Here are 100 books that The Demon of Unrest fans have personally recommended if you like
The Demon of Unrest.
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I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Virginia, so I am very familiar with America’s southern lands and culture. The South—also known as the Deep South—is a unique part of America’s tapestry of identities, and I love books set in this locale. Southern literature tends to focus on themes such as racial politics, one’s personal identity, and rebellion. When I wrote my book, I knew the story would have to take place in the southern states.
Here’s another book-to-movie entrant on the list. This book follows the exploits of a Confederate soldier who makes his way home to the mountains of North Carolina. It’s like the Odyssey—he has a series of memorable encounters and run-ins along his journey, and things are not as they seem when he eventually returns home. I love the novel's tension and the artfully crafted characters.
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves.…
When newlyweds Celia and Ed Cooney discover Celia is pregnant, they pledge to give their baby a good life—but what’s a couple living in a cramped room on $30 a week to do?
They start robbing Brooklyn businesses, much to the amusement of the city’s newspapers: A woman bandit is…
I am a lifelong lover of books. As a child, one of my most prized possessions was my library card. It gave me entrance to a world of untold wonders from the past, present, and future. My love of reading sparked my imagination and led me to my own fledgling writing efforts. I come from a family of storytellers, my mother being the chief example. She delighted us with stories from her childhood and her maturation in the rural South. She was an excellent mimic, which added realism and humor to every tale.
This book paints a vivid picture of the symbiotic relationship between 19th-century Southern slave masters and the people they enslaved. It also underscores the fact that for oppressed Black people, allies and enemies came in all colors.
The protagonist, Hiram Walker, is a child prodigy whose intellect and ambition make him poorly suited for a life of servitude. Significantly, Coates speaks to the obligation to “reach back” which those who have achieved a measure of physical, spiritual, or intellectual freedom owe to those who are still enslaved.
Harriet Tubman plays an important role in his narrative because she embodies that ideal.
'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey
Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully today
Hiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom.
Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a…
I am saddened and frustrated by polarization in American life today, and I believe that the Civil War has lessons to teach us about how we can avoid deeper divisions in our country. I grew up in Maryland, a border state, and have relatives that fought for the North, as well as relatives who fought for the South. In addition, I have Quaker ancestors who hated slavery and supported the Union, but who would not fight because they were pacifists. I am passionate about understanding the tensions that have always run through American life, and want to explore the topic deeply in my reading and writing.
I thought I knew my United States history, but I did not know the siege of Vicksburg, one of the most horrifying and significant military actions of the Civil War.
This book opened my eyes to the intense pain of the engagement through the stories of soldiers and civilians, men and women. The author does a masterful job of humanizing an account that could easily become a textbook story of a military engagement. He left me understanding the scar this siege left on Vicksburg for 100 years.
Continuing the series that began with A Blaze of Glory, Jeff Shaara returns to chronicle another decisive chapter in America’s long and bloody Civil War. In A Chain of Thunder, the action shifts to the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, in the vaunted “Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” a siege for the ages will cement the reputation of one Union general—and all but seal the fate of the rebel cause.
In May 1863, after months of hard and bitter combat, Union troops under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant at long last successfully cross…
History has always celebrated the "Founding Fathers, ” yet we almost never hear of the courageous, resourceful women whose actions shaped the nation.
In Obstinate Daughters, New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan asserts that, “If storytellers now, in the present day, continue to exclude these lives, experiences, and…
As an American history major in college, I planned an academic career. But a professor teaching my Civil War seminar said, “You are more interested in history as it affects the present. You should be a journalist.” So I was and am but always viewing current events through history. In my writing, as a journalist and author, I try to place people and places within a time frame, emphasizing links to the past. The Civil War era has loomed large in my work since so much of our story is rooted there. My appetite for historical nonfiction remains undimmed, and wherever I travel, I find that the past is always present.
Imagine a political maverick rejecting the leader and crusade he’d long supported, along with “the Lost Cause,” a credo subscribed to by millions (and generations) of unreconstructed white Southerners. James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s top generals, I learned, was not one of them.
That surprised me, as he was fully devoted to preserving slavery and supporting secession during the war but became a staunch Unionist afterward, even working with Black officials in his newly adopted home state of Louisiana. If you’ve ever wondered why there are no memorial statues on courthouse lawns to this rebel general, read this book to learn why.
I found this biography of “The Confederate General Who Defied the South” to be well-written, revelatory, and absorbing. It challenges long-held views of the Confederate cause.
Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Finalist
A "compelling portrait" (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize -winning author) of the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South.
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.
As an American history major in college, I planned an academic career. But a professor teaching my Civil War seminar said, “You are more interested in history as it affects the present. You should be a journalist.” So I was and am but always viewing current events through history. In my writing, as a journalist and author, I try to place people and places within a time frame, emphasizing links to the past. The Civil War era has loomed large in my work since so much of our story is rooted there. My appetite for historical nonfiction remains undimmed, and wherever I travel, I find that the past is always present.
I was intrigued by this book. John Randolph, the madman of the title, was well known to me as the fiery and erratic defender of slavery, representing antebellum Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was sometimes for abolition and sometimes not. Who knew that this mostly unrepentant white slaveholder in his contested will freed hundreds of the enslaved?
But not so fast, I learned. There was much more to the story than a simple gesture of humanity granted posthumously. There was much litigation over his true intentions. And what would happen to those he manumitted once they resettled in the free state of Ohio? I found this biography full of complexity, nuance, and surprises. I loved this book—a largely unknown story well told.
Few legal cases in American history are as riveting as the controversy surrounding the will of Virginia Senator John Randolph (1773-1833), which-almost inexplicably-freed all 383 of his slaves in one of the largest and most publicised manumissions in American history. So famous is the case that Ta-Nehisi Coates has used it to condemn Randolph's cousin, Thomas Jefferson, for failing to free his own slaves. With this ground-breaking investigation, historian Gregory May now reveals a more surprising story, showing how madness and scandal shaped John Randolph's wildly shifting attitudes toward his slaves-and how endemic prejudice in the North ultimately deprived the…
I am saddened and frustrated by polarization in American life today, and I believe that the Civil War has lessons to teach us about how we can avoid deeper divisions in our country. I grew up in Maryland, a border state, and have relatives that fought for the North, as well as relatives who fought for the South. In addition, I have Quaker ancestors who hated slavery and supported the Union, but who would not fight because they were pacifists. I am passionate about understanding the tensions that have always run through American life, and want to explore the topic deeply in my reading and writing.
I love that the author introduced me to Robert Smalls, whose story has rarely been told. An enslaved man in South Carolina, he stole a Confederate ship and sailed to freedom, later becoming a member of the US Congress.
I was angry that I had never known about Smalls, and this book has turned me into an evangelist for him. The author’s choice to tell his story in the first person was a risky move, but it paid off beautifully, allowing me to enter deeply into the life of a truly great man.
"Before this decisive night, I’d not fully appreciated the subtle line between inspiration and insanity. But now, with all our lives at risk, I found myself navigating that most perilous edge . . . "
Inspired by the life of an unsung American hero and slave, Trouble the Water navigates the rich tributaries of courage, betrayal, and redemption. In his inspiring journey, Robert Smalls witnesses great privilege and suffering alongside his owner’s daughter and the dangerous son of a firebrand secessionist. At the age of twelve, he’s sent to work in Charleston, where he loads ships and learns to pilot…
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
As an American history major in college, I planned an academic career. But a professor teaching my Civil War seminar said, “You are more interested in history as it affects the present. You should be a journalist.” So I was and am but always viewing current events through history. In my writing, as a journalist and author, I try to place people and places within a time frame, emphasizing links to the past. The Civil War era has loomed large in my work since so much of our story is rooted there. My appetite for historical nonfiction remains undimmed, and wherever I travel, I find that the past is always present.
This new take on radical Black abolitionist Nat Turner surprised—and enlightened me. If you’ve always thought of Turner as no more than a violent insurrectionist hellbent on the massacre of whites in southside Virginia, think again. There was much more to him, I learned in this out-of-the-box biography of the man both vilified and idolized since the infamous 1831 killing spree.
He was immortalized in the fictionized best-seller Nat Turner’s Rebellion, but this new take shows that truth can be stranger than fiction. I learned that Turner, rather than a revolutionary motivated solely by hate, drew heavily on the Old Testament and other religious sources as he and his followers terrorized and murdered in what they deemed to be a righteous cause.
As an American history major in college, I planned an academic career. But a professor teaching my Civil War seminar said, “You are more interested in history as it affects the present. You should be a journalist.” So I was and am but always viewing current events through history. In my writing, as a journalist and author, I try to place people and places within a time frame, emphasizing links to the past. The Civil War era has loomed large in my work since so much of our story is rooted there. My appetite for historical nonfiction remains undimmed, and wherever I travel, I find that the past is always present.
