My Favorite Books

American Presidents

Matthew Algeo, Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure:  The True Story of a Great American Road Trip

George E. Allen, Presidents Who Have Known Me

Louis Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt (The American Presidents Series)

Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower:  Soldier and President

Joyce Appleby, Thomas Jefferson (The American Presidents Series)

Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (The American Presidents Series)

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Michael R. Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945

Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage:  Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989

Kai Bird, The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter

H.W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

H.W. Brands, T.R.:  The Last Romantic

H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

H.W. Brands, Woodrow Wilson (The American Presidents Series)

Douglas Brinkley, Gerald R. Ford (The American Presidents Series)

Alan Brinkley, John F. Kennedy (The American Presidents Series)

Robert Brookhiser, Founding Father:  Rediscovering George Washington 

Minor Ferris Buchanan, Holt Collier: His Life, His Roosevelt Hunts, and The Origin of the Teddy Bear

Josiah Bunting III, Ulysses S. Grant (The American Presidents Series)

James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, George Washington (The American Presidents Series)

Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison (The American Presidents Series)

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson

Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Jimmy Carter, Living Faith

Ron Chernow, Grant

Lynne Cheney, James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

Lynne Cheney, The Virginia Dynasty: Four Presidents and the Creation of the American Nation

Jared Cohen, Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America

Gail Collins, William Henry Harrison (The American President Series)

John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson:  A Biography

Matthew R. Costello, The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President

Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President

Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963

Robert Dallek, Harry S. Truman (The American Presidents Series)

John W. Dean, Warren G. Harding (The American Presidents Series)

John Patrick Diggins, John Adams (The American Presidents Series)

John Patrick Diggins, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History

Aida D. Donald, Citizen Soldier: A Life of Harry S. Truman

Aida D. Donald, Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt

David Herbert Donald, Lincoln

Elizabeth Drew, Richard M. Nixon (The American Presidents Series)

John S.D. Eisenhower, Zachary Taylor (The American Presidents Series)

Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency:  George Washington

Paul Finkelman, Millard Fillmore (The American Presidents Series)

James Thomas Flexner, Washington:  The Indispensable Man

Charles Bracelen Flood, Grant’s Final Victory:  Ulysses S. Grant’s Heroic Last Year

Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights:  Moral Courage and Political Risks

E. Stanly Godbold, Jr., Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924-1974

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times

Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals:  The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit:  Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Annette Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson (The American Presidents Series)

Henry F. Graff, Grover Cleveland (The American Presidents Series)

David Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge (The American Presidents Series)

Gary Hart, James Monroe (The American Presidents Series)

John M. Hilpert and Zachary M. Hilpert, Campaigns and Hurricanes: A History of Presidential Visits to Mississippi

Michael F. Holt, Franklin Pierce (The American Presidents Series)

Roy Jenkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (The American Presidents Series)

Zackary Karabell, Chester Alan Arthur (The American Presidents Series)

Zachary Karabell, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election

John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

Michael Korda, Ulysses S. Grant:  The Unlikely Hero

Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin

William E. Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover (The American Presidents Series)

James Mann, George W. Bush (The American Presidents Series)

John F. Marszalek, The Petticoat Affair:  Manners, Mutiny and Sex in Andrew Jackson’s White House

Gary May, John Tyler (The American Presidents Series)

David McCullough, John Adams

David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt

David McCullough, Truman

George McGovern, Abraham Lincoln (The American Presidents Series)

Tim McGrath, James Monroe: A Life

James M. McPherson, Tried By War:  Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

John Meacham, In the Hands of the People: Thomas Jefferson on Equality, Faith Freedom, Compromise, and the Art of Citizenship

John Meacham, The Soul of America:  The Battle for Our Better Angels

Aaron David Miller, The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President

Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex

Robert Moskin, Mr. Truman’s War:  The Final Victories of World War II and the Birth of the Post War World

Timothy Naftali, George H.W. Bush (The American Presidents Series)

Barack Obama, A Promised Land (The Presidential Memoirs, Volume 1)

Patricia O’Toole, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House

Charles Peters, Lyndon Johnson (The American Presidents Series)

Kevin Phillips, William McKinley (The American Presidents Series)

Louis L. Picone, Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon

Robert V. Remini, John Quincy Adams (The American Presidents Series)

Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson

David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

Ira Rutkow, James A. Garfield (The American Presidents Series)

Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln:  The Prairie Years and the War Years

Joe Scarborough, Saving Freedom: Truman, The Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency

John Seigenthaler, James K. Polk (The American Presidents Series)

Gene Smith, When the Cheering Stopped:  The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson

Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy

Hans L. Trefousse, Rutherford B. Hayes (The American Presidents Series)

Tony L. Turnbow, Hardened to Hickory: The Missing Chapter in Andrew Jackson's Life

Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant:  American Hero, American Myth

Ronald C. White, American Ulysses:  A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Tom Wicker, Dwight D. Eisenhower (The American Presidents Series)

Ted Widmer, Martin Van Buren (The American Presidents Series)

Sean Wilentz, Andrew Jackson (The American Presidents Series)

Garry Wills, James Madison (The American Presidents Series)

Julian E. Zelizer, Jimmy Carter (The American Presidents Series)


U.S. History and Biography

Vladimir Alexandrov, The Black Russian

Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South

Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise To Globalism:  American Foreign Policy Since 1938

Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage:  Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and The Opening of the American West

Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the Word Anew:  The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders

Michael B. Ballard, Grant at Vicksburg: The General and the Siege

Haley Barbour with Jere Nash, America's Great Storm: Leading through Hurricane Katrina

James F. Barnett, Jr., The Natchez Indians:  A History to 1735

Allen Barra, The Last Coach:  A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant

John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

H.W. Brands, The First American:  The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

H.W. Brands, The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr

H.W. Brands, Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, The Second Generation of American Giants

Lindy Boggs, Washington Through a Purple Veil:  Memoirs of a Southern Woman

Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography

Victoria E. Bynum, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War

Thomas D. Clark and John D.W. Guice, The Old Southwest, 1795-1830: Frontiers in Conflict

Rick Cleveland, Boo:  A Life in Baseball, Well-Lived

William Cooper, Jefferson Davis: American

Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond’s America

Stephen Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi after Reconstruction, 1877-1917

William C. Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness: The Natchez Trace and the Civilization of the Southern Frontier

William C. Davis, The Greatest Fury: The Battle of New Orleans and the Rebirth of America

William C. Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America

William C. Davis, The Rogue Republic: How Would-be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, Valley Forge

Jack D. Elliott, Jr. and Mary Ann Wells, Cotton Gin Port: A Frontier Settlement on the Upper Tombigbee

Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic

Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers:  The Revolutionary Generation

Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace:  America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown

Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1866 – 1877

Eric Foner, Forever Free:  The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction

Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

Ernest Gordon, Through the Valley of the Kwai: From Death-Camp Despair to Spiritual Triumph 

John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power

Winston Groom, Shiloh 1862

Winston Groom, Vicksburg 1863

S.C. Gwynne, Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War

Gerard Helferich, High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta

George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 12)

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 5)

Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, The State of Jones

David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear:  The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 9)

Robert Khayat, The Education of a Lifetime

Harry S. Laver, The Leadership of Ulysses S. Grant:  A General Who Will Fight

Andro Linklater, An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army and Agent 13 in the Spanish Secret Service

John F. Marszalek, Sherman:  A Soldier’s Passion for Order

David McCullough, 1776

David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas – The Creation of the Panama Canal: 1870-1914

David McCullough, The Pioneers:  The Heroic Story of the Settlers who Brought the American Ideal West

David McCullough, The Wright Brothers

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom:  The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 6)

James M. McPherson, War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865

James McPherson, The War That Forged A Nation:  Why The Civil War Still Matters

John Meacham, American Gospel:  God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause:  The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 2)

Donald L. Miller, Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

Dennis J. Mitchell, A New History of Mississippi

G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery with Michael B. Ballard and Craig S. Piper, Sonny Montgomery:  The Veteran’s Champion

Willie Morris, Shifting Interludes: Selected Essays Edited by Jack Bales

Willie Morris, My Mississippi

Andrew P. Mullins, Jr., The Measure of Our Days: The Writings of William F. Winter

James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations:  The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 10)

James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 11)

Christian Pinnen and Charles Weeks, Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land

David L. Roll, George Marshall: Defender of the Republic

Ben Z. Rose, John Stark:  Maverick General

Sid Salter, Jack Cristil: Voice of the MSU Bulldogs

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel, Vicksburg is the Key:  The Struggle for the Mississippi River

Timothy B. Smith, The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign

Timothy B. Smith, James Z. George: Mississippi’s Great Commoner

Timothy B. Smith, The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi

Deanne Love Stephens, The Mississippi Gulf Coast Seafood Industry: A People's History

