best history biographies 2022

15 Memoirs and Biographies to Read This Fall

New autobiographies from Jemele Hill, Matthew Perry and Hua Hsu are in the mix, along with books about Martha Graham, Agatha Christie and more.

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By John Williams , Joumana Khatib , Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter

Published Sept. 8, 2022 Updated Sept. 15, 2022

Solito: A Memoir , by Javier Zamora

When he was 9, Zamora left El Salvador to join his parents in the United States — a dangerous trek in the company of strangers that lasted for more than two months, a far cry from the two-week adventure he had envisioned. Zamora, a poet, captures his childhood impressions of the journey, including his fierce, lifesaving attachments to the other people undertaking the trip with him.

Hogarth, Sept. 6

A Visible Man: A Memoir , by Edward Enninful

The first Black editor in chief of British Vogue reflects on his life, including his early years as a gay, working-class immigrant from Ghana, and his path to becoming one of the most influential tastemakers in media.

Penguin Press, Sept. 6

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman , by Lucy Worsley

Not many authors sell a billion books, but Christie’s nearly 70 mysteries helped her do just that. Born in 1890, she introduced the world to two detectives still going strong in film adaptations and elsewhere: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her life even included its own mystery, when she vanished for 11 days in 1926 . Worsley, a historian, offers a full-dress biography.

Pegasus Crime, Sept. 8

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands , by Kate Beaton

This graphic memoir follows Beaton, a Canadian cartoonist, who joins the oil rush in Alberta after graduating from college. The book includes drawings of enormous machines built to work the oil sands against a backdrop of Albertan landscapes, boreal forests and northern lights.

Drawn and Quarterly, Sept. 13

Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir , by Jann S. Wenner

In 2017, Joe Hagan published “Sticky Fingers,” a biography of Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine. Now Wenner recounts his life in his own words, offering an intimate look at his time running the magazine that helped to change American culture.

Little, Brown, Sept. 13

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5. Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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Best Biographies of 2022

OCT. 18, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

by Jon Meacham

An essential, eminently readable volume for anyone interested in Lincoln and his era. Full review >

OCT. 25, 2022

by John A. Farrell

An exemplary study of a life of public service with more than its share of tragedies and controversies. Full review >

AUG. 30, 2022

by Michael Broers

An outstanding addition to the groaning bookshelves on one of the world’s most recognizable leaders. Full review >

NOV. 8, 2022

by Kerri K. Greenidge

A sweeping, insightful, richly detailed family and American history. Full review >

FEB. 1, 2022

by Dan Charnas

A wide-ranging biography that fully captures the subject’s ingenuity, originality, and musical genius. Full review >

JULY 26, 2022

by Philip Short

Required reading for anyone interested in global affairs. Full review >

NOV. 15, 2022

by Brigitta Olubas

An absorbing, well-crafted profile of a supremely gifted writer. Full review >

SEPT. 6, 2022

by Katherine Rundell

Written with verve and panache, this sparkling biography is enjoyable from start to finish. Full review >

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Smithsonian's best history books of 2022.

For many, 2022 was a year of momentous change and loss, marked by events that will undoubtedly be discussed in history books for generations to come. Russia invaded Ukraine , launching a war that shows few signs of slowing. Elizabeth II, the long-reigning British queen, died at age 96 , marking the end of an era for a once-unparalleled empire. The global death toll for Covid-19 surpassed six million , and in June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade , dealing a significant blow to reproductive rights across the United States.

This year, the ten history books we’ve chosen to highlight serve a dual purpose. Some offer a respite from reality, transporting readers to such varied locales as Renaissance Italy, the Nile River and Yellowstone National Park. Others reflect on the fraught nature of the current moment, detailing how the nation’s past—including the military’s racist treatment of Black World War II soldiers and the government’s collaboration with a Mexican dictator—informs its present and future. From a searing exploration of slavery’s lasting consequences to a dual biography of two European queens, these are some of Smithsonian magazine’s favorite history books of 2022.

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard

Where does the Nile, the world’s longest river, begin? It’s a question that’s sparked debate for some 2,000 years, prompting speculation from Herodotus, Alexander the Great and Victorian scientists. Even today, the source of the Nile River remains elusive , with at least one contemporary scholar suggesting the Semliki River over the more commonly cited Lake Victoria .

