Here are 100 books that The Marrow of Tradition fans have personally recommended if you like
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I go by the title AmericanStudier in my public scholarship and take that name very seriously. I believe nothing is more important for our future than better remembering our past and that pushing the nation toward its most inspiring ideals requires grappling with our hardest and most painful histories. On my AmericanStudies blog, in my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, and in all my other scholarly, public, and social media content, I am committed to sharing our histories and stories, figures and works, voices, and writing in all forms and for all audiences. I hope you’ll join me in this work by reading and sharing these great books!
No book captures more clearly and compellingly the horrific, inspiring, and vital histories and stories of Native Americans than Brown’s.
I love the ways that Brown offers a profoundly new perspective on the American West, on the foundational myths that too often limit the way we see ourselves and the realities with which we must grapple instead, and on Indigenous communities as an essential part of the American story at every stage.
Revisionist Westerns are one of my very favorite genres, and this is the best one I know.
The American West, 1860-1890: years of broken promises, disillusionment, war and massacre.
Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos and ending with the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee, this extraordinary book tells how the American Indians lost their land, lives and liberty to white settlers pushing westward. Woven into a an engrossing saga of cruelty, treachery and violence are the fascinating stories of such legendary figures as Sitting Bull, Cochise, Crazy Horse and Geronimo.
First published in 1970, Dee Brown's brutal and compelling narrative changed the way people thought about the original inhabitants of America, and focused attention…
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…
I have studied nineteenth-century American literature and culture for more than thirty years. My friends roll their eyes when I excitedly share a passage from Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, Herman Melville, or Kate Chopin. I wrote this book because I realized that nineteenth-century thinkers and writers have a lot to teach us about tyranny, particularly the dangers it presents to our nation. I hope you’ll find the challenge of these books as important as I do!
This book imagines a world where the United States succumbs to authoritarianism. Subsequent writers have explored this theme, but I love Lewis’s novel because it captures a precarious historical moment (the 1930s) that has a lot in common with the present day.
“Buzz” Winthrop, the politician turned dictator, whips up fears about threats to America, stressing the need to get back to the nation’s “true” values. It’s a chilling portrait of a nation that loses its way.
“The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal.”—Salon
It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’s later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.
Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.
I have studied nineteenth-century American literature and culture for more than thirty years. My friends roll their eyes when I excitedly share a passage from Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, Herman Melville, or Kate Chopin. I wrote this book because I realized that nineteenth-century thinkers and writers have a lot to teach us about tyranny, particularly the dangers it presents to our nation. I hope you’ll find the challenge of these books as important as I do!
Judith Shklar’s account of the social harms caused by everyday cruelty is exceptional in its clarity and ethical value. She walks readers through vices that people often overlook—cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, misanthropy, and betrayal—showing how these “ordinary” ways of ignoring the needs of other people fray the norms of society.
The ideas are nuanced but her writing is crystal clear. I think this is the best book on ethics I have ever read.
The seven deadly sins of Christianity represent the abysses of character, whereas Judith Shklar's "ordinary vices"-cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal, and misanthropy-are merely treacherous shoals, flawing our characters with mean-spiritedness and inhumanity.
Shklar draws from a brilliant array of writers-Moliere and Dickens on hypocrisy, Jane Austen on snobbery, Shakespeare and Montesquieu on misanthropy, Hawthorne and Nietzsche on cruelty, Conrad and Faulkner on betrayal-to reveal the nature and effects of the vices. She examines their destructive effects, the ambiguities of the moral problems they pose to the liberal ethos, and their implications for government and citizens: liberalism is a difficult and challenging…
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…
These books have defined my life, giving me focus, direction, and purpose through a career that embraced 25 years at the United States Senate at senior staff levels and then served as the inspiration to co-found four national charities, including the Heart of America Foundation (HOA). The resulting activities have touched the lives of millions of adults and children and blessed my life beyond belief. I am a voracious reader with an extensive backlist of favorite books I have read and, in some cases, re-read. They are interesting, informative, and entertaining, but these books are a step beyond. This is where I go when I need hope and inspiration.
