Here are 7 books that Reaganland fans have personally recommended if you like Reaganland. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Rules of Civility

Kelly Bennett Author Of Out of the Mouth of Babe

From Kelly's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Word-smith Fact-gobbler Adventure-traveler Weed-picker Two-wheeling Grand

Kelly's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Kelly Bennett Why Kelly loves this book

I am a huge Amor Towles fan! The setting 1930’s NYC—jazz and flappers, cigarette holders and cocktail shakers, possibility, debauchery, and a smart, sassy, gutsy gal like Katey Kontent deserves a huge, buckle-up and enjoy the ride story and Towes delivers! I couldn’t wait and didn’t want it to end.

By Amor Towles ,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Rules of Civility as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, a “sharply stylish” (Boston Globe) book about a young woman in post-Depression era New York who suddenly finds herself thrust into high society—now with over one million readers worldwide

On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of The Maniac

Ben Orlin Author Of Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality

From Ben's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Math lover Bad at drawing

Ben's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Ben Orlin Why Ben loves this book

A monster story, in the voices of those who knew and loved the monster.

Quick digression: Every pedant loves to say that "Frankenstein," contrary to popular belief, is not the monster; Frankenstein is the *scientist* who *made* the monster. But of course, Shelley's novel reveals that Dr. Frankenstein *is* the real monster: it's his careless act of creation that's monstrous, not the poor suffering thing who was thereby created.

Anyway, back to Labatut's book: here, the creature is artificial intelligence, or the computer itself, or maybe our whole mad digital age -- and the monster who birthed it is a real historical mathematician.

By Benjamin Labatut ,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Maniac as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control…


Book cover of One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

Robert Polner Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father was the child of poor New York emigrants who, like our Ireland-born subject, Paul O’Dwyer, made his way into the American middle class through education, hard work, the beneficial effects of the New Deal, and the impact of labor organizing. All of these had the added benefit of restraining the tides of economic inequality and easing the galling undertow of racism. As American society retreated in my adult lifetime into rank nativism, political race-baiting, and an ever-widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else, I was attracted to the idea of taking the measure of a lawyer-activist-politician in New York in the 20th century, Paul O’Dwyer. 

Robert's book list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer

Robert Polner Why Robert loves this book

This history traces some of the ties between Irish revolutionaries and Jewish ones in Palestine and provides an unvarnished history of the events and personalities leading to the establishment of the Jewish state.

For Paul O’Dwyer, his own activism as an “Irish Zionist” in New York after WWII was motivated by his antagonism towards the British, viewing the British Mandate in what was then Palestine as the chief obstacle to a lasting arrangement beneficial to Jews and Arabs. He supported Jewish militant groups seeking to evict the British and open Palestine’s ports much wider to Holocaust survivors in Europe.

By Tom Segev , Haim Watzman (translator) , Shara Kay (editor)

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked One Palestine, Complete as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One Palestine, Complete explores the tumultuous period before the creation of the state of Israel. This was the time of the British Mandate, when Britain's promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land, set in motion the conflict that haunts the region to this day.

Drawing on untapped archival materials, Tom Segev reconstructs an era (1917 to 1948) of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces an array unforgettable characters, tracks the steady advance of Jews and Arabs toward confrontation, and puts forth a radical new argument: that the British, far from being pro-Arab, consistently favored…


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Book cover of Trusting Her Duke

Trusting Her Duke by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.

Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…

Book cover of Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York

Robert Polner Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father was the child of poor New York emigrants who, like our Ireland-born subject, Paul O’Dwyer, made his way into the American middle class through education, hard work, the beneficial effects of the New Deal, and the impact of labor organizing. All of these had the added benefit of restraining the tides of economic inequality and easing the galling undertow of racism. As American society retreated in my adult lifetime into rank nativism, political race-baiting, and an ever-widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else, I was attracted to the idea of taking the measure of a lawyer-activist-politician in New York in the 20th century, Paul O’Dwyer. 

Robert's book list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer

Robert Polner Why Robert loves this book

“The Little Flower” matched his effectiveness in battling Tammany Hall on the stump with his success as the corruption-fighting Fusion mayor of New York. Kessner discusses how this much-loved figure (even the subject of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize-winning musical) initially frustrated O’Dwyer’s brother Bill (his Democratic successor in 1946) by winning for a third time in a row in 1941.

Kessner shows how he was integral to the making of modern New York. In death, New York’s most outstanding leader took on new luster among good-government advocates and many others when Bill’s time in Gracie Mansion was short-circuited by the Bronx Democratic boss amid a pervasive police department scandal.