In River of the Gods , author Candice Millard traces arguably the most famous search for the river’s fabled origins: a series of mid-19th-century expeditions led by polymath Richard Francis Burton and army officer John Hanning Speke . While previous narratives have focused largely on these friends-turned-enemies, Millard’s book adds another central character to the mix: Sidi Mubarak Bombay , a formerly enslaved waYao explorer who played a crucial role in the quest.

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland

When Jonathan Freedland was 19 years old, he attended a London showing of Shoah , Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 Holocaust documentary. Listening to nine hours of testimony from witnesses to the genocide, Freedland was especially struck by Rudolf Vrba , who’d escaped Auschwitz at age 19, becoming one of the few to successfully evade recapture by the Nazis.

Imprisoned for nearly two years, Vrba and fellow escapee Alfred Wetzler broke out of Auschwitz by hiding under a woodpile (laced with petrol-soaked tobacco to throw guard dogs off their scent) near the camp’s edge for three days. The men eventually made their way back home to Slovakia, surviving the arduous trek with help from Polish peasants and resistance members. From there, they turned their attention to informing the world of the atrocities occurring at Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination centers.

The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

The divorce colony: how women revolutionized marriage and found freedom on the american frontier by april white, g-man: j. edgar hoover and the making of the american century by beverly gage, bad mexicans: race, empire, & revolution in the borderlands by kelly lytle hernández, half american: the epic story of african americans fighting world war ii at home and abroad by matthew delmont, saving yellowstone: exploration and preservation in reconstruction america by megan kate nelson, civil rights queen: constance baker motley and the struggle for equality by tomiko brown-nagin, blood, fire and gold: the story of elizabeth i and catherine de medici by estelle paranque.

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The best memoirs and biographies of 2022

Heartfelt memoirs from Richard E Grant and Viola Davis, childhood tales of religious dogma, and vivid insights into Agatha Christie and John Donne

The best books of 2022

C elebrity memoirs often follow the same trajectory: a difficult childhood followed by early professional failure, then dazzling success and redemption. But this year has yielded a handful of autobiographies from famous types determined to mix things up. Richard E Grant’s vivacious and heartfelt A Pocketful of Happiness (Gallery) recounts a year spent caring for his late wife, Joan Washington, who was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly before Christmas in 2020, and the “head-and-heart-exploding overwhelm” that followed. The book interweaves hospital appointments with memories of the couple’s courtship plus showbiz stories of Grant at the Golden Globes, or hijinks on the set of Star Wars. This juxtaposition of glamour and grief shouldn’t work, but it does.

Minnie Driver’s Managing Expectations (Manila) comprises spry and amusing autobiographical essays that detail pivotal moments in the actor’s life. These include her experience of becoming a mother, cutting off all her hair on a family holiday in France and the time her father sent her home to England from Barbados alone, aged 11, including a stopover at a Miami hotel, as punishment for being rude to his girlfriend (Driver got her revenge by buying up half the gift shop on her dad’s credit card). She also recalls the disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein bemoaning her lack of sex appeal, which she notes was rich from a man “whose shirts were always aggressively encrusted with egg/tuna fish/mayo”.

Diary Madly, Deeply The Alan Rickman Diaries Edited by Alan Taylor Canongate, £25

Alan Rickman’s Madly, Deeply (Canongate) diaries provide insight into the inner life of the late actor who, despite his many successes, frets over roles turned down and rails at the perceived ineptitude of script writers, directors and co-stars. He nonetheless keeps glittering company, hobnobbing with musicians, prime ministers and Hollywood megastars, and almost single-handedly keeps the tills ringing at the Ivy. And while he seethes at critics’ reviews of his own work, his assessments of less-than-perfect films and plays are so deliciously scathing, they deserve a book of their own.

In Finding Me (Coronet), the actor Viola Davis gives a clear-eyed account of her deprived childhood and her rise to fame, along with the violence, abuse and racism she endured along the way. The book is not so much a triumphant tale of overcoming adversity as a howl of fury at the injustice of it all. Davis may now be able to survey her career from a place of Oscar-winning privilege, but she doesn’t hesitate in calling out her industry and its ingrained racial bias, which leads to white actors landing plum roles and “relegates [Black actors] to best friends, to strong, loudmouth, sassy lawyers and doctors”. In The Light We Carry (Viking), the follow-up to her bestselling memoir Becoming, Michelle Obama also touches on the impossible-to-meet expectations that dog anyone trying to make it in a world that sees them as different, or deficient. “I happen to be well acquainted with the burdens of representation and the double standards for excellence that steepen the hills so many of us are trying to climb,” she writes. “It remains a damning fact of life that we ask too much of those who are marginalised and too little of those who are not.”

Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy homelands-hardback-cover-9781838852665

Away from the world of global fame and its attendant scrutiny, the journalist Chitra Ramaswamy’s touching memoir Homelands (Canongate) documents the author’s friendship with 97-year-old Henry Wuga, who escaped Nazi persecution as a teenager and began a new life in Glasgow. Interwoven with Wuga’s recollections is Ramaswamy’s own family story – she is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents – through which she digs deep into matters of identity, belonging and the meaning of home. Similar themes are explored in Ira Mathur’s multilayered Love the Dark Days (Peepal Tree), which, set in India, Britain and the Caribbean, reads like a fictional family saga as it leaps back and forth in time. The book charts the lives of the author’s wealthy, dysfunctional forebears against a backdrop of patriarchal hegemony and a collapsing empire.

The Last Days (Ebury) by Ali Millar and Sins of My Father (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) by Lily Dunn each tell harrowing stories of families torn apart by religious dogma. Millar, who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness on the Scottish borders, reflects on a childhood haunted by predictions of Armageddon and blighted by her eating disorder. As an adult she marries, within the church, a controlling man and has a baby, though at 30 she makes her escape and is “disfellowshipped”, meaning she is cut off for ever from her family. Meanwhile, Dunn recalls losing her father to a commune in India presided over by the cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, where disciples were encouraged to “live in love”, meaning they could engage in guilt-free sex. Dunn’s book is her attempt to pin down this charismatic, mercurial and unreliable figure and the ripple effects of his actions on those closest to him. In Matt Rowland Hill’s scabrously funny Original Sins (Chatto & Windus), it is the author who is the agent of chaos. The son of evangelical Christians, Hill shoots heroin at the funeral of a friend who died from an overdose, and tries to score drugs on a visit to Bethlehem. Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched.

In Kit de Waal’s first autobiographical work, Without Warning and Only Sometimes (Tinder Press), the author recalls how she and her four siblings would go to bed hungry while their father blew his earnings on a new suit, and her mother would work off her rage by collecting empty milk bottles and throwing them at a wall in the back yard. After a bout of depression in her teens, De Waal eventually found comfort and escape in literature. Her book is a brilliant evocation of the times in which she lived, when children learned to make their own entertainment and adults didn’t talk about their feelings, and a funny and tender portrait of a complicated family.

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The Crane Wife (Viking), by the American author CJ Hauser, began life as a confessional essay about the time she travelled to the gulf coast of Texas to study whooping cranes 10 days after breaking off her engagement. Published in the Paris Review, the essay blew up online, prompting Hauser to expand her thoughts on love and relationships into this thoughtful and fitfully funny book. Across 17 confessional essays, we find her furtively spreading her grandparents’ ashes at their old house in Martha’s Vineyard, contemplating breast reduction surgery and reflecting on her relationships with a high-school boyfriend and a divorcee who is clearly still in love with his ex.

Finally, some excellent biographies. Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (Hodder & Stoughton) by Lucy Worsley is a riveting portrait of the queen of crime viewed through a feminist lens. The book acknowledges Christie’s flaws, most notably in her views on race, while portraying her as ahead of her time in putting women at the centre of her stories and showing how older women “have more to offer the world than meets the eye”. Super-Infinite (Faber), winner of this year’s Baillie Gifford prize, is a biography of the 17th-century preacher and poet John Donne by Katherine Rundell, the children’s novelist and Renaissance scholar. Ten years in the writing, the book approaches its subject with wit and vivacity, bringing to life Donne’s inner world through his verse.

The Escape Artist- The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz

Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (John Murray) is a remarkable account of the life of Rudolf Vrba, a prisoner at Auschwitz who was put to work in “Kanada”, a store of belongings removed from inmates which revealed that the line fed to them was a lie: they were not there to be resettled but murdered. Vrba and his friend Fred Wetzler pledged to escape and tell the world about the Nazis’ industrialised murder, hiding beneath a woodpile for three days before slipping through the fence to freedom. The horror of this story lies not just in its account of “cold-blooded extermination” but in the slowness of authorities to react to the Vrba-Wetzler report, which laid out the workings of Auschwitz, complete with maps showing the chambers. Freedland recalls the words of the French-Jewish philosopher Raymond Aron, who, when asked about the Holocaust, said: “I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”

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Nonfiction Books » History Books

The best history books: the 2022 wolfson prize shortlist, recommended by carole hillenbrand.

Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson

Every year the Wolfson History Prize celebrates books that combine meticulous and original research with great writing, accessible to the general reader. Here, one of the 2022 judges, the eminent Islamic scholar Carole Hillenbrand , guides us through the shortlist to explain why each book is a must-read.

Interview by Benedict King

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer

The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill

The Best History Books: the 2022 Wolfson Prize Shortlist - Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson

Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme

God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

The Best History Books: the 2022 Wolfson Prize Shortlist - The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer

1 The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer

2 the ruin of all witches: life and death in the new world by malcolm gaskill, 3 devil-land: england under siege, 1588-1688 by clare jackson, 4 going to church in medieval england by nicholas orme, 5 god: an anatomy by francesca stavrakopoulou, 6 fallen idols: twelve statues that made history by alex von tunzelmann.

B efore we get into discussing what you and your fellow Wolfson History Prize judges regard as the best history books of 2022, have you noticed among them any particular approach to history or way of dealing with the past that is particularly original or interesting?

First up is The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer. Tell us why this one made the shortlist—what makes it one of the best history books of the year?

This is a very interesting book. The Ottoman Turks were a very long-lasting and important dynasty, who ruled for seven centuries. And the book unfolds a sweeping narrative stressing the importance of the Ottoman dynasty, both in relation to Middle Eastern countries, but also its role in European history. For many Europeans for about half a millennium, the Ottomans represented the exotic, dangerous and non-Christian Orient. They were the enemy to fear. The book draws out six key moments in Ottoman history as important.

First, the foundation of the Ottoman state at the end of the 13th century, in northwest Anatolia, by the Turkoman tribal leader, Osman I, who gave his name to the dynasty. Second, the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans after 1354, which transformed the Ottoman state into a trans-continental empire. Third, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet the Conqueror, which ended the Byzantine Empire. Fourth, the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent from 1522-1566, which marked the peak of power of the Ottoman Empire . Then there is the siege of Vienna, in 1683, which ended in Ottoman defeat by the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. That marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman domination in Eastern Europe. Finally there is the successful Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which brought about the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy.

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Ottoman tentacles stretched everywhere, not just politically, but also commercially. They controlled major trade routes by land and sea. This book delves deep into primary and secondary historical sources, but it is written very clearly and accessibly and will be accessible to general readers as well as scholars and students.

Does he have a take on it that is highly original, or is he just telling a good story well?

Let’s move on to The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill. What makes this among the best history books of 2022.

The narrative of this book centres on the frontier town of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1651, when there were rumours of witches and heretics, and the community became ensnared in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. This was the beginning of colonial America, where newly arrived English settlers’ dreams of love and liberty could give way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Gaskill uses previously unexamined sources to tell the tragic story of one family, and through it, to expose an entire society in agonised transition between supernatural obsessions and the coming of a more enlightened age.

Gaskill has written several books on witchcraft, but this one is a little different. He focuses on one specific episode 370 years ago to teach broader lessons about superstition, mental illness and human cruelty. He examines the misery of the isolation endured by pioneers far from home, trapped in an alien and frightening environment.

Let’s stay in the 17th century a little longer. Devil Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson takes us from the England of the Armada to the Glorious Revolution, but it has a different take on what people might traditionally think of as its British history in the 17th century. Is that right?

It is a highly original account of perhaps the most turbulent, and radical era of English history—if I can be that daring. It tells the story of a nation in a state of near-continual crisis and it will change our views of the 17th century. It is also extremely well written. It provides fresh insights by looking at England through European eyes. The author emphasizes that foreigners called England ‘devil-land’, a diabolical country, seriously damaged by religious extremism, royal collapse, civil war, and what I would describe as rabble-rousing disturbances. The book examines the complexity of England’s geopolitical involvements, and the perpetually anxious nature of life in Stuart times.

The author paints England as a failed state, and its precarity is presented in great detail. During these 100 years, many of the chaotic events described by Jackson were triggered by England’s ‘quarrelsome relationship’ with Europe. Her book presents England as having a siege mentality. It is a country ill at ease with the idea of foreign influence and always at odds with itself.

Next up is Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme. This is about parish life in the Middle Ages, isn’t it? Why does it stand out among 2022’s history books?

