Best reads from 2021: History and Biography

It is that time of year again when I look back at the best books I have read in the past year.  This has been a rather pathetic year for my blog.  I have not posted anything since last year’s book lists.  There are a lot of reasons for that – pastoral struggles and parenting an emotionally draining 4-year-old top the list, in addition to pulling off the weddings of our two oldest children and various COVID-19 complications.

Life may have been pathetic with regard to my blog this year, but I did carve out some time to read some very good books.  As always, I have divided my year in review book posts into 3 topics – history/biography, ministry and ministry related, and fiction.

Thanks to everyone who has shared with my how much they appreciate these lists.  I have had people remark that they have used them to guide their own reading, as well as their gift buying for the readers in their family.

Here are brief descriptions of the best history/biography books I read in the past year as well a list of the rest of what I read.

The Brothers York:  A Royal Tragedy by Thomas Penn.  I have always been fascinated by medieval history, and although I have read a book or two about the Wars of the Roses in England, the history of those events have never been brought to life like they did in this book.  Penn tells the tragic story of the York Brothers with tremendous detail and great writing.

 

Coolidge by Amity Schlaes.  I did not know much about Calvin Coolidge before I read this book.  After reading this wonderful biography, I wish we had more Calvin Coolidges in public office in America.  What made Coolidge so special?  Schlaes does a wonderful job explaining what made him tick – a faithful, lifelong commitment to smaller government, public thrift and personal integrity.  He is probably the one president who cut the government budget year after year while in office.

 

The Fall of the Ottomans:  The Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan.  When we think about World War 1, often the only thing we know is the trenches in the Western Front of France.  (See below)  But World War 1 was truly a global war.  Rogan tells the story of the war in Ottoman Empire, places we know today as Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Israel, and provides a fascinating and at times disturbing survey of those events.

 

The Western Front by Nick Lloyd.  As noted above, the Western Front is usually all we think about when we think of World War 1.  And what we assume is that it is a boring story of static, trench warfare.  Nick Lloyd, while not hiding the grisly price paid in lives on the Front, lets us take a peek behind the scenes at the decision-making behind the battles.  As each side dug in, both sides were surprisingly creative in trying to find ways to break the deadlock and achieve victory. 

Race and Culture:  A World View by Thomas Sowell.  I am ashamed I have not read much of Thomas Sowell’s writings baring an occasional newspaper column.  Sowell is a brilliant thinker and a trained economist with the ability to see things most people do not.  In this book, Sowell ruminates on both races and cultures and pokes holes in many of the modern assumptions we hold about those topics.

 

Fateful Lightning:  A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo.  I have read a number of American Civil War surveys.  This is one of the best.  If you are looking for a Civil War book about campaigns and battles, look elsewhere.  If you want someone to guide you through the origins, politics and motivations of the War or to show you how people lived their personal and religious lives during the war, this is your book.  And the epilogue was actually the best part.  In it Guelzo unpacks the roots of the Confederate Lost Cause that still affects our country today.

 

Robert E. Lee:  A Life by Allen Guelzo.  Allen Guelzo begins this biography with a question – how do you write a book about a traitor?  While Lee had many sterling qualities, at heart Guelzo sees him as a traitor to his own country.  The biography is exhaustive and well-written, covering his whole life, not just his Civil War battles.  He ends the book discussing our modern-day culture’s rejection of Lee, not because he was a traitor but because he was a (very reluctant) slave owner, having received slaves in his father-in-law’s estate. 

 

The Last King of America:  The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts.  Roberts is one of the best biographers out there right now, and this book is revisionist biography at its best.  Recently hundreds of thousands of pages of George III’s papers have been released for study, creating a treasure trove of new material.  Roberts argues that George was not the tyrant Thomas Jefferson made him out to be, but a moral, kind-hearted ruler who woefully misunderstood the attitude of the American colonists and who at pivotal times, struggled with a form of manic depression.

 

2^nd Tier reads, still excellent and recommended:

Philip and Alexander:  Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy

The Habsburgs:  To Rule the World by Martyn Rady

Great Society:  A New History by Amity Schlaes

Island of the Lost:  An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett

The War of the Copper Kings by C. B. Glasscock

Blood and Treasure:  Daniel Boone and the Fight for American’s First Frontier by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Germantown:  A Military History of the Battle for Philadelphia, October 4, 1777 by Michael C. Harris

Double Crossed:  The Missionaries who Spied for the United States during the Second World War by Matthew Avery Sutton

Madhouse at the End of the Earth:  The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton

The Road to Jonestown:  Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn

The Arsenal of Democracy:  FDR, Detroit and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War by A. J. Baime

Seven Days in Hell:  Canada’s Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers by David O’Keefe

A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood:  The Bible and the American Civil War by James P. Byrd

War on the Border:  Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion by Jeff Guinn

Until Justice Be Done:  America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kate Masur

The Crooked Path to Abolition:  Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution by James Oakes

The Indispensables:  The Diverse Soldier-Mariners who Shapes the Country, Founded the Navy and Rowed Washington across the Delaware by Patrick O’Donnell

The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah:  Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville by Wiley Sword

Land of Tears:  The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa by Robert Harms

Sicily ’43:  The First Assault on Fortress Europe by James Holland

The Black Prince:  England’s Greatest Medieval Warrior by Michael Jones

To Rescue the Republic:  Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union and the Crisis of 1876 by Bret Baier

 

3^rd Tier reads, disappointing in some ways:

The Company:  The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown

Winter King:  Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn

Summer of Blood:  England’s First Revolution by Dan Jones

 

Uggh!  I am amazed I finished it….

Alaric the Goth:  An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome by Douglas Boin