable refresher course.

Throughout, Cooper shows both how natural forces beyond human control often have a decisive role in how our history plays out, and how, while technologies have changed over the millennia, the foibles of human nature are much the same as they have always been.

One of the highlights of the Fall 2025 American television season was PBS’s twelve-hour examination of the American revolution, from its “in-house” documentarian, Ken Burns. As usual with such projects, there was an accompanying book, and this is it.

As illuminating and entertaining as the TV series was, the book provides more context, more explanation and, frankly, more time to pause and digest the wealth of information contained in the show.

There are two underlying messages here. First, the American revolution was more the outgrowth of a larger world-wide clashing of empires than a strictly home-grown dispute. Second, the conflict was a harsher and bloodier civil war amongst the colonists than we learned in our simplified schoolbook telling of this momentous turn of history. The book adds greatly to the appreciation of the documentary.