It is often moving. It shows us how religious life was woven into people’s everyday experiences, from Anglo-Saxon times to the Reformation . It is richly illustrated, too. These churches were crucial to English, religious and social life, for church services on Sundays weekdays and for feast days, such as the celebrations at Christmas and Easter. The recurrent cycle of baptism, marriage, funerals, the everyday existence of ordinary people in parish churches are at the very centre of the story.

Let’s move on to God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou.

Stavrakopoulou is a remarkable and unusual historian. Her attitude to the Bible in this book is controversial. It has a decidedly anthropological slant. She describes how, three thousand years ago in the Holy Land, the inhabitants knew of many deities, led by a Father God called El. Later, one such deity, known as Yahweh, had a human-shaped body and he possessed feet to walk on. He had a wife, offspring and colleagues. His body changed all the time. At one point, he was virile young, strapping, and emanated red hot light. However, in the book of Daniel, he had a more celestial colour. He had the white hair and the beard of an aged deity who possesses wisdom.

“The book is steeped in unusual interpretations of how the Bible shows the divine”

In this whole book God is anthropomorphised. Through a close examination of the Bible , Stavrakopoulou writes about the various gods depicted in ancient myths and rituals. They came from a particular time, and they were made in the image of the people who lived then, who were shaped by their circumstances and experience of the world. She argues that important people in the Hebrew Bible were not historical figures and that probably very little of the Hebrew Bible is historical fact. She bases this on arguments that ancient writers had an understanding of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ very different from a modern definition of those terms.

Let’s go onto the last of the best history books of 2022, Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

Of all these six books this one is the most accessible to the general reader. It is fascinating. It examines the fate of fallen statues of famous figures from the past.

In 2020, statues from around the world, from the United States to New Zealand, were pulled down and broken up by protesters. This book examines why statues were put up, what messages they conveyed, how those messages were challenged, what controversies these statues caused, and why and how they were destroyed. The book is very well-researched and looks at statues as a visible and public form of historical storytelling.

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The choice of statues is very wide ranging, geographically, including among others Stalin, George V, Lenin, Saddam Hussein and George Washington. I cannot resist pointing out that it is not surprising that the statues are all of men. Above all, it is worth reading this book for the light it shines on the function of statues today, as well as yesterday, and the book does seek to discuss the contemporary debate and the rewriting of the past by the present. It also looks at the curious absence of historical awareness on the part of many of those who are still determined to topple statues. It is a kind of a commentary, if you like, on ‘wokeness’, I think. As the military historian, Dan Snow, so rightly put it, “Like all the best historians, von Tunzelmann uses the past to explain what’s going on today”. I found this book intelligent, illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable.

What does she say about the modern debate about statues? Does he ask whether we should be putting them up and what they mean and all that sort of thing? Does she have a particular take on that?

Not a particular take. She just leaves us to decide what we think. So much depends on who the people are. But her view is that it doesn’t seem as if the people who are pulling these statues down really understand the historical milieu in which they were put up.

But she’s not going into that controversy at all.

Not really. She’s more interested in in the statues and why they were put up in the first place. It is a very interesting book. I found it quite thought provoking.

Part of our best books of 2022 series.

May 11, 2022

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Carole Hillenbrand

Carole Hillenbrand is Professor Emerita of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professorial Fellow of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. In 2005 she was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, the first non-Muslim to be awarded this prize.

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The Best Biographies of 2022

Summer Loomis

Summer Loomis has been writing for Book Riot since 2019. She obsessively curates her library holds and somehow still manages to borrow too many books at once. She appreciates a good deadline and likes knowing if 164 other people are waiting for the same title. It's good peer pressure! She doesn't have a podcast but if she did, she hopes it would sound like Buddhability . The world could always use more people creating value with their lives everyday.

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The following are the best biographies 2022 had to offer, according to my brain and my tastes. And I know it might sound like something everyone says, but it was really hard to pick them this year. Like many people, I love “best of” lists for the year, even when I disagree with the titles that make the cut. There is something about narrowing the field to “the best” that makes me excited to read the list and see what I’ve read already and which gems I’ve missed that year. If you want to look back at some of the titles Book Riot chose in 2021, try this best books of 2021 by genre or best books for 2020 . Both will probably quadruple your TBR, but they’re super fun to read anyway.

