Between the World and Me
Coates writes to his son about the Black body in America, from Howard to the loss of Prince Jones.
2,234-word summary · 10 min read
history + nonfiction
11 books tagged both “history” and “nonfiction”.
John Adams
McCullough follows Adams from Braintree lawyer to second president.
2,515-word summary · 11 min read
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
In 1920s Oklahoma, Osage oil wealth makes tribal members targets for murder, forcing the young FBI under Tom White to expose the conspiracy behind the Reign of…
2,403-word summary · 11 min read
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Washington rowers led by Joe Rantz chase gold in Hitler's Berlin in 1936.
2,439-word summary · 11 min read
The Prince
Machiavelli advises Lorenzo on rule through fear and love, fortune, cruelty and mercy.
2,204-word summary · 10 min read
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Diamond argues geography and crops explain why some societies expanded faster than others.
3,432-word summary · 15 min read
The Devil in the White City
Architect Burnham builds the 1893 Chicago Fair while H.H. Holmes builds his murder hotel nearby.
2,020-word summary · 9 min read
Unbroken
Louis Zamperini survives a Pacific crash, sharks and POW camps after running in the Berlin Olympics.
3,263-word summary · 15 min read
Night
Elie Wiesel's account of Sighet, the cattle cars, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, told in short flat sections by a boy about fifteen. Why the book carries the year…
2,594-word summary · 12 min read
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank's diary explained: two years in the Secret Annex, the entries on fear and boredom, what Otto Frank cut, and why the book still reads like a…
1,913-word summary · 9 min read
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Harari's Sapiens from cover to cover: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural bargain, shared fictions like money and nations, and the scientific centuries…
2,145-word summary · 10 min read