New History Books 2010

The following are the most popular history books published in 2010. Popularity is based upon library circulation.

1 The Legacy of the Second World War
by John Lukacs.

In this work, which offers both an accessible primer for students and challenging new theses for scholars, Lukacs addresses the perplexing and often overlooked questions about World War II, revealing the ways in which the war and its legacy still touch lives today.



2 Anything Goes: a biography of the roaring twenties
by Lucy Moore.

Moore interweaves stories of the compelling people and events that characterized the 1920s to produce a gripping portrait of the Jazz Age. She reveals that the Roaring Twenties were an epoch of passion and change--an age, she observes, not unlike our own.



3 Americans in Paris: life and death under Nazi occupation
by Charles Glass.

Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong.



4 The Harvard Psychedelic Club: how Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil killed the fifties and ushered in a new age for America
by Don Lattin.

Lattin describes one of the engines that drove the revolution of the 1960s. His style is narrative nonfiction, using spoken and written interviews to construct dialogue as it might have occurred, in most cases reviewed for accuracy by at least one of the actual participants in a conversation. Chapters describe their first encounter with psychedelic drugs, the research they began, infighting and exposure, expulsion, San Francisco, pilgrimage and exile, the impact on the lives of the four, and their impact on the world.



5 Citizens of London: the Americans who stood with Britain in its darkest, finest hour
by Lynne Olson.

Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and a reluctant American public to support the British at a critical time.



6 The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: how the daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his empire
by Jack Weatherford.

After Genghis Khan's death in 1227, conflicts erupted between his daughters and his daughters-in-law; what began as a war between powerful women soon became a war against women in power as brother turned against sister, son against mother. At the end of this epic struggle, the dynasty of the Mongol queens had seemingly been extinguished forever, as even their names were erased from the historical record.

TB