2006

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins

Synopsis
This unforgettable account of the unraveling of the British colonial empire in Kenya is a major work of history detailing the prisons, work camps, and terror that the British imposed on millions just after World War II. It has chilling parallels to America's own imperial project. (read more)

2005

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Review
"[O]bjective — and terrific....Coll...has given us what is certainly the finest historical narrative so far on the origins of Al Qaeda....Ghost Wars provides fresh details and helps explain the motivations behind many crucial decisions." James Risen, The New York Times (read more)

2004

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

Review
"An important book....It is fervently to be hoped that people will read Anne Applebaum's excellent, tautly written, and very damning history." New York Times Book Review (read more)

2003

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

Review
"The emotional force of Power's argument is carried by moving, sometimes almost unbearable stories of the victims and survivors of such brutality....This is a well-researched and powerful study that is both a history and a call to action." Publishers Weekly (read more)

2002

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter

Review
"[A] vivid, admirably nuanced, and wide-ranging history of the city that became ground zero in the Civil Rights struggle....A dense, detailed, and insightful history." Kirkus Reviews (read more)

2001 Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix

2000 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower

1999 The Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

1998 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

1997 Ashes To Ashes by Richard Kluger

1996 The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg

1995 The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner

1994 Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick

1993 Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills

1992 Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin

1991 Ants by Bert Holldobler

1990 And Their Children After Them by Michael Williamson

1989 A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan

1988 The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

1987 Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K Shipler

1986 Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas

1985 The Good War: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel

1984 The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr

1983 Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan

1982 The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

1981 Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl Schorske

1980 Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

1979 On Human Nature by Edward Osborne Wilson

1978 Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

1977 Beautiful Swimmers by William W Warner

1976 Why Survive?: Being Old in America by Robert N Butler

1975 Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

1974 The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

1973 Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances Fitzgerald

1972 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Barbara W. Tuchman

1971 The Rising Sun by John Toland

1970 Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence by Erik H Erikson

1969 Armies of the Night: History As a Novel\the Novel As History by Norman Mailer

1968 Rousseau & Revolution Story of CIV Volume 10 by Will Durant

1967 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis

1966 Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale

1965 O Strange New World by Howard M Jones

1964 Anti-intellectualism in America by Richard Hofstadter

1963 The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

1962 The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore H White