I loved this book for its expansive view of the Civil War era, extending from the election of Abraham Lincoln through the immediate postwar Reconstruction well into the 20th century. As history has taught us, gains made soon after the Confederate defeat were soon lost, and battles remained to be fought over the same constitutional grounds for decades—and are still being fought today.
Historian Manisha Sinha has crafted a sweeping new history that relates the “lords of the lash” with “the lords of the loom,” linking Southern slaveholders to Northern industrialists. I found this connection convincing and essential for understanding not only the conflict but its tentacles that encompassed the entire nation for decades into the present. This is essential reading to understand our past and present.
We are told that the present moment bears a strong resemblance to Reconstruction, when freed-people and the federal government attempted to create an interracial democracy in the south after the Civil War. That effort was overthrown and serves as a warning today about violent backlash to the mere idea of black equality. In The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, acclaimed historian Manisha Sinha expands our view beyond the usual temporal and spatial bounds of Reconstruction (1865-1877) to explain how the American Civil War, the overthrow of Reconstruction, the conquest of the west, labour conflict in the north,…
I joined the Nixon administration as a White House Fellow upon Harvard Law School graduation in 1969, so I wasn’t part of Nixon’s 1968 campaign. I served for five years, rising to associate director of the Domestic Council and ending as deputy counsel on Nixon’s Watergate defense team. Given my personal involvement at the time, coupled with extensive research over the past fifteen years, I’m among the foremost authorities on the Watergate scandal, but essentially unknowledgeable about people and events preceding the Nixon presidency. My five recommended books have nicely fill that gap – principally by friends and former colleagues who were actually “in the arena” during those heady times.
Gellman is a nationally-recognized historian, whose writings reflect thorough and insightful research. His earlier books – on Nixon’s time in Congress (The Contender) and as Eisenhower’s vice president (The President and the Apprentice) – meticulously debunked derogatory stories about Nixon, and this one on the 1960 campaign does the same. Many believe Theodore White’s Making of the President,1960 is the only authoritative account of that contest, but Gellman points out how White set out to idolize Kennedy and villainize Nixon – never once actually speaking to Nixon, either during or following the campaign. Gellman is an excellent writer, putting his readers right in the center of historic events. His final chapter, bringing the campaign all together is simply outstanding.
Based on massive new research, a compelling and surprising account of the twentieth century's closest election
"[Gellman] offers as detailed an exploration of the 1960 presidential race as can be found."-Robert W. Merry, Wall Street Journal
"A brilliant work . . . the research is absolutely phenomenal . . . This book should receive every accolade the publishing industry can give it, including the Pulitzer Prize."-John Rothmann, KGO's "The John Rothmann Show"
The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is one of the most frequently described political events of the twentieth century, yet the accounts to…
Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this stunning work in verse for young readers.
On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were…
As a journalist covering the Future of Work and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I encountered pioneering social entrepreneurs and newly minted tech billionaires whose ideologies attracted millions and have since shaped our culture, economy, and society. I've curated some of the most impactful books that informed my understanding of their ambitions and how work is evolving, as well as the thought leaders who inspired them. Engaging with this content and integrating it over the last decade has transformed my worldview, leading me to a more fulfilling, peaceful, and creative life—but it’s been quite the journey!
Andrew Yang stands out as an unconventional thinker who is redefining the political landscape for Americans disillusioned with the two-party system. In this book, he introduces “third way” solutions to address political crises, such as ranked-choice voting, term limits, and other common-sense reforms. The former presidential candidate has built a formidable following across the political spectrum by developing a new theory of change that balances individual autonomy with systemic reform.
I met Andrew over a decade ago—he introduced me to Tony Hsieh, the late Zappos CEO and the subject of my first book, when they first experimented with creating a more human-centered economy by revitalizing downtown Las Vegas through entrepreneurship.
In our deeply polarized era, this book gave me a renewed sense of hope by exploring how we can collectively redesign societal incentives.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A lively and bold blueprint for moving beyond the “era of institutional failure” by transforming our outmoded political and economic systems to be resilient to twenty-first-century problems, from the popular entrepreneur, bestselling author, and political truth-teller
“A vitally important book.”—Mark Cuban
Despite being written off by the media, Andrew Yang’s shoestring 2020 presidential campaign—powered by his proposal for a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for all Americans—jolted the political establishment, growing into a massive, diverse movement.
In Forward, Yang reveals that UBI and the threat of job automation are only the beginning, diagnosing how a…
