Recommendations for modern history reading

I read "upstairs at the White House" which is written by the head Butler at the White house through several administrations. It gave a different perspective on the presidents and first ladies over several decades.

Not a typical "history" type book but I enjoyed it as a history buff.

I don’t have any specific book recommendations for you. But I would try to read up on McCarthyism, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the Summer of Love + Woodstock, the second-wave women’s rights movement, Watergate, the Iranian revolution, the rise of modern Christian evangelicalism and the Moral Majority, the gay rights movement and AIDS, the fall of the Soviet Union, the regional ethnic wars of the ’90s, al-Qaida and 9/11, the historic election of Barack Obama, and the explosion of technology during all that time frame. Also most of the post-war presidents would make really interesting reading.

I’ll try to make a book list for you when I get home.



ETA another great topic is how much society changed (freaked out) when the soldiers came home in ’45 and ’46. The women had been working in factories and running society and their own homes for the first time, and the men had been all over the world, experiencing new stuff and being terrorized by war. They wanted their jobs back. We went from liberation back to housewives, popping out loads of babies, in the blink of an eye. Interesting times.

On the Civil Rights Movement: Anything by Taylor Branch. He is a superb writer. Don’t let the size of his books alarm you. They are easy to read and even the chapters are broken into smaller sub-sections. His are the only books where I’ve gladly read the footnotes because they add so much to the story. Books are: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, At Canaan’s Edge. They cover 1954-1968.

Anything by David McCullough. Another great historian who writes like a storyteller. I would read them all. Even the earlier historical periods will make it easier to understand the whys and wherefores of post WWII America. Don’t bother reading the footnotes. For later history read: Truman, Mornings on Horseback, The Path Between the Seas, The Great Bridge, The Johnstown Flood, The Greater Journey, The Pioneers.

To go along with White Trash (a study on class & wealth in America) take a look at How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis. He was a photo journalist in New York City at the turn of the 20th century and documented the lower east side slums. Lots of fascinating photos in this book.

For 20th Century Culture:
George Washington Slept Here by Karla Ann Marling. A great & at times humorous look at how Americans manipulate history for social & political purposes.

Russell Lynes’ book The Tastemakers is a study in American popular taste. Covers housing, art, fashion, the suburbs, Hollywood, sports...

Witold Rybczynski’s books Home and The Most Beautiful House in the World. Both examine the history of how we make, personalize, and define home.

I strongly encourage you to read The Constitution & all the amendments before embarking on this adventure. It’s a remarkable document that drives almost all our societal & political outcomes (or our reactions to these outcomes). I make a point of reading it at least once a year. I’m always amazed at how people interpret the same words in such disparate ways.

You said, historical fiction is fine. Heavy on historical accuracy. Not overly detailed. Not sure if this fits that description.

The Last Aloha by Gaellen Quinn is about how the US overtook the Hawaiian royalty and took Hawaii as a state. It is a fiction book but had enough facts in it that you felt like you learnt what happened. It's been a few years since I read it, I enjoyed the book. I still remember the overarching details of how it happened. For me that's what I want from historical fiction, some people pick the books apart say this and this detail weren't 100% accurate, well I'm only going to remember the overview of what I read anyway. If I was an expert in that area I probably wouldn't be trying to learn through a fluffier way of fiction.

www.amazon.com/Greatest-Generation-Tom-Brokaw/dp/0812975294 this was excellent and very readable. He's written several others that look like they fit your criteria also - but I haven't read them yet

Great list!

Following this thread and making my list too! Thanks everyone for your input.

I don't have any recommendations for you, but I will be watching this thread, too, because I'm really not up on modern history either.   I'd say I know some stuff about history from a 'history of design' sense, since I'm interested in fashion / architecture / antiques / collectibles, but 'history' as in 'historical events' and/or 'politics' not so much. 



yes!  this situation, the rise of suburbia, car culture, changes in advertising, new products, etc. is absolutely fascinating to me.  One of my favorite books related to this is titled Populuxe.  Not necessarily a serious history book, but a good look at the changes that happened in the decades after WWII thru looking at shopping, advertising, furnishings, and design.  

Post WW-II history has been my jam for years. I recently read The Accidental President by AJ Baime, about Harry Truman and the first months of his presidency, and I highly recommend it, not just for Truman's story, but for a very well-explained overview of the huge issues at the end of WW II, and the early days of the atomic era and what became the Cold War. These are all things we still feel the results of today.

A few others I've read in the past couple of years: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, historical fiction about the early years of the AIDS crisis and the way it decimated the gay community.

High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel. If you don't know much about the McCarthy era, this is an interesting way to dip your toe in. The author talks about the impact of McCarthy's Communist witch hunt on the world of Hollywood by zeroing in on the movie High Noon and how it came to be written and filmed.

American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin, non-fiction about Patricia Hearst's kidnapping...lots of good info about the crazy post-hippie fringe culture of the early 1970s.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan...not post war, but worth reading about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, about the early years of Elvis Presley and the world of the 1950s.

No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and their working partnership through his presidencies, again not postwar, but important stuff.

It's not a book, but I highly recommend watching Ken Burn's documentary miniseries about the Vietnam War that came out last year. It covers so much history from the 50s to the 70s and it's incredible. And there are some episodes of American Experience that are streamable on Prime and maybe PBS, too, great ways to learn about various historical topics.

Old movies are also great and easy ways to learn about history. "The Best Years of Our Lives" was made right after WWII and tells the stories of three soldiers coming home and trying to adjust. "The Manchurian Candidate" reveals a lot about the paranoia of the Cold War years."Seven Days in May" is about the foiling of a right-wing military coup and the tension between pro-war and disarmament people in the early 60s. I know you weren't looking for movies, but sometimes one needs a break from reading!

We have a ridiculous amount of history books, these are quite long but very good, a few suggestions:
- No Ordinary Time (this book is excellent: www.amazon.com/No-Ordinary-Time-Franklin-Roosevelt/dp/0684804484)

- Dark Sun ("Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.)

- Parting the Waters (In volume one of his America in the King Years, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a masterly account of the American civil rights movement.)

I'm reading one of the books mentioned above (Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World) but I have to say I don't love it....

I agree I love historical fiction but most if it is WWII, not even WWI. Or it's English royalty in the 1700s and earlier. Hard to find the rest of the world in different time periods.

I suggest US Representative John Lewis' autobiography Walking With the Wind. There are a lot of first hand accounts of the civil rights movement.