Well, we’ve reached the heart of summer!  Time to kick back at the hottest part of the day, lay in the hammock or by the ocean, and fall into your summer reading list.  Because we at Teaching American History fully understand the value of a good book, our faculty has stepped up to help our audience choose their big reads of the summer.

Mack Mariani recommends Book and Dagger by Elyse Graham. The book chronicles the role that historians and other academic researchers played as spies in Europe before and during World War II.   It’s an easy read and a great reminder that the research skills and attention to detail that teachers and scholars bring to their work can come in handy in unexpected ways!

Stephen F. Knott has enjoyed the following:

• The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It (2024), by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague. A chilling account of the effort to overturn the election of 2020 culminating with the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021.
• Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (2014), by John McKee Barr. An encyclopedic account of decades of Lincoln hatred promoted by “lost cause” devotees. These devotees have found a receptive audience in our day.
• This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016), by Matthew Karp. An eye-opening account of the campaign by Southern politicians prior to the Civil War to make the expansion of slavery the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.
• Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (2023), by Fergus Bordewich. This often neglected period of American history receives its due in this book which recounts, among other things, the battle against the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations by President Ulysses S. Grant. A sobering reminder that Appomattox did not mark the end of the American Civil War.
• [Add hyperlink to book on Amazon in the title] The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal (2019), by Stephen F. Knott. An account of how we got to where we are today by an exceptional author.

Tom Bruscino has a few recs: 

First, Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019) is absolutely essential for a clearer understanding of key developments in Western and World History. For founding principles in American history, especially as they relate to slavery and the Constitution, take a look at Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding (2018). Fulton Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West (1948) is a great examination of the stakes of the ideological competition with communism, while also serving as a snapshot of postwar American culture and politics that will sound surprisingly familiar today. Finally, Michael Kort, The Vietnam War Reexamined (2017) is fair, thoughtful, and useful in understanding and teaching about that fraught conflict.

Of course, Dan Monroe has a Lincoln recommendation! Sovereign of a Free People: Abraham Lincoln, Majority Rule, and Slavery by James H. Read. Read’s study is a fine overview of Lincoln’s efforts to sustain majority rule amidst dramatic efforts to thwart the same, such as Stephen A. Douglas’s bogus “popular sovereignty” policy that allowed slavery to expand without a clear process to prevent that expansion, thereby cheating the antislavery majority.  

And a couple of new takes on the Declaration of Independence by respected friends and colleagues:

• The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty by Bradley Birzer.
• Divided Over The Declaration: How An Enduring Debate Sustains the Vision of America by David J. Bobb and Tony Williams.

Joe Griffith will be reading America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, by, of all people, the bass player for his favorite folk-rock band, the Avett Brothers.

Ben Slomski will be diving in to: 

• The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes – an epic history of the Manhattan Project. World history, physics primer, scientific treatise, and spy novel all-in-one.
• Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law by Kate Elizabeth Brown – one of the few books to examine Hamilton’s lasting influence in law and how the Federalist legacy has been preserved through legal doctrine and cases.
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville – one of the great American books. Whales, commerce, religion, and philosophy.

Eric Sands recommends Richard Beeman – Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. A fantastic account of the constitutional convention and the contributions of the various actors.  

John Moser will be reading: 

• James Ellroy, Red Sheet. Every once in a while I reward myself with a novel, and I love Ellroy’s noir style.
• Steve Pincus, The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for an Activist Government. Pincus claims that most of the Founders were less interested in the natural rights part of the Declaration than they were in establishing a powerful government.
• David J. Bobb and Tony Williams, Divided over the Declaration: How an Enduring Debate Sustains the Vision of America. Tony Williams was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, which highlights the continuing importance of the Declaration of Independence.
• Stephen F. Knott, Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency. Longtime MAHG faculty member Steve Knott focuses on the dangers of conspiracy theories, and the presidents who promote them.
• Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. The author embraces the radical idea that we can engage with people who don’t agree with us without becoming nasty and vituperative.

And finally, Stephen Tootle’s reading list is dominated by Teaching American History friends and family! 

Stephen Knott’s Conspirator in Chief, Tony Williams and David Bobb’s Divided over the Declaration lead us off.  George Nash just put out a little book called Books and the Founding Fathers and Their Influence on America Today.  I just finished that one.  Jeffrey Rosen’s Pursuit of Liberty just arrived yesterday.  I’m reading an old book by John Patrick Diggins called Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America.  Adrian Wooldridge’s The Revolutionary Center just came in last week but I haven’t started it yet.  I just finished reading a novel called Theo of Golden that was good–it will make you cry.  I’m also reading some late 20th century Calvinist fundamentalism in a compilation of the writings of Francis A. Schaefer.  I’m re-reading David Berman’s book of poetry; that one is called Actual Air.  I continue to work on finishing the Twain and Buckley biographies and a big history of Mexico, but I’m not optimistic that I’ll finish them this summer.  I’m almost finished reading a biography of Garfield so I need to just polish that one off so I can get it off my nightstand!  

But summer reading is just a continuation of the reading I do all year long.  I read bits and pieces of books that I need for history stuff and I always have big stacks of books on both nightstands that I am reading start-to-finish.  What an honor it is to be able to read all these wonderful books and be the beneficiary of so much hard work and love from wonderful scholars and writers!  I’m humbled and happy every day to be reminded of how little I know and how much more there is to learn.