By Thomas Kessner ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Informed by unprecedented access to previously unavailable private papers, documents, family memorabilia, and photographs, this volume profiles the colorful mayor and the city he governed during its golden era


Book cover of Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront

Robert Polner Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father was the child of poor New York emigrants who, like our Ireland-born subject, Paul O’Dwyer, made his way into the American middle class through education, hard work, the beneficial effects of the New Deal, and the impact of labor organizing. All of these had the added benefit of restraining the tides of economic inequality and easing the galling undertow of racism. As American society retreated in my adult lifetime into rank nativism, political race-baiting, and an ever-widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else, I was attracted to the idea of taking the measure of a lawyer-activist-politician in New York in the 20th century, Paul O’Dwyer. 

Robert's book list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer

Robert Polner Why Robert loves this book

A suspenseful account of the corrupt underworld centered on the harbor where Paul O’Dwyer worked on the docks as a law student at St. John’s and in the criminal courthouse as a young attorney cutting his teeth during the Great Depression.

It shows the often claustrophobic social and political world from which Paul soon made his escape to the more cosmopolitan Manhattan, beginning his career as a lawyer known in part for defending union leaders, lawyers, and activists targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights in the reactionary Cold War and Vietnam War eras to come.

By Nathan Ward ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dark Harbor as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What if the world of the old New York waterfront was as violent and mob-controlled as it appears in Hollywood movies? Well, it really was, and the story of its downfall, told here in high style by Nathan Ward, is the original New York mob story. "New York Sun" reporter Malcolm 'Mike' Johnson was sent to cover the murder of a West Side boss stevedore and discovered a 'waterfront jungle, set against a background of New York's magnificent skyscrapers' and providing 'rich pickings for criminal gangs'. Racketeers ran their territories while doubling as union officers, from the West Side's 'Cockeye'…


Book cover of Other People's Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made

Robert Polner Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father was the child of poor New York emigrants who, like our Ireland-born subject, Paul O’Dwyer, made his way into the American middle class through education, hard work, the beneficial effects of the New Deal, and the impact of labor organizing. All of these had the added benefit of restraining the tides of economic inequality and easing the galling undertow of racism. As American society retreated in my adult lifetime into rank nativism, political race-baiting, and an ever-widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else, I was attracted to the idea of taking the measure of a lawyer-activist-politician in New York in the 20th century, Paul O’Dwyer. 

Robert's book list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer

Robert Polner Why Robert loves this book

One of O’Dwyer’s early prominent battles for the First Amendment and civil rights occurred when he represented families evicted for opposing a racial color line in the selection of tenants of MetLife’s Stuyvesant Town in lower Manhattan, built with assistance from the La Guardia administration.

Through Bagli’s carefully researched history of this watershed battle over the authority of a private landlord to bar African Americans, he explains that O’Dwyer’s involvement in the case on behalf of progressive tenants helped pave the way for Metlife to build the smaller Riverton housing development in Harlem as a concession to critics. Over time, city and state laws would make housing discrimination illegal.

By Charles V. Bagli ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Other People's Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A veteran New York Times reporter dissects the most spectacular failure in real estate history

Real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of dollars when their much-vaunted purchase of Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village in New York City failed to deliver the expected profits. But how did Tishman Speyer walk away from the deal unscathed, while others took the financial hit—and MetLife scored a $3 billion profit?
 

 

Illuminating the world of big real estate the way Too Big to Fail did for banks, Other People’s Money is a riveting account of politics, high finance, and the hubris…


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Book cover of The Duke's Christmas Redemption

The Duke's Christmas Redemption by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.

Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…

Book cover of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Robert Polner Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My father was the child of poor New York emigrants who, like our Ireland-born subject, Paul O’Dwyer, made his way into the American middle class through education, hard work, the beneficial effects of the New Deal, and the impact of labor organizing. All of these had the added benefit of restraining the tides of economic inequality and easing the galling undertow of racism. As American society retreated in my adult lifetime into rank nativism, political race-baiting, and an ever-widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else, I was attracted to the idea of taking the measure of a lawyer-activist-politician in New York in the 20th century, Paul O’Dwyer. 

Robert's book list on era that influenced attorney Paul O'Dwyer

Robert Polner Why Robert loves this book

A richly detailed and often riveting narrative on the 1960s, particularly the divisive and tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the enormous antiwar movement (both events in which O’Dwyer played a leading role as a Senate candidate and anti-Vietnam War ally of Eugene McCarthy).

Accounts of urban riots drawn in part from court records bring the decade’s harsh and even brutal edge to life.

By Rick Perlstein ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nixonland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Heralded by stunning reviews, Perlstein's best-selling NIXONLAND begins in the blood and fire of the Watts riots - one week after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, and nine months after his historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater seemed to have heralded a permanent liberal consensus. The next year scores of liberals were thrown out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon. Six years later, President Nixon, harvesting the bitterness and resentment borne of that blood and fire, was re-elected in a landslide even…


Book cover of Rules of Civility
Book cover of The Maniac
Book cover of One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

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