For 2022 in particular, there were a ton of excellent titles to choose from, in both biographies and memoirs. I am not being polite here but let me just say that it was genuinely hard to choose. To make it easier on myself, I have included some memoirs to pair with the best biographies of 2022 below. If you don’t see your absolute favorite, it’s either because I didn’t like it (I don’t believe in spending time on books I don’t like) or because I ran out of space. And it was most likely the latter!

His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Samuels and Olorunnipa are two Washington Post journalists who meticulously researched Floyd’s personal history in order to better understand not only his life and experiences before his death, but also the systemic forces that eventually contributed to his murder. While very interesting, this is also a harder read and very frustrating at times as there is so much loss wrapped up into this story. Definitely one of the best biographies of 2022 and one that I think will be read for years to come.

Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett

This is one of those classic biographies that I think readers will just love diving into. Rich in detail and nuance, it drops readers into Dunbar’s life and times, offering a fascinating look at both the literary and personal life of this great American poet. If you are able to read on audio, you may want to check out actor Mirron E. Willis’s excellent narration.

Didn’t We Almost Have it All: In Defense of Whitney Houston by Gerrick Kennedy

Maybe you’re a huge fan or maybe you don’t know who Whitney Houston was, but either way, you can still read this and enjoy it. Kennedy is very clear that he didn’t set out to write a traditional biography. He wasn’t trying to dig up new “dirt” about the singer or to ask people in her life to reflect back on her now that she has been gone for 10 years. Instead, Kennedy tackles something deeper and possibly harder: to see and appreciate Houston as the fully-formed and talented human being that she was and to understand in full her influence over popular culture and music.

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Finding Me by Viola Davis

If you are also interested in reading a memoir from 2022, you could pair Whitney Houston’s biography with Viola Davis’s book. It was a title I saw everywhere in 2022, but didn’t pick up until the end of the year. My only two cents to add to this strong choice is that I was also just about the last person on earth who hadn’t heard about Davis’s childhood. Please don’t go into this without knowing at least something about what she had to overcome. However, despite all that, I still think it is an excellent and ultimately uplifting read. Content warnings include domestic violence, child endangerment, physical and sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault, drug addiction, and animal death. And also the unrelentingly grinding nature of poverty.

Cover of Like Water A Cultural History Bruce Lee

Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee by Daryl Joji Maeda

This is a much more academic presentation of Bruce Lee and the myriad of ways he can be “read” in his connections and contributions to American pop culture. If you or someone you know is itching to read an extremely detailed and deeply considered look at Lee’s life, then this is the book for you. If you read on audio, be sure to check out David Lee Huynh’s narration.

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story by Simu Liu

If you want to read something much lighter but still connected to Asian representation in Western movies, you could do worse than Liu’s 2022 memoir. In comparison to other books on this list, this felt like a much lighter read to me, but it is not without some heavier moments. While I am not a superfan of Liu (because I’m not really a superfan of anyone), I did enjoy learning about Liu’s childhood and especially hearing little details like that his grandparents called him a nickname that basically translated to “little furry caterpillar” as a child. I mean, is there anything more adorable for a kid?

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

This is another meaty biography that readers will just adore. Complex and fascinating, von Neumann’s curiosity was legendary and his contributions are so far-reaching that it is hard to imagine any one person undertaking them all. This is a good choice for readers who are fascinated by mathematics, big personalities, and intellectual puzzles.

Cover of Agatha Christie an Elusive Woman

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

This is another best biography of 2022 that many, many readers will want to sink into. The audio is also by the author so you may want to read it that way. Whether someone reads it with eyes or ears (or both!), this book is sure to interest many curious Christie fans. And if Worsley’s biography isn’t enough for you, you may also enjoy this breakdown of why Christie is one of the best-selling novelists of all time or these 8 audiobooks for Agatha Christie fans .

Cover of the School that Escaped the Nazis

The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler by Deborah Cadbury

Cadbury writes a fascinating biography of Anna Essinger, a schoolteacher who managed to smuggle her students out of a Germany succumbing to Hitler’s rise to power and all the horror that was to follow. Essinger’s bravery and clear-eyed understanding of what was happening around her is amazing. This is a thrilling and fascinating biography readers will no doubt find inspirational.

Cover of The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland

The Escape Artist: The Man who Broke out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland

Freedland is a British journalist who has written this thoroughly engrossing book about Rudolf Vrba, a man who managed to escape from Auschwitz. It’s no surprise that this is a very important but difficult read. For those who can manage it, I highly recommend immersing oneself in this historical nonfiction biography about a man who survived some of the darkest events of human history.

