Top Non-Fiction
Discover the best non-fiction books with our curated list of top reads. Explore biographies, history, science, and more to expand your knowledge and inspire your next great read.
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The Power Broker
by Robert A. Caro
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches—and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough"—a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system. Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars—he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder. This is how he built and dominated New York—before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done.
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Path Between The Seas
by David McCullough
The National Book Award–winning epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a first-rate drama of the bold and brilliant engineering feat that was filled with both tragedy and triumph, told by master historian David McCullough. From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Truman, here is the national bestselling epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal. In The Path Between the Seas, acclaimed historian David McCullough delivers a first-rate drama of the sweeping human undertaking that led to the creation of this grand enterprise. The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale. Winner of the National Book Award for history, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Cornelius Ryan Award (for the best book of the year on international affairs), The Path Between the Seas is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of technology, international intrigue, and human drama.
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The Fifties
by David Halberstam
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill. A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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New York 1960
by Robert A.M. Stern
This is the third volume (and the fourth chronologically) in architect and historian Robert A. M. Stern's monumental series of documentary studies of New York City architecture and urbanism. New York 1880, New York 1900, and New York 1930 have comprehensively covered the architects and urban planners who defined New York from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. The post-World War II era witnessed New York's reign as the unofficial but undisputed economic and artistic capital of the world. By the mid-1970s, the city had experienced a profound reversal, and both its economy and its reputation were at a historic nadir. The architectural history of the period offered an exceptionally abundant and varied mix of building styles and types, from the faltering traditionalism of the 1940s through the heyday of International Style modernism in the 1950s and 1960s to the incipient postmodernism of the 1970s. Organized geographically, New York 1960 provides an encyclopedic survey of the city's postwar architecture as well as relating a coherent story about each of its diverse neighborhoods. Primary sources are emphasized, including the commentaries of the preeminent architecture critics of the day; the text is illustrated exclusively with a rich collection of period photographs.
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Kennedy & Nixon
by Christopher Matthews
Details the long standing friendship which existed between Kennedy and Nixon which began in 1946 when both were elected as congressmen, but degenerated into distrust and bitterness and ending in the dark deeds of Watergate in 1972.
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Washington Goes to War
by David Brinkley
From one of America's most celebrated television newscasters comes an irresistible, wonderfully anecdotal social and political portrait of Washington during World War II. 11 photos.
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The Final Days
by Bob Woodward
Portrays the post-Watergate White House of Richard Nixon, as the President, his family, his staff, and many legislators tried desperately to prevent his resignation.
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In The Nature Of Materials
by Henry-Russell Hitchcock
This is the definitive study of Frank Lloyd Wright and his work, an eloquent summation of an outstanding career that spanned nearly seventy years of American architectural history. Writing with warmth and penetrating intelligence, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, America's leading architectural expert, explores Wright's distinctive approach to the design and construction of homes, civic centers, housing projects, country clubs, and office buildings—emphasizing throughout Wright's skillful use of materials to create harmony between structure and environment.Hitchcock covers each of the major phases in Wright's first fifty years as an architect: the apprenticeship with J.L. Selsbee; the movement toward maturity with "Lieber Meister" Sullivan, and the links with Richardson, the "prairie" architecture of the early 1900s and the non-domestic work of the same period which exerted so great an influence upon the development of modern European architecture; the textile block housing and cantilevered skyscraper projects of the early ‘20s; the creative hiatus of the late ‘20s and early ‘30s; and the projects of the Depression years, interrupted in 1942 by World War II.More than 400 illustrations are presented in chronological order in a format Wright himself designed, revealing an endless assortment of shapes, materials and structural ornament that indicate the scope and focus of Wright's genius. Accompanying the photographs, plans, and perspectives is Hitchcock's perceptive commentary, linking each building to a particular phase in Wright's development and showing how in each case the architect forged the elements of materials, mass, space, and ornament into a powerful visual statement.Hitchcock also contributes a list of the architect's completed projects through 1941, and, in a new foreword specially prepared for this Da Capo edition, assesses Wright's major projects during the last two decades of his life.
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The Encyclopedia of New York City
by Kenneth T. Jackson
Offers a wealth of facts about New York from prehistory to the present, containing more than four thousand entries on a wide range of topics
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Zero 3 Bravo
by Mariana Gosnell
Mariana Gosnell takes the reader along on her extraordinary voyage across the U.S. in her single-engine Luscombe Silvaire, Zero Three Bravo. Enticed by the ribbon of sky that she could see from her Manhattan office window, she took a leave of absence from her job and made a three-month solo flight, navigating by use of landmarks and landing in America's little-known, back-country airports. She traveled south from her home airport of Spring Valley, New York, down to North Carolina and Georgia, west across Texas to Los Angeles and north to San Francisco, and then east over the Rockies, the plains, and the farms of the Midwest until she was back home.
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The Selling of the President
by Joe McGinniss
What makes you cast your ballot? A Presidential candidate or a good campaign? How he stands on the issues or how he stands up to the camera? The Selling of the President is the enduring story of the 1968 campaign that wrote the script for modern Presidential politicking—and how that script came to be. It introduces: Harry Treleaven, the first adman to suggest that issues bore voters, that image is what counts Roger Ailes, a PR man who coordinated the TV presentations that delivered the product Frank Shakespeare, the man behind the whole campaign, who, after eighteen years at CBS, cast the image that sold America a President And the candidate, Richard Nixon himself—a politician running on television for the highest office in the land In his introduction, Joe McGinniss discusses why—unfortunately—his classic book is as pertinent today to understanding our political culture as it was the year it was published.
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The Boys on the Bus
by Timothy Crouse
Reporter Timothy Crouse's behind-the-scenes coverage of the political press corps during the 1972 presidential campaign. An enlightening study in journalism and the political process. Photographs, Index.
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The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe
When the future began... The men had it. Yeager. Conrad. Grissom. Glenn. Heroes...the first Americans in space...battling the Russians for control of the heavens...putting their lives on the line. The women had it. While Mr. Wonderful was aloft, it tore your heart out that the Hero's Wife, down on the ground, had to perform with the whole world watching...the TV Press Conference: "What's in your heart? Do you feel with him while he's in orbit?" The Right Stuff. It's the quality beyond bravery, beyond courage. It's men like Chuck Yeager, the greatest test pilot of all and the fastest man on earth. Pete Conrad, who almost laughed himself out of the running. Gus Grissom, who almost lost it when his capsule sank. John Glenn, the only space traveler whose apple-pie image wasn't a lie.
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The Nightingale's Song
by Robert Timberg
How the legacy of the Vietnam War changed the lives of five Naval Academy graduates: John McCain, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, John Poindexter and James Webb.