History Book Group

The History Book Group usually meets on the first Friday of the month at 1:00. No registration is required, all are welcome. A limited supply of books is available for checkout at the circulation desk.

Selections for 2024

  • January 5 – Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania / Erik Larson
  • February 2 – The Pirate’s Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd / Daphne Palmer
  • March 1 – Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love / Dava Sobel
  • April 5 – When Britain Burned the White House: The 1814 Invasion of Washington / Peter Snow
  • May 3 – Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse / Kim Wicker
  • June 7 – Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington 1848-1868 / Cokie Roberts
  • July 5 – Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 / Simon Winchester
  • August 2 – Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West / Dorothy Wickenden
  • September 6 – Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples From Destruction / Lynne Olson
  • October 4 – The Witches: Salem, 1692 / Stacy Schiff
  • November 1 – Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor / Steve Kemper
  • December 6 – The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire / Joseph Sassoon

Previous Selections

2023

  • January 6 – The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip / Jeff Guinn
  • February 3 – Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill/ Candice Millard
  • March 3 – Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege / Mike Thomson
  • April 14 Dodge City – Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West / Tom Clavin
  • May 5 – River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile / Candice Millard
  • June 2 – The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World / Shelley Puhak
  • July 7 – Lafayette in the Somewhat United States / Sarah Vowell
  • August 4 – Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis / Annie Proulx
  • September 1 – The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of WWII / Judith Mackrell
  • October 6 – Stampede: Gold Fever & Disaster in the Klondike / Brian Castner
  • November 3 – After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War / Helen Rappaport
  • December 1 – Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies / Laura Thompson

2022

  • January – Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt / Steven Johnson
  • February – The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek / Howard Market
  • March – The Swerve: How the World Became Modern / Stephen Greenblatt
  • AprilLast Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost / Michael Walsh
  • May – The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization / Roland Ennos
  • June – One Summer: America, 1927 / Bill Bryson
  • July – Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington / Daniel Mark Epstein
  • August – Nelson’s Trafalgar: The Battle that Changed the World / Roy Adkins
  • September – The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire / Jack Weatherford
  • October – Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World / Giles Milton
  • November – The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty / Caroline Alexander
  • December – Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific / Nicholas Thomas

2021

The History Book Group  did not meet in 2021

2020

  • January – The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 / Harvey Sacks
  • February – Eight Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Biland’s History-Making Race Around the World / Matthew Goodman
  • March – Cancelled
  • April – Cancelled
  • May – Cancelled
  • June – Cancelled
  • July – The Geography of Genius / Eric Weiner
  • August – The Wright Brothers / David McCullough
  • September – The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History / Elizabeth Kolbert
  • October – Lake of the Ozarks / Bill Geist
  • November – Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder & Memory in Northern Ireland / Patrick Radden Keefe
  • December – Barnum: An American Life / Robert Wilson

2019

  • January – Black Tudors:  The Untold Story / Miranda Kaufmann
  • February – Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History / Catherine Arnold
  • March – Ruthless Tide – The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster / Al Roker
  • April – Once a Professor: A Memoir of Teaching in Turbulent Times / Jerry Apps
  •  May – The Last Palace:  Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House / Norman Eisen
  • June – Ants Among Elephants:  An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India / Gidla Sujatha
  • July –  Dog Man – An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain / Martha Sherrill
  • August –  Atlas of a Lost World:  Travels in Ice Age America / Craig Childs
  • September –  Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking: The Royal Marriages that Shaped Europe / Deborah Cadbury
  • October – In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex / Nathaniel Philbrick
  • NovemberDamnation Island:  Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York / Stacy Horn
  • December – A Time of Gifts:  On Foot to Constantinople:  From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube / Patrick Leigh Fermor

2018

  • January – The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill / Greg Mitchell
  • February – Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations / John Avlon
  • March – Hitler’s First Victims: The Quest for Justice / Timothy Ryback
  • April – The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair / Margaret Creighton
  • May – Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty / Dan Jones
  • June – The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: An Untold Story of the American Revolution / Robert P. Watson
  • July – The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses / Carolyn Purnell
  • August – Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe / Inara Verzemnieks
  • September – Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South / Adrienne Berard
  • October – The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss and the American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home / Denise Kiernan
  • November – Shooting Ghosts: A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer and Their Journey Back from War / Thomas Brenna & Finbarr O’Reilly
  • December – A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression / Jane Ziegelman & Andrew Coe

2017

  • April – The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics Stephen Coss
  • May – Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helen’s / Steve Olson
  • June – Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 / Adam Hochschild
  • July – The Medici: Power, Money and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance / Paul Strathern
  • August – How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World / Steven Johnson
  • September – The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free / Alex Perry
  • October – Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 Madeleine Albright
  • November – The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War / Don H. Doyle
  • December – The Gates of Europe: The History of Ukraine / Serhili Plokhy