That is my list of the best biographies of 2022, with a few memoirs for those who are interested. And now of course, I need to mention several titles I have yet to get to from 2022: Hua Hsu’s Stay True , Zain Asher’s Where the Children Take Us , Fatima Ali’s Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More , and Dan Charnas and Jeff Peretz’s Dilla Time , to name a few!

Also Bernardine Evaristo published Manifesto: On Never Giving Up in 2022 and somehow it slipped through the cracks of my TBR. I will have to make time for that one soon.

If you still need more titles to explore, try these 50 best biographies or 20 biographies for kids . And to that latter list, I might add that a children’s biography came out about Octavia Butler in 2022 called Star Child by Haitian American author Ibi Zoboi, so you might want to check that out too!

The Thriller Writer Outselling James Patterson and John Grisham

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8 books that NPR critics and staff were eager to tell you about in 2022

Maison Tran

It's that time of year again: NPR brings you the complete Books We Love list for 2022, a quirky, highly personal collection of our staff and contributors' favorite books of the year.

We've curated a range of reads from the renaissance of ever-diverse graphic novels to hair-raising thrillers and mysteries .

Of the 402 books that made the list, here are eight of the books that our Books We Love readers recommended the most.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

You know that feeling when you finally beat a video game? Emotional catharsis floods your mind and body and, drained, you set down the controller with a sigh. If you're not much of a gamer, but you still crave that emotional release, Gabrielle Zevin's brilliant novel about two friends' journey to video game stardom is the perfect substitute. This story of love, loss and the constant battle between art and commercial success left me short of breath. It's one of those books you'll be thinking about long after "game over."

— Brandon Carter , associate producer, Washington Desk

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

For centuries, the crone Baba Yaga has been a figure in Slavic folklore – the kind of character who might lend you a magical candle or kill you and use your skull to decorate her house on chicken legs. In her debut novel, Thistlefoot , author and folklorist GennaRose Nethercott reimagines Baba Yaga as a Jewish woman living in an Eastern European shtetl in 1919, during a time of civil war and pogroms. Through the crone and her story, Nethercott explores the idea of folklore as a retelling of a memory too painful to talk about plainly.

— Mallory Yu , producer/editor, All Things Considered

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy's account of her tumultuous relationship with show business, disordered eating and abuse by her mother is the heart of her debut memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died . McCurdy's storytelling is not only fantastic but intimate and raw, full of both pain and humor. While it can be hard to read, learning about how much she was going through privately while in the public eye, I'm Glad My Mom Died is also hard to put down – and hard to forget.

— Aja Miller, associate, Member Partnership

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

I could say something buttoned-up, like "Jonathan Escoffery's debut collection of short stories examines race, identity and class in incisive ways." And that'd be true, but phrasing it that way betrays the lack of didacticism in his writing . Instead, the book – which follows generations of one Jamaican American family – focuses on the hunger (literal and figurative), heartbreak, horniness and (maybe?) hope that often come hand-in-hand with trying to make it in this country.

— Andrew Limbong , correspondent, Culture Desk and host, Book of the Day

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley is back with her latest whodunit, this time set in an eerie Parisian apartment complex. Running from her own problems, Jess decides to visit Ben, her journalist brother. But when she gets to Paris, Ben is nowhere to be found. None of his neighbors know where he is, but they all seem to know him – maybe a little too well. As she investigates, Jess learns more about her brother, his work and those peculiar neighbors. With characters suspicious and unlikable in their own way and a fun twist, you're in for a dark and moody escape .

— Arielle Retting , growth editor, Digital News

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

I'm a sucker for Gothic novels, and I've been loving the trend of Gothics that take place somewhere unexpected (i.e., not Europe). The Hacienda is a story that takes us to, well, a hacienda – in a remote Mexican town in the 1820s, not long after the War of Independence. The protagonist, Beatriz, moves to her new husband's large estate, eager to escape the rejection, poverty and tragedy that she's suffered in Mexico City. What she finds instead is a ridiculously haunted house inhabited by some equally haunted-seeming people – including those meant to be closest to her.

