Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in July 2024. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on MORE TO COME. Enjoy.

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Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (2013) by Joseph J. Ellis combines original accounts, insightful analysis, and first-class storytelling skills to bring the reader into the critical summer of 1776, when the future of American independence was very much in doubt. Few historians write as knowledgeably and effectively about the revolutionary period in America as Ellis, who in this short work brimming with fresh perspective addresses what he calls the “crescendo moment” in American history.

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The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War (2024) by Erik Larson examines the motives and actions of a small minority of rich white men who decided that slavery—and the lavish lifestyle owning other human beings enabled for them and their families—was worth defending to the point of tearing the country apart. In his familiar storytelling style, compelling the reader to keep turning pages, Larson focuses on the chaotic months between Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency on November 6, 1860, and the Confederacy’s shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Much like other times of conflict, it is a period marked by “tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals.”

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Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy (2023) by Jamie Raskin is a searing memoir covering the first forty-five days of 2021 that saw Congressman Raskin lose his only son to suicide, endure a mob’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to try and upend the election of Joe Biden, and lead the second impeachment against the former president who planned the outlines of the assault and incited that mob. On the very first pages he reminds us that we had too long looked away from a very old threat, the one raised by Alexander Hamilton in the prescient Federalist No. 1 that literally unfolded on January 6, 2021. The work is a “vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all.”

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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) by Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust who teaches at Yale, is a guide to resisting authoritarianism. This small but powerful work provides present-day advice in the vein of that used by the Founding Fathers when they sought to build a governmental system of checks and balances that would be resistant to the tyranny that overcame ancient democracies. Snyder is no believer in American exceptionalism. Instead, he notes that while we “might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats . . . this would be a misguided reflex.”

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Helsinki’s New Living Room—Oodi Library (2021) by Wif Stenger (for the Scandinavia Review) describes the public enthusiasm for the design of the city’s new flagship library. Oodi is a “wavy, radiant structure” that opened in late 2018 as Finland celebrated its 101st Independence Day. Creativity is at the heart of Oodi (“Ode”), a spirit that has been taken in kind by its visitors. “The willingness of people to use and share the building in creative and respectful ways has been delightful to experience,” said the lead architect for the project.

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What’s on the nightstand for August (subject to change at the whims of the reader)

• The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk
• Red Notice by Bill Browder
• The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
• G.E. Kidder Smith Builds: The Travel of Architectural Photography by Angelo Maggi
• The CIA: An Imperial History by Hugh Wilford

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

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NOTE: Click to see the books I read in June of 2024 and to see the books I read in 2023. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

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Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash