Books for America's 250th Anniversary: Updated

The story of America is never-ending but these books are a good start.

The enthusiastic reviews of America by foreigners attending the World Cup events should remind Americans that we aren’t as bad as we’re often depicted.

In truth, the United States is a gutsy nation, full of energy, courage, and creativity and boosted by a colossal “can do” attitude. It’s a George Gershwin, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Estevan Ochoa, Saul Bellow, Elon Musk, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Ulysses S. Grant, Cochise, Ted Williams, Dorothy Parker, Rod Serling, Jimmy Stewart, Carl Sandburg, and Wyatt Earp sort of place that produces people who get up off of the mat and generals who respond to surrender demands by saying, “Nuts!”

It’s an unusual nation and we should be thankful every day that we’re here.

The following is less of a reading list than it is a menu. I recommend every dish.

Non-Fiction

1776 by David McCullough

A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin

Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Army of the Potomac Trilogy (Mr. Lincoln’s Army, Glory Road, A Stillness at Appomattox) by Bruce Catton

At Ease: Stories I Tell To My Friends by Dwight Eisenhower

Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House by William Safire

Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Harry V. Jaffa

Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell

In Search of History by Theodore H. White

Indian Wars by Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn

John Adams by David McCullough

King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred M. McClay

Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams

Lincoln Reconsidered by David Donald

Making It by Norman Podhoretz

Mary Chesnut’s Civil War edited by C. Vann Woodward

Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen

On the Border with Crook by James G. Bourke

Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation by Richard Norton Smith

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by U.S. Grant

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe

Radical Son by David Horowitz

Silent Missions by Vernon Walters

Six Crises by Richard M. Nixon

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell

The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders by Jacob Needleman

The American Spirit by David McCullough

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

The Civil War (three volumes) by Shelby Foote

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling

The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay

The Fifties by David Halberstam

The Generals by Thomas Ricks

The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White

The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again by Michael Barone

The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer

The Patriots by Winston Groom

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Van Woodward

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow

Truman by David McCullough

The Untouchables by Eliot Ness

Witness by Whitaker Chambers

Fiction

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Erasure by Percy Everett

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom

Glitz by Elmore Leonard

Hondo by Louis L’Amour

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

James by Percy Everett

Lonesome Dove by Larry MacMurtry

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow

Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Roughing It by Mark Twain

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald

The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Searchers by Alan Le May

The Virginian by Owen Wister

The Year of Jubilo by Howard Bahr

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

The Wonderful Country by Tom Lea

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

True Grit by Charles Portis

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

[Note: My latest book, Pilate’s Magician: A Novel of the Resurrection, is available on Amazon.]