An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America

Nick Bunker (Get this book)
Bunker delivers an eye-opening study of the British view of the American Revolution and why they were crazy to fight it. England never had a solid plan for administering the American colonies, situated on a continent they couldn't understand and could never hope to rule. Their existence was purely economic, a market for English goods and an exclusive supplier of tobacco, rice, timber, fur, rum, sugar and other important exports. Those who governed for England sent few, if any, reports, and those were incomplete and/or about the coming trouble. A scholarly yet page-turning, superbly written history.--Kirkus

Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War

Todd Brewster (Get this book)
Brewster provides a highly readable, vigorously researched account of the fraught six-month period in which the Emancipation Proclamation came into being, which inarguably changed the course of the Civil War. Brewster opens with W.E.B. Du Bois' apercu, somewhat inaccurate but also somewhat on the mark, that Lincoln was an illegitimate, poorly educated Southerner whose championing of abolition was politically calculated. Whether accurate or not, Lincoln's decision brought added resolve to the battle to restore the Union, adding equality to "the American ideal of liberty." A sturdy, instructive, well-written book.--Kirkus

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

Karen Abbott (Get this book)
In this gripping book, Abbott tells the moving and fascinating story of four women who played unconventional roles during the Civil War: Belle Boyd, a boisterous flirt and Confederate spy; Rose Greenhow, a seductive widow also spying for the South; Emma Edmondson, who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union army; and Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy spinster in the Confederate capital with Unionist loyalties. Meticulously researched and fluidly written, this book draws the reader in and doesn't let go until the four heroines draw their final breaths. In the end, Abbott tells a remarkable story of passion, strength, and resilience.--Publisher's Weekly

Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad

Brian A. Catlos (Get this book)
A dramatic review of Mediterranean history in the Middle Ages. Catlos intentionally veers away from earlier treatments of the age of the Crusades by focusing on the entire Mediterranean region as a diverse and interconnected region. The author moves from west to east as he examines this complex world through the stories of various individuals. A vivid history of "the collaboration and integration of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian peoples of the Mediterranean that laid the foundation for the modern world.--Kirkus

Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath

Paul Ham (Get this book)
A provocative look at the closing days of the Japanese Empire and the long shadow cast ever after by the atomic bomb.The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not have to happen: Thus, in a nutshell, is Sunday Times Australia correspondent Ham's position, as distinct from that of many authors and historians who have insisted that the United States would have suffered more than 1 million casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainland. A valuable contribution to the literature of World War II that asks its readers to rethink much of what they've been taught about America's just cause.--Kirkus

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

Rick Perlstein (Get this book)
After the swamping of the Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964, it seemed unlikely that 16 years later another stridently conservative candidate, Ronald Reagan, would be elected in a landslide. After all, Nixon had run and governed as a centrist who accepted most New Deal and Great Society programs. Perlstein is an award-winning author who has written extensively on politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Here, he recounts the events between the slow decay of the Nixon administration in 1973 as Watergate unfolded, up to Reagan's surprisingly close, if failed, effort to unseat the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, in 1976. That failure, of course, proved, in retrospect, that Reagan could succeed as a national candidate. This is a masterful interpretation of years critical to the formation of our current political culture.--Booklist

Brazil: The Fortunes of War: World War II and the Making of Modern Brazil

Neill Lochery (Get this book)
Well-focused look at the authoritarian rule of charismatic Brazilian president Getulio Vargas (1882-1954). Unlike fellow British scholar Michael Reid in his recent broad overview, Lochery keeps the spotlight on the buildup to World War II, when Brazil, then a resources-rich provincial backwater, was eyed as a valuable asset by both the Axis and the Allies. Assuming power in 1930 and then ruling as a dictator from 1937 to 1945, Vargas was determined to make Brazil a stronger, more modern power politically, economically and militarily. "Brazil may still have been waiting for its future to arrive," writes the author, "but by the time Vargas was entombed, his capital was at least living in the present."Colorful personalities and tricky maneuvers make for a lively drama.--Kirkus

Bringing Down Gaddafi: On the Ground with the Libyan Rebels

Andrei Netto, Marsden, Michael (Get this book)
The Paris correspondent for a leading Brazilian newspaper recounts his experience covering the Libyan revolution. During the eight-month conflict that deposed Muammar Gaddafi, 32 journalists were imprisoned, 15 kidnapped, 30 expelled and 11 killed. Measured against these sobering statistics, Netto counts his own eight-day imprisonment as trifling. Notwithstanding the current political chaos in Libya, Netto concludes with some hopeful words about the country's future.A courageous and well-informed piece of journalism.--Kirkus

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Evan Osnos (Get this book)
New Yorker staff writer and former China correspondent Osnos offers nimble, clever observations of a country squeezed between aspiration and authoritarianism. From 2005 to 2013, the author lived with his wife in China. In his debut book, he meanders among stories he pursued concerning Chinese of all strata striving to make a living in, and make sense of, a country in the throes of staggering transformation. Osnos groups his human-interest profiles under the themes of fortune, truth and faith, and he explores how new economic opportunities have challenged traditional ways and opened up Chinese society to unheard-of liberties and "pathways to self-creation"--emotionally, intellectually and otherwise. Pleasant, peripatetic musings revealing a great deal about the Chinese character. --Kirkus