David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution

Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Ordeal of the Reunion:  A New History of Reconstruction

Martha H. Swain, Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years

Craig L. Symonds, American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg

Emory Thomas, Robert E. Lee

Don H. Thompson, Stennis:  Plowing a Straight Furrow, The Story of Statesman John C. Stennis

Janice Branch Tracy, Mississippi Moonshine Politics:  How Bootleggers & the Law Kept a Dry State Soaked

Bill Waller, Straight Ahead:  The Memoirs of a Mississippi Governor

Richard White, The Republic For Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

Jay Winik, April 1865:  The Month That Saved America

Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 4)

Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters:  What Made the Founders Different

Michael E. Woods, Arguing Until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy

Ben Wynne, The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis


American Politics

Bill Bradley, We Can All Do Better

Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values:  America’s Moral Crisis

Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict:  An Insider’s Challenging View of Politics, Power, and the Pulpit

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Our Divided Political Heart:  The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent

E.J. Dionne, Jr., They Only Look Dead:  Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics

Louis L. Gould, Grand Old Party:  A History of the Republicans

Philip Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America

Erle Johnston, Politics:  Mississippi Style

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It's Even Worse Than It Looks:  How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism

Christopher Matthews, Hardball:  How Politics is Played—Told By One Who Knows the Game

Charles Murray, Losing Ground:  American Social Policy 1950-1980

Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, Mississippi Politics:  The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006

Curtis Wilkie, The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men

Bob Woodward, Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom

Bob Woodward, The Secret Man:  The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat

Bob Woodward, Veil:  The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987

Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren:  Inside The Supreme Court


Civil Rights and Race Relations

Natalie G. Adams and James H. Adams, Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters:  America in the King Years 1954-63

Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire:  America in the King Years 1963-65

Taylor Branch, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement

Nancy K. Bristow, Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College

Ellis Cose, Color-Blind:  Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World

Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country:  Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution

Harlon Dalton, Racial Healing:  Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

William Doyle, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962

Carolyn Renee Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975

Myrlie Evers-Williams and Manning Marble, The Autobiography of Medgar Evers:  A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches

Myrlie Evers-Williams, Watch Me Fly:  What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

Richard Grant, The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi

William P. Hustwit, Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education

Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America

John Lewis, Walking with the Wind:  A Memoir of the Movement

Glenn C. Loury, One By One From The Inside Out:  Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America

James P. Marshall, Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965

Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow

Jon Meacham, His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

Jerry Mitchell, The Preacher and the Klansman

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Willie Morris, The Courting of Marcus Dupree

Willie Morris, The Ghosts of Medgar Evers:  A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood

Willie Morris, Yazoo:  Integration in a Deep-Southern Town

Minion K.C. Morrison, Aaron Henry of Mississippi: Inside Agitator

Melany Neilson, Even Mississippi

M.J. O’Brien, We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired

Buck O’Neil, I Was Right On Time:  My Journey From the Negro Leagues to the Majors

David M. Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Ted Ownby, The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi

Stephanie R. Rolph, Resisting Equality:  The Citizens’ Council, 1954-1989

Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections On a Multicultural Society

Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975

Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character

Katheryn Stockett, The Help

William Sturkey, Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White

Julius E. Thompson, Lynchings in Mississippi:  A History, 1865-1965

Maryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South

Jim Wallis, American’s Original Sin:  Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to a New America

Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer:  The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy

Cornell West, Race Matters

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Curtis Wilkie, When Evil Lived in Laurel: The “White Knights” and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer

Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers:  Mississippi Martyr
 

World History

Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking:  The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

Jung Chang, Wild Swans:  Three Daughters of China

Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Philip Freeman, Alexander the Great

Graham E. Fuller, Turkey and the Arab Spring: Leadership in the Middle East

Ernest Gordon, Through the Valley of the Kwai: From Death-Camp Despair to Spiritual Triumph

Richard Haass, The World: A Brief Introduction

Peter Hart, The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War

Patrick Howarth, Attila, King of the Huns: The Man and the Myth

Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War:  Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War

Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra

Robert K. Massie, Peter The Great:  His Life and World

Martin Meredith, Mandela:  A Biography

Milton W. Meyer, China:  A Concise History

Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945

J.A.G. Roberts, A Concise History of China

Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

Edward Shaughnessy (Editor), China: Empire and Civilization

Martin Sixsmith, Russia:  A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Jonathan Spencer, Mao Zedong

Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August

Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall:  Six Presidents and China:  An Investigative History

Derek Wilson, Peter the Great

Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval:  America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800