2024: A Historian’s Reading List

My annual reading list. You can follow previous years’ lists by clicking back through this link.

First, the historical and professional work. Let me use the same language I use ever year, since it’s a lot of books and people wonder how this is possible:

I read these books for my own purposes–to prepare for teaching, to keep up or catch up on the historiography in my fields, occasionally to broaden my horizons. So I do not read every word of these books, nor do I generally read for factual information. I read for preparation for my work, whether my own professional writing, to inform my blog posts, to prepare for new courses, or to think through harder questions. That often means simply being aware of the basic outlines of a book so that I can go into more detail later when I need to write about a given subject. I also included the few books on contemporary politics I read this year, since there’s not much sense separating those out from historical books given my writing. And lest you think this is some exercise in weirdness, it allows me to references these books for years and most of my books are generated out of doing this work.

This year saw a bit more historical reading than usual, but I don’t think I actually read more. Rather, new history books are just really short. Comparing today to the 90s is amazing in terms of length. Mostly I think it’s for the best.

I put asterisks next to 20 books I thought LGM readers should really read. These aren’t necessary the best books here, though there is some overlap, but rather ones that are a bit more accessible and also very good. There are certainly more than 20 very fine books here, but here are 20 of them for you. I am happy to spend part of the day discussing the various books in comments, if you want or. have questions or whatever.

