by Simon Sebag Montefiore (2016)
The sweeping, intimate chronicle of the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for three centuries, creating the largest land empire on earth through a succession of visionary conquerors, tyrants, and romantic eccentrics.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s legendary exposé of the vast Soviet network of forced labor camps and secret police terror that shook the world and helped dismantle Soviet legitimacy.
Taylor Branch
The Pulitzer Prize-winning first volume of Taylor Branch’s landmark trilogy on the civil rights movement, charting Martin Luther King Jr.’s rise from a young Atlanta preacher to the moral epicenter of a nation.
S.C. Gwynne
S.C. Gwynne’s Pulitzer finalist epic chronicles the four-decade war between the Comanches—the most formidable horse warriors in history—and Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers for control of the Great Plains.
Robin Lane Fox
Robin Lane Fox’s masterpiece reconstructs the world and mind of Alexander of Macedon, who by age thirty-two had conquered the known world from Greece to India, driven by the myth of Achilles.