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
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
Gail Collins, William Henry Harrison (The American President Series)
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
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, 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, Truman
George McGovern, Abraham Lincoln (The American Presidents Series)
James M. McPherson, Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
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)
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)
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
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)
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
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
H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
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
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, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America
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
Ernest Gordon, Through the Valley of the Kwai: From Death-Camp Despair to Spiritual Triumph
Winston Groom, Shiloh 1862
Winston Groom, Vicksburg 1863
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
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 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
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)
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)
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, James Z. George: Mississippi’s Great Commoner
David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution
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
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
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
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
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
Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta
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
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
Ted Ownby, The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi
Stephanie R. Rolph, Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954-1989
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections On a Multicultural Society
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
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
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
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
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
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
