Books like The Artificial River — picked by fans

Annette Gordon-Reed’s book introduces readers to the enslaved family of a Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson.

What I love about this book is that it upends the traditional picture of Jefferson while neither vilifying nor excusing him. It’s a full picture of a complicated man and the fascinating people who were part of his life. After all, the historian’s task is not to make heroes or villains but to show the full complexity of human beings.

At the center of the story is Sally Hemings, the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife and the mother of some of Jefferson’s children. The book also shows how a careful historian can interpret and evaluate different kinds of evidence, including documents, oral history, and DNA.

I love this book because it is both totally surprising and, at the same time, familiar. Sylvia and Charity lived together for more than 40 years in the early 1800s in New England, and their neighbors acknowledged their status as devoted partners.

Cleves is a masterful storyteller. Reading the book, I was captivated by these two remarkable women. When I finished the book, I realized I had a completely different understanding of queer relationships in early America.

This was one of the first books I read that showed me how powerful true crime can be as a vehicle for historical narrative. Jewett’s murder in 1830s New York was all but forgotten until Cline recovers that case and the social world of sex workers in that era.

It’s the writer’s eye for narrative details and her contemporary sleuthing into the complexities of Jewett’s life that keeps me coming back to this book again and again. Cline continually reveals her research process, and by doing so, I felt like I was part of the story as she reconstructs the crime and New York in the 1830s. 

We often think of the Age of Revolutions as linked to the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and science. But as Juster demonstrates in this fascinating book, it was also an age of prophecy. If they were sometimes dismissed as crazy, hundreds of male and female prophets found significant followers during the 1790s and early 1800s—followers who saw in those prophetic visions inspired ways to live in and face the challenges of a growing democratic society. Even those of us who knew about some of the ecstatic religious practices of the Second Great Awakening found ourselves marveling at Juster’s recapturing of a world of visionaries during an Age of Reason. Ultimately, she inspires us to connect the emerging democratization of the early nineteenth century to the profusion of charismatic and sometimes unsettling religious leaders. A wonderful piece of scholarship that is also a dream to read.

I was given the opportunity to make a television program about the Battle of Plattsburgh /Lake Champlain. Amateurs to Arms proved out to the best source for research concerning the War of 1812. It was no wonder since Professor John Elting had also written the 1812 West Point Atlas. His book on the northern battlefields is groundbreaking. An infantry officer in Germany during WWII, his experience brought an understanding of men caught in hand-to-hand combat. As a result of my extensive research, John suggested that I write a companion book to the film. The Final Invasion, Plattsburgh, the war of 1812’s most decisive battle, won the Army Historical Foundation book prize and the endorsement of the US Army War College.

There are many great books written about the fledgling US Navy that came into its own during the campaign of 1812.  As an Army officer, I was compelled to read them all when researching if my book, Old Ironsides, Eagle of the Sea if I were to compete with that of the ‘old saults’. George was challenged not only to define the complexities of the fledgling American frigates, but to contrast it with the proven rulers of the waves.  The British navy had not had a significant challenge since the magnificent history laid down by captain Horacio Nelson. The unpresented victories over the Royal Navy’s frigates were “uncalled for” according to the London Times. If there is one book to read about the epic struggle at sea, this is the one to choose.

The 1813 American campaign against Montreal posed the most dangerous threat to Canadian security during the war until it climaxed with British victories at Châteauguay and Crysler’s Farm. Oddly, it is not known as well as those that occurred on the Niagara Peninsula or in the territories surrounding the western end of Lake Erie. Field of Glory is a detailed and much appreciated narrative of that campaign. Any basic library of the war should include a least one comprehensive ground-level study of the fighting, and this book is one of the best of the genre, along with the other two that comprise Don Graves’s “Forgotten Soldiers Trilogy,” Where Right and Glory Lead! The Battle of Lundy’s Lane, 1814; and All Their Glory Past: Fort Erie, Plattsburgh, and the Final Battle of the North, 1814.

In contrast, a large percentage of other campaign histories tend to be written… show more.

This is the final book in Don Graves’s trilogy on the War of 1812, following Where Right and Glory Lead, and Field of Glory. Don is an eminent historian on the war and his research is impeccable. Just as important, he writes an engaging narrative with surprisingly vivid insights into the minds of men in battle. It is no surprise that his books have remained in print for many years. I have had the pleasure of Don’s friendship for almost 20 years and have tramped many of the battlefields with him – always enlightening, always enjoyable.

We tend to reject older histories, but sometimes they maintain their currency and their importance – and thus remain in print and would find a respectable berth on a basic thematic bookshelf. One such work is Alfred T. Mahan’s two-volume Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812, first published in 1905. An officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War, Mahan later joined the faculty of the Naval War College where he combined his professional experiences with close studies of historical records to examine the theme of sea power’s importance in history from the 17th century to his own time. His 1812 text was one of his works that proved to be influential in naval circles in Britain, France, the United States, and Japan in his day and afterwards. For modern readers, Sea Power is a well-written, accessible, but sophisticated study that not… show more.

There are an enormous range of themes associated with the War of 1812, from the war’s social contexts to Black history, to the Treaty of Ghent that ended the conflict, to the war’s place in history and memory, and many other topics. In a five-book essential list, they can’t be covered adequately, but readers may turn to essay collections to examine a good number of these concerns. This volume is the best of such collections, with most of its essays having been written by leading experts in the field. It also captures a good sense of the understanding of the war at the time of its bicentennial years of 2012-15 when historical interest was particularly strong and when scholars re-evaluated many of our commonly held assumptions. Now, ten years on, these essays have held up well. One word of warning, however: the chronology looks authoritative but isn’t. Some of the… show more.