1. Jenny Carson, A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice ***
2. Marc Dixon, Heartland Blues: Labor Rights in the Industrial Midwest ***
3. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s
4. Jessica Wang, Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920
5. Elena Schneider, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World
6. Christopher Boyer, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico
7. Gregory Smoak, ed., Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West
8. Moon Ho-Jung, Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the U.S. Security State
9. Conor Morrissey, Protestant Nationalists in Ireland, 1900-1923
10. Kate Clifford Larson, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer ***
11. Errol Wayne Stevens, In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression
12. Christina Greene, Free Joan Little: The Politics of Race, Sexual Violence, and Imprisonment
13. Jordan Biro-Walters, Wide Open Desert: A Queer History of New Mexico
14. Alexandra Harmon, Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Repressed and Renewed
15. Darnella Davis, Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era
16. Pablo Mitchell, Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880-1920
17. Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
18. Judith Stepan-Norris and Jasmine Kerrissey, Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight over the U.S. Labor Movement
19. David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640
20. Jennifer Eaglin, Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol
21. Maurice Hobson, The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta
22. Meng Zhang, Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market
23. Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, Empire’s Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962
24. Steven Friedman, Prisoners of the Past: South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule
25. Tani Barlow, ed., Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia
26. Susan Nance, Rodeo: An Animal History
27. Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792
28. Patrick Burke, Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock
29. Jessica Ordaz, The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity
30. Natalia Molina, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community
31. Charlotte Coté, A Drum in One Hand, A Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast
32. Alaina Roberts, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land
33. Thomas Mackaman, New Immigrants and the Radicalization of American Labor, 1914-1924
34. Pekka Hamalainen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Conquest for North America  ***
35. Terence Young, Heading Out: A History of American Camping
36. Diane C. Fujino and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation
37. Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876-1945
38. Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir, eds., Power Lines: Building a Labor-Climate Justice Movement ***
39. Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life ***
40. Soyica Diggs Colbert, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry ***
41. Kathryn Gin Lum, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History
42. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture ***
43. Paul A. Shackel, The Ruined Anthracite: Historical Trauma in Coal-Mining Communities
44. Eric Zolov, The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties
45. Joshua Reid, The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs
46. Adam Moore, Empire’s Labor: The Global Army That Supports U.S. Wars ***
47. Chris Otter, Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology
48. Musab Younis, On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought
49. Bronwen Everill, Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition
50. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress
51. Adria Imada, An Archive of Skin, an Archive of Kin: Disability and Life-Making during Medical Incarceration
52. Frederick Hoxie, This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made
53. Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People
54. Andrew Hazelton, Labor’s Outcasts: Migrant Farmworkers & Unions in North America, 1934-1966
55. Luis Aguiar & Joseph McCartin, eds., Purple Power: The History and Global Impact of SEIU
56. Courtney Fullilove, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture
57. Peter Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1920
58. Daniel S. Moak, From the New Deal to the War on Schools: Race, Inequality, and the Rise of the Punitive Education State
59. Pekka Hamalainen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power ***
60. Erik Kojola, Mining the Heartland: Nature, Place, and Populism on the Iron Range
61. Ronald W. Schatz, The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era
62. James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
63. Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America
64. Paul S. Hirsch, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism ***
65. Louis P. Masur, The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America
66. Clayton Howard, The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac: The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California
67. Alice L. Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
68. James Poskett, Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science
69. Jeannie N. Shinozuka, Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950
70. Sean Ehrlich, The Politics of Fair Trade: Moving Beyond Free Trade and Protection
71. Jane Berger, A New Working Class: The Legacies of Public Sector Employment in the Civil Rights Movement
72. Erin Woodruff Stone, Captives of Conquest: Slavery in the Early Modern Spanish Caribbean
73. Andrew Egan, Haywire: Discord in Maine’s Logging Woods and the Unraveling of an Industry
74. Stephen Chambers, No God But Gain: The Untold of Cuban Slavery, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Making of the United States
75. Nan Enstad, Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism ***
76. Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States
77. Sheila McManus, Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the American West
78. Lucas Bessire, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
79. Rachel Walker, Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America
80. Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South
81. Kevin Grant, Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948
82. Amy Aronson, Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life ***
83. Tony Michaels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
84. Brian Hochman, The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States
85. Anna Willow, Understanding ExtrACTIVISM: Culture and Power in Natural Resource Disputes
86. David B. Williams, Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of the Puget Sound
87. David Wilson, Northern Paiutes of the Malheur: High Desert Reckoning in Oregon Country
88. Gabriel Valle, Gardening at the Margins: Convivial Labor, Community, and Resistance
89. Michael Dwyer, Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush
90. Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman, and Ryan T. Cragun, Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society
91. Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts ***
92. Kathleen Cairns, At Home in the World: California Women and the Postwar Environmental Movement
93. Thomas A. Castillo, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami
94. Emily Marker, Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era
95. Ellen Spears, Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945
96. John M. Findlay, The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000
97. Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth: A History *** (Wrote Review of this in the LA Review of Books)
98. Mark S. Ferrara, The Raging Erie: Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal
99. Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment ***
100. Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the Constitution in the Founding Era
101. Anita Huizar-Hernandez, Forging Arizona: A History of Peralta Land Grant and Racial Identity in the West
102. Sandra Bolzenius, Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II
103. William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan
104. William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain
105. Pavla Simkova, Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands
106. Maurice Crandall, These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 ***
107. Diana K. Johnson, Seattle in Coalition: Multiracial Alliances, Labor Politics, and Transnational Activism in the Pacific Northwest, 1970-1999
108. Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool in Modern War ***
109. Alberto Garcia, Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico
110. Amanda Frost, You Are Not America: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers ***
111. Timothy E. Nelson, Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930
112. Pablo Piccato, A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth and Justice in Mexico
113. Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
114. Michael Jonas, Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War
115. J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Toward Utopia: A Economic History of the Twentieth Century ***
116. James C. Benton, Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America
117. Rebecca Kosmos, Intertwined: Women, Nature, and Climate Justice
118. Naoko Wake, American Survivors: Trans-Pacific Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
119. Michael A. Verney, A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early U.S. Republic
120. Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys
121. Rebecca Sharpless, Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South
122. Jennifer Bess, Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O’odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin
123. Annelise Heinz, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture
124. Davide Orsini, The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy
125. Benjamin T. Smith, The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976
126. Dillon J. Carroll, Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Civil War Soldiers
127. Elizabeth Grennan Browning, Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886-1937
128. Jalane Schmidt, Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba
129. David Stiller, Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande
130. Andrew Curley, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation
131. Thomas Fleischman, Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany’s Rise and Fall
132. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico
133. K. Norman Johnson, Jerry F. Franklin, and Gordon H. Reeves, The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan: The Wild Science of Saving Old Growth Ecosystems
134. Thomas J. Campanella, Brooklyn: The Once and Future City (note: If you know anyone in your life who is a full on Brooklyn person and who likes a readable history with a ton of pictures, this would make a good gift)
135. David L. Parsons, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era

Last year, I started keeping track of presses I read from, which I thought would be interesting. So here’s this year’s list (if they don’t all add up, well, fine) and the top 10 presses over the last two years:

