Here are 100 books that The Storm Is Here fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
I always love it when a work of history connects with and helps me understand the present, and Linda Gordon’s book certainly does that.
Not only does she provide a riveting account of the revival of the Klan in the 1920s, she clearly demonstrates the tremendous impact the organization had on America during this period and long beyond, through its skillful use of demagoguery, its canny media strategy and its underlying politics of resentment.
Extraordinary national acclaim accompanied the publication of award-winning historian Linda Gordon's disturbing and markedly timely history of the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dramatically challenging our preconceptions of the hooded Klansmen responsible for establishing a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South, this "second Klan" spread in states principally above the Mason-Dixon line by courting xenophobic fears surrounding the flood of immigrant "hordes" landing on American shores. "Part cautionary tale, part expose" (Washington Post), The Second Coming of the KKK "illuminates the surprising scope of the movement" (The New Yorker); the Klan attracted four-to-six-million members through secret…
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’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
We tend to think that the success of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s was somehow inevitable. But as Clive Webb shows in this marvelous history, this was not really the case. Resistance to civil rights, especially in the South, was deep-seated, widespread, and vicious.
Unearthing the almost forgotten history of racist extremists such as Bryant Bowles, John Kaspar, J.B. Stoner, Rear Admiral John Crommelin, and Major General Edwin Walker, Webb reminds us of the sobering reality that there is often very little separating extremist voices from those of many “ordinary” Americans.
This title connects civil rights opponents to America's tradition of radical conservatism. The decade following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision saw white southerners mobilize in massive resistance to racial integration. Most segregationists conceded that ultimately they could only postpone the demise of Jim Crow. Some militant whites, however, believed it possible to win the civil rights struggle. Histories of the black freedom struggle, when they mention these racist zealots at all, confine them to the margin of the story. These extremist whites are caricatured as ineffectual members of the lunatic fringe. Civil rights activists, however, saw them…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
I first read this book as a student in the 1990s, and it has always stayed with me, becoming more and more relevant as time has gone by.
Covering films like Rambo: First Blood Part II, Red Dawn, and Top Gun, magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, weekend paintballers, the NRA, and the foreign policy (mis)adventures of the Reagan and Bush administrations, alongside the activities of various white supremacists, Gibson’s book is a wholly enlightening account of the ongoing appeal of guns, violence, paramilitarism, and what we would now call “toxic masculinity” in American life.
Argues that America's defeat in Vietnam and challenges to the status quo have created a crisis in American identity, and have given birth to a reactionary new war culture
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…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
Harrowing, haunting, and utterly compelling, Langer’s superb investigation of the murder of an Ethiopian immigrant called Mulugeta Seraw by racist skinheads in Portland, Oregon, in 1988 always reminds me of the importance of good journalism, the demands of justice and the power of empathy.
It is a book of focused, local history with a much wider story to tell.
A riveting account of a skinhead killing and a chilling look at the world in which it happened
On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride met for an evening of beer and racist banter. Later that night, they encountered three Ethiopians; a street fight broke out and Kenneth Mieske brutally beat Mulugeta Seraw with a bat. In the early-morning hours, Seraw died.
Drawing on more than ten years of original research, award-winning journalist Elinor Langer takes the Seraw case as the occasion for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement…
For more than half a century, I have been writing books and articles about America’s past, with most of my work focusing on 20th-century political history. I believe that, except in the 1850s, which led to a bloody civil war, Americans have never been more divided. Although I have always believed in objectivity in my work, I share Leo Tolstoy’s belief that history is ultimately a form of moral reflection, that a conversation with the past might do more than inform us about what people have said and done; it might help make decisions about how we should live.
The roots of our national divisions run through our 250-year history and Nick Bryant, a talented British journalist and Ph.D. historian in American history has brought together the strands of that story in a readable narrative: demagoguery, the “constant curse” of slavery and its aftermath, the embrace of violence and a gun culture unmatched among democracies, the divisive nature of religion, cultural conflicts over change attitudes toward sexuality, the ongoing tension over immigration and America’s sense of “exceptionalism”...It is a painful story and not a book for Americans likely to resent an “outsider’s” critical view of America.
Bryant, who spent years in the United States as a BBC correspondent is frank to admit that he has “said goodbye to the American I had fallen in love with as a teenager,” but “my love affair with the United States has not ended.”
'This is a must read book for all those who love America and want it to be healed.' -- Justin Webb, presenter of the BBC's Today programme and Americast
'Unflinching and insightful.' -- Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent
From the author of When America Stopped Being Great, an insightful and urgent reassessment of America's past, present and future - as a country which is forever at war with itself.
The Forever War tells the story of how America's extreme polarization is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be…
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.
John Price is a liberal Republican, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but choosing to self-identify today as a moderate. This book details his political coming to age, including being co-founder of the Ripon Society. Following Nixon’s 1968 election, Price joined his White House staff as one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s deputies, serving as director of the Urban Affairs Council. Nixon attended twenty-one of its twenty-three Cabinet Room meetings. Nixon was adamantly anti-Communist, but what John shows is that, far from being a die-hard conservative, his approach to governing was that of a pragmatist, asking how best can the government help to address this issue? John and I served on the same Domestic Council but were assigned different public policy responsibilities. I’m impressed by his personal story – and by his political insights.