De Tocqueville’s book is the first and probably still the best examination of the genius of America. At times like these, it's good to be reminded of what makes America work. Frankl would firmly understand and concur. The essence of America is our responsibility. Frankl would break it up into two words: “response-ability.”
I first read this book when I was in college. I have read it at least once in every subsequent year. It’s nice to be reminded of who we are. Ultimately, De Tocqueville teaches that this country will be whatever we make it. If we don’t like what’s going on, it’s our responsibility to change it.
When it was first published in 2000, Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop's new translation of Democracy in America was lauded in all quarters as the finest and most definitive edition of Tocqueville's classic - complete with the most faithful and readable translation to date, impeccable annotations of unfamiliar references, and a substantial introduction placing the work and its author in the broader contexts of political philosophy and statesmanship. Mansfield and Winthrop's astonishing efforts have not only captured the elegance, subtlety, and profundity of Tocqueville's original, but they also offer proof of how very essential this masterpiece continues to be.
I have studied nineteenth-century American literature and culture for more than thirty years. My friends roll their eyes when I excitedly share a passage from Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, Herman Melville, or Kate Chopin. I wrote this book because I realized that nineteenth-century thinkers and writers have a lot to teach us about tyranny, particularly the dangers it presents to our nation. I hope you’ll find the challenge of these books as important as I do!
Neal Wood was a respected scholar of political thought and he wrote this book to be accessible to many readers, motivated by his conviction that the thorough embrace of capitalist competition was degrading the character and culture of the United States.
When reading this, I could not help but think about the writings of Black Americans in the nineteenth century, who argued that greed was one of the main reasons for slavery. Wood offers a sober reminder that it is useful to think about the consequences, intended and not, of our nation’s choices and priorities.
The US has been subjected to the ruthless and unrelenting tyranny of the world's most advanced capitalism, permeating every aspect of American life. The chief difference from other tyrannies is its facelessness, its dependence on impersonal coercive power more than on direct violence and terror against its subjects. A frightening irony of this new tyranny, dissected by the distinguished historian of political thought Neal Wood, is that it is producing a degenerating society and a politics headed toward collapse. All world empires have decayed from within and eventually fallen. The new tyranny's demise may long be hidden by a sophisticated…
I am a 1.5-generation Filipina who migrated to Australia in 1977 at the age of 17. As a migrant, I know the challenges of moving to a new country without friends and extended family. I have a PhD in history from the University of Michigan and am a professor of History at the University of New South Wales in Australia. I have written five books mostly on Filipino women’s history. My book on Filipino migration, which won the NSW Premier’s General History Prize (Australia) in 2022, analyses the migrant's heroic narrative—an account that resonates with my own migration story.
I recommend this book because it is a no-holds-barred narrative of what it is like to be a male agricultural laborer in 1920s racially segregated America.
It is a gritty tale of how a mostly male migrant population survived racial discrimination and economic hardship, living in the labor camps and working for a dollar a day. It shows how these men found ways to cope and acquire dignity even while experiencing loneliness since it was difficult to find brides (due to anti-miscegenation laws). From dressing up in $100 tailor-made suits and smoking cigars to paying ten cents a dance at taxi dance halls to gambling, prostitution, and labor activism, it tells the story of the first generation of migrant laborers in the United States.
America Is in the Heart is a semi-autobiographical novel from the celebrated author Carlos Bulosan. Beginning with the young Carlos' difficult childhood in the rural Philippines where he and his family face immense hardship, this gripping story follows the narrator's tumultuous journey in search of a better life in America. This is an eye-opening account of the injustices, abuse and discrimination faced by immigrants in post-Second World War America.
