Books like Citizens of London

House arrest in a hotel, and a man raises a daughter in it.

The Count can give Sofia nothing—no country, no freedom, no future he can guarantee—so he gives her manners, music, attention, and wit, and most of all love. It turns out those are not nothing. They're the inheritance.

I love it for the opposite reason I love McCarthy: same question, no apocalypse, just a man with four walls deciding what to pass on. If you're a parent who feels you have less to give your kids than you'd hoped, this one's a gift.

Who believes men alone have redrawn the maps of the world? Gertrude Bell, beautiful adventurer, mountaineer, archaeologist, writer, linguist, and self-taught photographer, championed Arab self-rule, advising the British military in creating the nation of Iraq after World War I. Thwarted in love, this Victorian debutante set forth on a life as colorful as Lawrence of Arabia, with whom she became a close friend. I marveled at her courage, traveling alone in the vast desert of Arabia with a few native guides, dining with Bedouin chiefs who had never deigned to receive a woman before. It’s impossible to describe her life in a few sentences, but it was a revelation to me that a woman of the Victorian era could accomplish what few men had, while remaining a correct English lady.

I fell in love with Ishi, the ageing bull elephant, who is the narrator of this saga. If ever you doubted that elephants were sentient creatures, this book will change your mind. After fifty years as a captive, shipped overseas, mistreated in a circus, and landing in a zoo, by miraculous serendipity, Ishi finds himself back in Africa, hundreds of miles from the animal sanctuary where he was raised. Making a final desperate journey to reach the human family that rescued him as a baby, when his mother and entire herd were killed by ivory poachers, our hero encounters one peril after another. A highly emotional tale, it speaks of good and evil. Ishi’s story will have you contributing to every campaign to save these noble beasts.

Bill Donovan, recognized as a hero for rescuing his fellow soldiers at the front in World War I, was a rising star in the Republican Party, becoming assistant attorney general under Republican President Calvin Coolidge.

But in mid-1941, when many Republicans were condemning President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a warmonger, Donovan broke with them and supported FDR, urging him to create an intelligence agency to prepare the United States for a war against fascism.

In his insightful Wild Bill Donovan, Douglas Waller recounts Donovan’s bold decision to ally himself with FDR, rejecting partisan politics and instead prioritizing the defense of American democracy. FDR eventually named Donovan director of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime spy agency that was a forerunner of today’s Central Intelligence Agency.

I read this book for research for my own book. The White Rose is the tragic story of Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends, German students who defied Hitler, forming the underground movement known as The White Rose. I was thrilled at the terror of the brother and sister taking chances, distributing anti-Nazi leaflets right under the eyes of the Gestapo. Handsome Hans, heartthrob of his female medical classmates, was the leader of the group, while serious, pious Sophie was his loyal lieutenant. Written by their sister, this account shows there were good people who opposed Hitler, risking everything. I had chills, imagining the terrible price the two siblings paid for their bravery. And my heart ached for their mother, who lost two children to Himmler’s archaic method of punishment—the guillotine.

In the 1930s, Wendell Willkie was a Democrat who sided with big business and criticized Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Then, in a whirlwind, Willkie switched parties and won the Republication presidential nomination in June 1940.

After FDR won the election of 1940, Willkie shattered party expectations again when he called upon Congress to pass FDR’s controversial Lend Lease program to send military aid to European nations facing the assault of Hitler’s Nazi armies. 

Willkie also took a strong stance in support of civil rights. Time and again, he proved he was a leader with a nimble mind unfettered by party politics. He broke the rules by defying those who would predict his politics according to his party affiliation. 

The compelling story of Wendell Willkie and his call for human rights in America and around the world comes to life in David Levering Lewis’s beautifully written biography, The Improbable Wendell Willkie… show more.

Walter White served as the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 until his death in 1955. A light-skinned Black man often mistaken for white, he used his appearance to infiltrate the white-supremacy power structure and then work for civil rights.

In his evocative autobiography, A Man Called White, White recounts how in 1941 he and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph pushed President Franklin Roosevelt to take a major step forward in the struggle for civil rights – creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC). It’s a gripping tale about an often-overlooked part of the civil rights movement

The FEPC worked to desegregate the war industries, a mission that reshaped American politics and set the Democratic Party on the path of becoming the party of civil rights.

I love this book, which is warm and beautifully written, because it tells the story of the most vital and consequential political partnership of the last century. Roosevelt and Churchill, both heroes of mine, saved freedom by steering the Allies to victory in World War II over the mighty, ravenous, bloodthirsty, and seemingly invincible Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

This book brings Roosevelt and Churchill to life, showcasing their astounding brilliance and strength, along with their very human pettiness, impatience, and skullduggery, as they work in close concert with one another, press one another, and, when necessary, even work around one another. It’s a marvelous story and a gripping read.

The book gives great insight into the role of organized efforts at persuasion in establishing and reinforcing much of what we think we know about mobilization for the war.

Business wanted credit for the success of war production, even though most of it was achieved in government owned, government operated (GOGO) or government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants. The public sector played a much larger role in planning, directing, and controlling the mobilization effort than business wished the American public to acknowledge.