1. North Carolina—12
2. Oxford—11
3. Chicago—10
4. Harvard—8
5. Illinois—8
6. Washington—8
7. California—7
8. Princeton—7
9. Pennsylvania—5
10. Duke—5
11. Cornell—4
12. Yale—4
13. NYU—3
14. Nebraska—3
15. Cambridge—3
16. Oklahoma—2 
17. Verso—2
18. Norton—2
19. Routledge—2
20. Penguin—2
21. Massachusetts—2
22. Basic—2
23. Johns Hopkins—2 
24. Arizona—2
25. New Mexico—2
26. New Press—1
27. Kansas—1
28. Utah—1
29. Crown—1
30. Wits University (South Africa)—1
31. McFarland—1
32. Mariner (Harper Collins)—1
33. Texas A&M—1
34. Columbia—1  
35. Rutgers—1
36. Beacon—1
37. Texas Tech—1
38. Bloomsbury—1  
39. Colorado—1
40. Pittsburgh—1
41. LSU—1
42. Nevada—1
43. Oregon State–1

Top 10 over two years:

1. Oxford—21
2. North Carolina—20
3. Illinois—14
4. Harvard—13
5. Chicago—12
6. California—12
7. Washington—11
8. Princeton—11
9. Duke—9
10. Yale—9
11. Cambridge—9

Washington is so high for two reasons–I write in environmental and Pacific Northwest history so naturally I am going to read a preponderance of books in those two fields. Illinois is there because of labor history, though I find myself reading less labor history these days as the entire field has shifted to discussing neoliberalism in the 1970s, which has value, up to a point, but not like this.

Now onto the fiction and literary nonfiction. I beat my all time reading list of 68 and that was 2020, when I had lots of time. Of course, I’ve been on sabbatical this fall, so that explains a lot of it. But I’m pretty happy to have read 70. Asterisks are books I’ve read before. I guess what I’d say about this year is a lot more plays than normal (intentional), a ton of international fiction, a few classics (a goal in 2025 is to read more of these), an OK number of music books (probably should read more in 25), and a reengagement with Philip Roth in the last few weeks, who might have been a terrible person but who was a great writer, funny, amazing discussions of American identity, and a true master of prose.

1. Jean-Patrick Manchette, The Mad and the Bad
2. Steacy Easton, Why Tammy Wynette Matters
3. Charles Portis, The Dog of the South
4. Emi Yagi, Diary of a Void
5. Margo Price, Maybe We’ll Make It
6. Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968
7. Chrétien de Troyes, Ywain: The Knight of the Lion**
8. Tommy Orange, There There
9. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian***
10. Harald Voetmann, Awake
11. Philip Eil, Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the Pill Mill Killer
12. John McPhee, Rising from the Plains,**
13. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer**
14. Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honor of Katarina Blum
15. Richard Ford, The Ultimate Good Luck
16. Le Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For
17. Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange
18. Albert Cossery, Proud Beggars
19. Laila Lalami, The Other Americans
20. Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy
21. Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives
22. Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking For is in the Library
23. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men
24. Toni Morrison, A Mercy
25. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
26. Studs Terkel, Working
27. C. Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey
28. Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
29. Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore**
30. Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives***
31. Antonio Tabucchi, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro***
32. Carl Hiaasen, Lucky You
33. Arthur Miller, The Crucible
34. Homer, The Odyssey **
35. Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
36. Richard Thompson, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975
37. Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
38. Jean-Patrick Manchette, The N’Gustro Affair***
39. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
40. Eugene O’Neill, Complete Plays, 1913-1920
41. Alex Harvey, Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles
42. Leonard Sciascia, The Day of the Owl
43. Tobias Wolff, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
44. Phil Klay, Missionaries
45. James Wilcox, Modern Baptists
46. John Bleasdale, The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terence Malick
47. Wole Soyinka, Isara
48. Colin Escott, Hank Williams: The Biography
49. Sally Rooney, Normal People
50. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
51. Henrik Ibsen, Enemy of the People, (Arthur Miller adaptation)
52. Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Book of Not
53. Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris
54. Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale
55. Shoji Morimoto, Rental Person Who Does Nothing
56. Nanni Balestrini, We Want Everything
57. Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow
58. Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
59. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer***
60. Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda***
61. Ivan Doig, This House of Sky**
62. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses**
63. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind
64. Morgan Talty, Fire Exit
65. Roberto Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction
66. Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
67. Dave Zirin, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy
68. Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer***
69. Peter Handke, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
70. Philip Roth, Zuckerman Unbound***

Let’s talk books today!