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…
I go by the title AmericanStudier in my public scholarship and take that name very seriously. I believe nothing is more important for our future than better remembering our past and that pushing the nation toward its most inspiring ideals requires grappling with our hardest and most painful histories. On my AmericanStudies blog, in my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, and in all my other scholarly, public, and social media content, I am committed to sharing our histories and stories, figures and works, voices, and writing in all forms and for all audiences. I hope you’ll join me in this work by reading and sharing these great books!
There have been Asian Americans for as long as there’s been an America, and indeed in places like California Asian communities were there before the United States was.
That’s just one of the countless surprising and crucial lessons that I first learned from Takaki’s sweeping and magisterial history of the U.S., and every time I dip back into this book, I learn something new about where we’ve been, who we are, and what we can be if we better remember all of our communities and stories.
I am inspired every day by what Takaki accomplished and shared and what his book helps us understand.
Ronald Takaki's "brilliant revisionist history of America" (Publishers Weekly) is a landmark work of American history retells American history from the bottom up, through the lives of many minorities - Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and others - who helped create this country's mighty economy and rich mosaic culture. A Different Mirror brilliantly illuminates our country's defining strengths as it reveals America as a nation peopled by the world.
I go by the title AmericanStudier in my public scholarship and take that name very seriously. I believe nothing is more important for our future than better remembering our past and that pushing the nation toward its most inspiring ideals requires grappling with our hardest and most painful histories. On my AmericanStudies blog, in my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, and in all my other scholarly, public, and social media content, I am committed to sharing our histories and stories, figures and works, voices, and writing in all forms and for all audiences. I hope you’ll join me in this work by reading and sharing these great books!
The best 21st-century American literature builds on all that has come before but at the same time offers us something profoundly new, and I don’t know any book that does both those crucial things better than Henríquez’s novel.
I love that this intimate story of one undocumented family turns a mirror to our collective community, that it is defined by 2014 contexts but reveals timeless truths about love and loss, and that every time I return to it, Henríquez both rips my heart out and heals me.
The worst and best of us are here on every bracing and moving page.
A stunning novel of hopes and dreams, guilt and love—a book that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American and "illuminates the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration" (The New York Times Book Review).
When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees…
For most of my life, I have dedicated myself to confronting, combatting, or deconstructing white supremacy. It impacts everyone. Much of my work is about highlighting the ways Black people have refused and resisted racial discrimination, violence, and harm. We can never have too many tools, and equally important for me was being able to have tools that achieved their purpose. I wrote We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to remind readers that there has never been a time in the history of this country when Black people have not fought back against their oppression.
Ok, when this book debuted, there was some controversy, the cover centers one large crowbar! But when a reader really takes the time to sit with the arguments Osterweil is making, she cannot be denied.
Her book is more than a pitch to loot or even burn it all down, Osterweil wants us to understand why people loot and furthermore, she wants us to be more disturbed by the reasons for looting than the act itself.
If the truth sets us free, then we should all be willing to ask the hard questions. This book does that.
A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy.
Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent tactics reflect badly on the broader movement.
But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class -- not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
EM Forster said, "Only Connect." That has inspired my life and work. The Oxford Times published my Oxtopian castaway series, and those life stories were turned into three books. The castaways, with links to Oxford, were from five continents. One of those castaways was Kenyan-born Nancy Mudenyo Hunt. Nancy founded the Nasio Trust, which has transformed the lives of hundreds of disadvantaged young people in West Kenya and Oxfordshire. With friends, I’m currently fundraising to build the first community library in West Kenya. Nancy asked if we could write a book together, and we did. We wrote a novel inspired by her life.
Barack Obama’s father was part of the story of Kenya’s road to freedom, and yet his son, Barrack, hardly knew him. His father met Barack’s mother while on a scholarship to the USA but abandoned her and his son when he returned to Kenya in 1964 and became a senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance.
We researched his life when writing our book. My co-author, Nancy Mudenyo Hunt, is also of Luo ancestry. Her father attended Obama’s funeral. This memoir is a testimony to the struggle of children of mixed heritage to decide on their identity. I find it sad that the young Obama is identified by the father who left him and not by his mother who cherished him.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more…
