September’s Best New History Books

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
As firmly embedded in the popular culture as the Vietnam War remains, it is also rapidly fading into the distant past for younger generations. Burns and Ward know that the time to capture first-hand perspectives on this moment of American and Vietnamese history is fast ending, making this book historically essential as well as fascinating for the modern reader. The point-of-view is intimate and personal, allowing soldiers from both sides to tell their stories, transforming them into characters in a narrative that never resolves. Combined with the startling range of photographs, this is easily one of the best books on the subject of the Vietnam War ever produced.

The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home, by Denise Kiernan
As the conversation about income inequality ramps up, this book is the ideal historical complement. In the late 19th century, George Washington Vanderbilt II was the world’s richest bachelor, and he chose to put his immense resources into building the largest private home ever constructed, a 175,000 square foot mansion sitting on 125,000 acres of land. Uninterested in romance, Vanderbilt nonetheless married the well-bred but impoverished Edith Dresser, who suddenly found herself queen of a city-sized estate. A spice of schadenfreude comes into play as Vanderbilt’s fortunes decline and the family is thrust into the sort of economic downturn that most people would recognize, even if on a vastly different scale, and Edith emerges as a heroine of sorts as she struggles to save her family and her huge, lavish home.

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War, by Doug Stanton
One of the most effective techniques in a history book is to focus on a single event, exploring every facet in order to illuminate a larger related tapestry. Stanton does just this with his exploration of the Tet Offensive, the chaotic attack North Vietnam launched on January 31st, 1968 in an effort to destabilize the south and push American forces out of the country. The forty men of Echo Company of the 101st Airborne Division (an army reconnaissance platoon) had just arrived in country, and found themselves enduring a grueling, seemingly endless battle against a desperate, implacable enemy. The gripping descriptions of endless fighting combined with testimonials about the less-than warm welcome the soldiers received when they returned home help to explain the Vietnam era in terms anyone will understand.

Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
O’Reilly and Dugard stretch their “Killing” concept a bit, taking a brutally realistic look at the American Revolution. Telling the story from the point of view of both the Americans who went from protesters to revolutionaries and the king who somehow managed to let the colonies slip through his fingers despite being one of the most powerful monarchs in the world, the co-authors matter-of-factly relate momentous events. Soldiers served under terrible conditions, and the fighting was nothing like the polite engagements often depicted in pictures and film, often involving desperate, close-quarters fights. The personalities involved prove fascinating, and the book is peppered with bits of trivia that even dedicated history buffs will be glad to know.

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors, by Dan Jones
The Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple, known today as the Templars, began existence as a group of impoverished knights who protected pilgrims to the Holy Land in exchange for charity. From these humble beginnings sprang one of the most powerful and influential knightly orders in history. Gaining patronage, property, and political power, the Templars grew so great they were eventually demonized and destroyed by rival powers in Europe. Jones tells the story of the Templars in brisk writing that makes their rise and fall viscerally exciting, informative, and fascinating.

Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime, by Ben Blum
In 2006, Alex Blum (the author’s cousin) was arrested as part of a four-man team that robbed a bank in Tacoma, Washington. What made the crime unusual was that Alex was an active-duty Army Ranger, and the crime was planned by higher-ranking Ranger Luke Sommer. Alex claimed he believed the heist was part of a special training course, opening up a national conversation about the military mindset, training techniques that often involved brutal psychological attacks, and what exactly our soldiers are being prepared to do. Ben Blum explores this complicated case with incredible skill, sifting through the mind games and bringing a fair-handed sympathy to all involved. The end result is a unique true-crime story that will haunt you.

Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory, by Michael Korda
If Dunkirk has been on your mind, this is the ideal book to explore a moment in World War II history often misunderstood or given short shrift. Korda draws on his own childhood memories as well as meticulous research to explain the wishful thinking that permeated England in the years before Dunkirk, the sudden terror that enveloped the nation when the Nazis invaded France, the rise of Winston Churchill, and the tactical triumph Dunkirk represented at a time when a German invasion seemed all but inevitable—and unstoppable. Hindsight is always perfect, and Korda answers the question of why Hitler was left to his own devices for so long, how Churchill rose from the ashes of a failed stab at a political career, and why he said of Dunkirk, “wars are not won by evacuations.”

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story, by Douglas Preston
Preston, also known as one half of the team writing the Agent Pendergrast series of thrillers, details his involvement with a team seeking to prove the existence of a lost city in the Honduran wilderness. Legends tell of a city destroyed by a series of natural cataclysms, abandoned as cursed, and forbidden for centuries. Using a combination of cutting-edge technology and boots on the ground, Preston and his team locate two large sites and a wealth of archaeological treasures to prove that a lost civilization once existed in an area of the world where no human being has set foot in centuries. Preston’s skill as a novelist makes the deep-dive into the past at once entertaining, gripping, and informative.

Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, by Ben Macintyre
While lying in a military hospital recovering from injuries during World War II, David Stirling had a brainstorm inspired by his fascination with parachutists: why not create a small team of daring men who would drop from airplanes behind enemy lines and sabotage their foes before a battle even begins? The men eventually recruited into Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) were far from the uber-professional soldiers one thinks of when they imagine the modern-day SEALs and Deltas of the special ops world; they were largely untrained, unprepared, often mentally unstable, and frequently alcoholics. But what this group of misfits and reprobates accomplished was breathtakingly audacious. While they are far from infallible, the story of the early members of the SAS—drawn here from diaries and interviews—paints a picture of casual bravery and derring-do better than most novels.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen
Exploring and explaining the overheated reality-distortion field that has enveloped the United States, author Andersen notes it isn’t just one side of the political divide that seems to have abandoned facts; he implicates the liberals who refuse to vaccinate as much as the conservatives who embrace the “fake news” paradigm. The question Andersen chases in this inarguably necessary book is deceptively simple in the age of alternative facts: how exactly did we get here? How did the country turn into a nation of magical thinkers who reject facts, proven science, and, in many cases common sense? Andersen’s refreshing tendency to affix blame wherever he sees it makes a case that this has been going on for a very long time—and we’re all in some way complicit.