Books like Burr

This was the first novel I read on my own as an adult.

I had read a great deal in school—all required reading. Shortly after I graduated, I discovered Winds of War on a break from my summer job and started it. It was daunting: 898 pages. Right away, I was captivated.

Wouk made history around the start of World War II come alive with characters and POV’s from both sides of the conflict. He included critical battles and turning points in the war, but what made it different was his ability to create characters I cared about and plunge those characters deep into the conflict.

Wouk was the first author that made me love history, and it’s a love affair I’ve continued in my adult life. 

This is the only non-fiction in my recommendation list, though I’ve read many.

I enjoyed this book because it captures the interesting, complicated, love-hate relationship between Washington and Arnold. Early on, Benedict Arnold was a protégé of George Washington, and Washington helped to ease Arnold’s trajectory to becoming the most successful general of the Revolutionary War.

But I found fascinating Philbrick’s ability to capture how this relationship disintegrated and how Arnold actually turned on Washington and the colonials. I was wowed by Philbrick’s skill at drawing from the historical record to uncover this complicated process that went from what we’d describe today as a “bromance” to one of resentment and hatred.

I discovered a much more nuanced Benedict Arnold than the black traitor painted in our history classes.

When I first learned the subject of this hot-selling book, the building of a medieval cathedral, my first thought was blah.

I mean, how interesting could the decades-long construction of a massive church be? Boy, was I wrong. Follett makes the story so compelling, personal, and moving; I couldn’t stop reading. I got so invested in the characters and the tale that I wished there were more, even after 1008 pages. Yeah.

Thankfully, Follett wrote four more books in the Cambridge series, and yes, I’ve read them all. There is a reason why Pillars of the Earth is the bestselling historical novel of all time.

“To the youth of the world in whose spirit and courage rest the hope of eventual freedom for all mankind.” Thus begins Disney’s film version of this novel. Like Walt himself, this novel inspired a love of the history of our revolution in me at a young age.

Did you know that Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom is from this story? Johnny learns early in the story that “pride cometh before a fall,” but his personal struggles become subsumed in a cause greater than himself.

The author comes from an old Yankee family with ties to the revolution, and so do I. The commission of James Churchill as a Captain in the Massachusetts militia, signed by John Hancock, still hangs in the farmhouse where I grew up. It’s in her blood, and that comes through in this timeless classic. 

I found This Tender Land, a tale of four orphans adrift on the Mississippi River in 1932, to be heartwarming, memorable, and compelling.

This slice of history—the years surrounding the depression, I knew little about—I learned next to nothing of this in school and Kreuger makes the time, settings, and conditions come alive.

This story has echoes of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn but with its own compelling story and time. This novel followed Krueger’s other book, which won the Edgar Award and which I also loved. But I enjoyed this story even more with its complex characters and even more compelling narrative.

Like a brilliant painting, Jeff Shaara’s novel Rise to Rebellion brings to life the major players in the rising conflict between Britain and her American colonies. Colorful description and details help us see King George, ruling far from his colonies alongside ruthless advisers; Royal Governor Thomas Gage, determined to put down the colonists’ uprising; John Adams, industrious lawyer and farmer; Benjamin Franklin, lively inventor and scientist; and George Washington, ambitious Virginian military leader, as they lead in the saga that results in independence for our nation.

Laurie Halse Anderson masterfully helps us see the dilemmas of those who endured the Revolutionary years, from a young runaway slave to soldiers at General Washington’s winter camp at Valley Forge. For younger readers, Forge gives the experience of surviving the bitter cold and hunger of the winter camp for both the fearful runaway slave, Curzon, posing as a freedman and soldier in Washington’s army, and his friend Isabel. You can feel the cold seeping into your rag-bound feet and taste the sand in your rock-baked flatbread, hunger pangs tormenting you as you read.

Part of a seven-book series, in this historical fiction novel, young soldier Joseph Killeen finds himself questioning the army’s treatment of the Haudenosaunee Confederation in the wilds of western New York. Under General Washington’s direction, his group scouts out an Iroquois village, Joseph and his group set fire to long houses and crops and capture the natives. But they themselves are overpowered and killed.

The last survivor, Joseph, is spared for his kindness to a tribal woman and becomes a member of the tribe. As his understanding and respect for the Haudenosaunee grow, he must decide whether to remain with them or return to his family. The conflict between colonial settlers and native peoples plays a significant role in the country’s history before, during, and after the Revolution. Practices and attitudes of the Iroquois are carefully depicted by the author, making this read interesting.

This is one of the books that inspired and provided source material for the musical Hamilton. Freeman is a Pulitzer prize-winning historian of post-1776 United States. This masterful history of the early American republic shows how dueling needs to be understood as politics by other means, as part of the mad scramble for power and prestige in the context of never-ending “paper wars” in the partisan press. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ll never forget how much the cover art captured my imagination, and how brilliantly it reflects what you will find inside.

This book is not just about duels; it also covers political alliances, gossip, insults, and elections. But that is Freeman’s whole point, that they are all interconnected, and dueling is just one piece of a larger picture.

Isenberg’s complete biography of the notorious Aaron Burr brings the reader beyond the typical villainous frame set by earlier historians. There are plenty of engrossing elements to Burr’s life, involving war, sex, political maneuvering, the famous duel with Alexander Hamilton, risky finance, and accusations of treason.

Isenberg tackles them all, while humanizing her ambitious, prickly subject. But I found the real value of the book is in its capacity to show more familiar founders, such as Hamilton, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, from very different angles.