History Book Group | Germantown Community Library

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

Selections for 2025 (titles will be released every four months)

January 3 – The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency / Chris Whipple
February 7 – Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts / Stacy Cordery
March 7 – The Last Outlaws: The Desperate Final Days of the Dalton Gang / Tom Clavin
April 4 – Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the nazis and Assured an Allied Victory / Ben Macintyre
May 2 – Disappointment River: Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage / Brian Castner
June 6 – Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty / Anderson Cooper
July 11 (closed July 4) – The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War / Erik Larson
August 1 – Unfamiliar Fishes / Sarah Vowell

Previous Selections

2024

January 5 – Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitiania / 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

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
April – Last 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
November – Damnation 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