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 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 (library closes at 1:00 on April 7): 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

Previous Selections

2022:

• January 7: Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt / Steven Johnson
• February 4: The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek / Howard Market
• March 4: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern / Stephen Greenblatt
• April 1: Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost / Michael Walsh
• May 6: The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization / Roland Ennos
• June 3: One Summer: America, 1927 / Bill Bryson
• July 1: Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington / Daniel Mark Epstein
• August 5: Nelson’s Trafalgar: The Battle that Changed the World / Roy Adkins
• September 2: The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire / Jack Weatherford
• October 7: Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World / Giles Milton
• November 4: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty / Caroline Alexander
• December 2: Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific / Nicholas Thomas

2021: The History Book Group  did not meet in 2021

2020:

• January 17: The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 / Harvey Sacks
• February 21: Eight Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Biland’s History-Making Race Around the World / Matthew Goodman
• March 20: Cancelled
• April 17: Cancelled
• May 15: Cancelled
• June 19: Cancelled
• July 17: The Geography of Genius / Eric Weiner
• August 21: The Wright Brothers / David McCullough
• September 18: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History / Elizabeth Kolbert
• October 16: Lake of the Ozarks / Bill Geist
• November 20: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder & Memory in Northern Ireland / Patrick Radden Keefe
• December 18: Barnum: An American Life / Robert Wilson

2019:

• January 18:  Black Tudors:  The Untold Story / Miranda Kaufmann
• February 15:  Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History / Catherine Arnold
• March 15:  Ruthless Tide:  The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster / Al Roker
• April 12: Once a Professor: A Memoir of Teaching in Turbulent Times / Jerry Apps
•  May 17:  The Last Palace:  Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House / Norman Eisen
• June 21:  Ants Among Elephants:  An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India / Gidla Sujatha
• July 19:  Dog Man:  An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain / Martha Sherrill
• August 16:  Atlas of a Lost World:  Travels in Ice Age America / Craig Childs
• September 20:  Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking: The Royal Marriages that Shaped Europe / Deborah Cadbury
• October 18:  In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex / Nathaniel Philbrick
• November 15:  Damnation Island:  Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York / Stacy Horn
• December 20:  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