The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon's senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price-a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller's campaigns-joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies, and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, and President Eisenhower.
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…
Michael Patrick Lynch is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Provost Professor of the Humanities at the University of Connecticut. His books have been translated into a dozen languages and include On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It, The Internet of Us, True to Life (Editor’s Choice, The New York Times Sunday Book Review), and Know-it-All Society (winner of the 2019 George Orwell Award). Lynch’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nature, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications worldwide; his 2017 TED talk has been viewed nearly 2 million times. He lives in CT with his family and one very philosophical dog.
This book has become a touchstone in conversations about democratic erosion. What I found most compelling was how it uses global and historical patterns to explain how democracies can slide into authoritarianism—slowly, and often legally. It helped me connect institutional changes in the U.S. to larger global trends in democratic backsliding.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that today’s democracies rarely collapse through sudden coups. Instead, they are gradually weakened from within by elected leaders who stretch or disregard institutional norms to expand their own power. These changes frequently occur under the appearance of legality, making democratic decay harder to detect.
Drawing on historical and global examples, the authors show how democracies slide into authoritarianism when two foundational norms begin to erode: mutual toleration (the recognition that political rivals are legitimate) and institutional forbearance (the practice of exercising restraint even when one holds legal authority). When those norms break down,…
'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before.
Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are…
I’ve long been interested in politicians who challenged ideological orthodoxy and crossed partisan lines. That interest led me to research the seeming disappearance of moderate Republican elected officials. I was also curious about the generations of voters who supported them. Since I started asking questions about the mid-twentieth-century GOP, I have become interested in the history of the Republican Party dating back to its origins in the 1850s. The Republican Party’s transformation since the days of Abraham Lincoln is fascinating and provides insight into US history, governance, and race relations in nuanced ways that are helpful for understanding the US today.
Nicole Hemmer’s insightful look at and redefinition of the Reagan Era is the type of political history I admire the most. It proves the power of historical context for reexamining contemporary politics. This book is much more than an explainer for Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP, but it demystifies his rise by tracing the power struggles waged by ultra-partisan Republicans in the 1990s.
It makes a chaotic and norm-breaking era in our politics legible and compelling. This very recent history will come into clearer view over time, but for now, Hemmer provides a great service by weighing in early and helping us decipher the nature of today’s politics.
A bold new history of modern conservatism that finds its origins in the populist right-wing politics of the 1990s
Ronald Reagan has long been lionized for building a conservative coalition sustained by an optimistic vision of Americanexceptionalism, small government, and free markets. But as historian Nicole Hemmer reveals, the Reagan coalition was short-lived; it fell apart as soon as its charismatic leader left office. In the 1990s — a decade that has yet to be recognized as the breeding ground for today’s polarizing politics — changing demographics and the emergence of a new political-entertainment media fueled the rise of combative…
As a historian of the U.S. presidency, I have long been fascinated by the ways in which aspirants for the White House energize and harness popular support for their candidacy. Tracing the development of electioneering practices from the early 1800s to today has been fascinating. Is there a connection between the hickory sprigs worn by Andrew Jackson’s supporters and the MAGA hats worn by Donald Trump’s supporters? Between the political rallies of William Henry Harrison and those of every modern presidential candidate? Between the derision leveled at politically active women in the 1830s and that directed at Sarah Palin and Hilary Rodham Clinton in the twenty-first century? You betcha!
This collection set me on the road of thinking about how politics consisted of more than just voting and holding office. Essays by Nancy Isenberg (on Aaron Burr and sexual politics), Jeff Pasley (on Thomas Jefferson and blocks of cheese), Andrew Robertson (on electioneering rituals), and Rosemarie Zagarri (on women and political parties) have been particularly influential in shaping my thinking about the interaction between traditional politics and cultural politics.
In pursuit of a more sophisticated and inclusive American history, the contributors to Beyond the Founders propose new directions for the study of the political history of the republic before 1830. In ways formal and informal, symbolic and tactile, this political world encompassed blacks, women, entrepreneurs, and Native Americans, as well as the Adamses, Jeffersons, and Jacksons, all struggling in their own ways to shape the new nation and express their ideas of American democracy. Taking inspiration from the new cultural and social histories, these political historians show that the early history of the United States was not just the…
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…
I have been interested in understanding the realities of American social and political life throughout my career as a historian. I have written about the aftermath of populism, a biography of a New Dealer who went to prison for stuffing ballot boxes, the hidden history behind the Gateway Arch, and the year after Pearl Harbor. More than ever, I find that candid assessments of who we have been are necessary to understand where we are today.
Mettler and Lieberman place our current challenges within the broader context of other democratic crises in American history.
Readers will find it helpful to understand that democracy has been a contested part of our past, from the early days of the Republic to Watergate. Mettler and Lieberman remind us that protecting and enhancing democracy is an ongoing task.
While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present.
In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound - even fatal - damage to the American democratic…
