Books – Detail

Click on a genre link to see the matching books; click again to return to the full Athenaeum Bookshelf.

Abundance
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson

From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.

288 pp. - History

America, América: A New History of the New World
Greg Grandin

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.

737 pp. - History

Antisemitism in America: A Warning
Chuck Schumer

In an urgent and personal new book, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-elected Jewish official in America, sheds light on the Jewish American experience and sounds the alarm about the troubling resurgence of antisemitism.

New York Times Bestseller

234 pp. Hardcover - History

Brits Who Shaped America: Post-Revolutionary Tales of Influence and Impact
PJ Coë

How did America turn itself from a largely agrarian society into the sophisticated, industrial and military colossus it became in the twentieth century? PJ Coë illuminates the part played by influential Britons in this astonishing transformation, from the eve to the sunset of the nineteenth century.

195 pp. - History

Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, History Books About Infection
John Green

The scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world--and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis

198 pp. Hardcover - History

Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon
A. E. Stallings

In this deliciously detailed and gossipy history of the Parthenon (AKA, Elgin) Marbles, award-winning poet and writer A. E. Stallings discusses the removal of the Marbles from the Athenian Acropolis, their misadventures before and after installation in the British Museum (from shipwreck to boxing matches), and the debate over their future and possible reunion in Greece.

233 pp. - History

A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Edna Bonhomme

A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.

286 pp. Hardcover - History

The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
Shaun Walker

The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.

433 pp. - History

The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion
Rebecca Lemov

An acclaimed historian of science uncovers the hidden history of brainwashing—and its troubling implications for today.

452 pp. Hardcover - History

Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War
Jill Eicher

The never-before-told story of the epic battle of wills between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill, as they debated the repayment of the enormous sums loaned by America to Great Britain during World War I.

341 pp. Hardcover - History

The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
(Author)

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiformthe oldest writing in the worldfrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

380 pp. Hardcover - History

The Next One Is for You: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA’s Secret American Army
Ali Watkins

From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles—a true-crime saga that illuminates Irish America’s central role in the conflict and its legacy.

326 pp. - History

Noble Fragments: the maverick who broke up the world’s greatest book
Michael Visontay

One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and sold it off in individual pages. This is the story of an Australian man’s hunt for those fragments and his family’s debt to an act of literary vandalism.

266 pp. - History

On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR
Steve Oney

An epic reported history of National Public Radio that reveals the unlikely story of one of America’s most celebrated but least understood media empires.

566 pp. - History

Patterned Brick Architecture of West New Jersey
Robert L. Thompson

Attempts to answer the vexing question of why the great preponderance of America’s patterned brick architecture is located in the ancient colony of West New Jersey, a land mass covering roughly half of present-day New Jersey. Thompson expands his story well beyond southern New Jersey, beginning in England, searching for the antecedents, both practical and artistic, to this folk-art. He also examines the patterned brick architecture found in other American colonies and its meaning vis-a-vis those building found in West New Jersey.

194 pp. - History

Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
Michael Luo

From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle to belong.

542 pp. - History

The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
Kristen Martin

The orphan story has been mythologized: Step one: While a child is still too young to form distinct memories of them, their parents die in an untimely fashion. Step two: Orphan acquires caretakers who amplify the world’s cruelty. Step three: Orphan escapes and goes on an adventure, encountering the world’s vast possibilities.

343 pp. Hardcover - History

Surviving Wall Street: A Tale of Triumph, Tragedy, and Timing
Scott L. Bok

Portrays the dramatic transformation of the investment banking business in recent decades through the tumultuous saga of one firm (Greenhill & Co., a specialist in mergers and acquisitions) and one man (Scott Bok, the longtime CEO of that firm). Written in the style of an adventure tale, this book is also a "coming of age" story for a naive young man who came to Wall Street―as thousands like him do each year―and managed to grab a front-row seat for a period of epic change.

505 pp. - History

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