Books – Detail

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

1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland
Morgan Llywelyn

A page-turning exploration of a warrior king's life, loves, and battles, bringing the facts to life with a novelist's eye for detail and drama.

256 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

Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950
Eli Erlick

Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history.

268 pp. - History

Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War
Diarmaid Ferriter

Drawing on completely new sources, Ireland's most brilliant historian shows how important the Irish War of Independence was for understanding Ireland now.

328 pp. - History

Black Citymakers: How the Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America
Marcus Anthony Hunter

Black Citymakers explores a century of socioeconomic, cultural, and political history in the Black Seventh Ward, creating a new understanding of the political agency of black residents, leaders and activists in twentieth century urban change.

286 pp. - 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

The Devil Wears Rothko
Barry Avrich

The Devil Wears Rothko charts the explosive demise of Knoedler Gallery, one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious art galleries, with detailed and salacious insight into the art fraud scandal of the century.

222 pp. - History

Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place
Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle–heartland of the North's defining industry–and the Murder Triangle–the Badlands roamed by the Glenanne gang of security forces colluding with loyalist paramilarites.

351 pp. - 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

The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People
John Kelly

A magisterial account of one of the worst disasters to strike humankind--the Great Irish Potato Famine--conveyed as lyrical narrative history from the acclaimed author of The Great Mortality

397 pp. - History

Historic Building Mythbusting: Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology
James Wright

Go to any ancient building in the land and there will be interesting and exciting stories presented to the visitor. Buildings archaeologist James Wright explains and unpicks the development of these myths and investigates the underlying truths behind them. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more engaging, romantic and compelling than the myths themselves.

228 pp. - 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 Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
Dennis McNally

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Strange Trip and the publicist of the Grateful Dead, a riveting social history of everything that led up to the 1960s counterculture movement.

420 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

The Politics of Sorrow: Unity and Allegiance Across Tibetan Exile
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Tells the story of the Group of Thirteen, a collective of chieftains and lamas from the regions of Kham and Amdo, who sought to preserve Tibet’s cultural diversity in exile. A compelling narrative of a tumultuous time that reveals the complexities of Tibetan identities then and now.

349 pp. - History

Queer Moderns: Max Ewing's Jazz Age New York
Alice T. Friedman

A richly illustrated history of the glittering world of queer artistic life in the 1920s and ’30s.

269 pp. - History

The Revelation of Ireland: 1995-2020
Diarmaid Ferriter

A masterful history of a country transformed over 25 years, from Ireland's most distinguished historian.

552 pp. - History

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
Padraic X. Scanlan

A “vigorous and engaging” (Fintan O’Toole, New Yorker) new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster

340 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

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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