— Leah Donnella , supervising editor, Code Switch

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Sequoia Nagamatsu's debut is beautiful and unsparing in its depiction of a world reeling from a climate catastrophe-driven plague . From the earliest days of a pandemic, to the impacts that linger centuries into the future, the plague forces humans to reckon with immeasurable grief and loss. And the commercialization of death is inescapable: There's a euthanasia amusement park for terminally ill children, a hotel for the dead. But despite the doom and gloom, these stories are endlessly imaginative and rich with meaning. Though the universe these stories are unfolding within is undeniably bleak, Nagamatsu imbues his characters with a sense of cosmic hope and humanity.

— Summer Thomad , production assistant, Code Switch

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

The 1950s weren't just unkind to women with aspirations outside the home – they were punishing. Case in point: Elizabeth Zott, chemist. She doesn't have her Ph.D. because she was assaulted by a professor; she's belittled and harassed by the men she works with. She falls in love with a star scientist – and is dogged by rumors that she's using him to get ahead. His accidental death, her surprise pregnancy and new single-mother desperation lead her to success in an unlikely place: a TV cooking show. But Zott gives her audience radical lessons that go beyond the kitchen. This book is an often funny-yet-infuriating read.

— Melissa Gray , senior producer, Weekend Edition

The Best Books of 2021

This Year's Must-Reads

The Ten Best History Books of 2021

Our favorite titles of the year resurrect forgotten histories and help explain how the U.S. got to where it is today

Meilan Solly

Associate Editor, History

After 2020 brought the most devastating global pandemic in a century and a national reckoning with systemic racism , 2021 ushered in a number of welcome developments, including Covid vaccines , the return of beloved social traditions like the Olympics and public performances , and incremental but measurable progress in the fight against racial injustice .

During this year of change, these ten titles collectively serve a dual purpose. Some offer a respite from reality, transporting readers to such varied locales as ancient Rome, Gilded Age America and Angkor in Cambodia. Others reflect on the fraught nature of the current moment, detailing how the nation’s past—including the mistreatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and police brutality—informs its present and future. From a chronicle of civilization told through clocks to a quest for Indigenous justice in colonial Pennsylvania, these were some of our favorite history books of 2021.

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

“It’s terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die,” writes Annalee Newitz in the opening pages of Four Lost Cities . This stark statement sets the stage for the journalist’s incisive exploration of how cities collapse—a topic with clear ramifications for the “global-warming present,” as Kirkus notes in its review of the book. Centered on the ancient metropolises of Çatalhöyük , a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia; Pompeii , the Roman city razed by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E.; Angkor , the medieval Cambodian capital of the Khmer Empire; and Cahokia , a pre-Hispanic metropolis in what is now Illinois, Four Lost Cities traces its subjects’ successes and failures, underscoring surprising connections between these ostensibly disparate societies.

All four cities boasted sophisticated infrastructure systems and ingenious feats of engineering. Angkor, for instance, became an economic powerhouse in large part due to its complex network of canals and reservoirs, while Cahokia was known for its towering earthen pyramids , which locals imbued with spiritual significance. Despite these innovations, the featured urban hubs eventually succumbed to what Newitz describes as “prolonged periods of political instability”—often precipitated by poor leadership and social hierarchies—“coupled with environmental collapse.” These same problems plague modern cities, the writer argues, but the past offers valuable lessons for preventing such disasters in the future, including investing in “resilient infrastructure, … public plazas, domestic spaces for everyone, social mobility and leaders who treat the city’s workers with dignity.”

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history―and figure out why people abandoned them

Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace

In the winter of 1722, two white fur traders murdered Seneca hunter Sawantaeny after he refused their drunken, underhanded attempts to strike a deal. The ensuing furor, writes historian Nicole Eustace in Covered With Night , threatened to spark outright war between English colonists and the Indigenous inhabitants of the mid-Atlantic. Rather than enter into a prolonged, bloody battle, the Susquehanna River valley’s Native peoples forged an agreement, welcoming white traders back into their villages once Sawantaeny’s body had been metaphorically “covered,” or laid to rest in a “respectful, ritualized way,” as Eustace told Smithsonian magazine’ s Karin Wulf earlier this year.

“Native people believe that a crisis of murder makes a rupture in the community and that rupture needs to be repaired,” Eustace added. “They are not focused on vengeance; they are focused on repair, on rebuilding community. And that requires a variety of actions. They want emotional reconciliation. They want economic restitution.”

The months of negotiation that followed culminated in the Albany Treaty of 1722 , which provided both “ritual condolences and reparation payments” for Sawantaeny’s murder, according to Eustace. Little known today, the historian argues, the agreement underscores the differences between Native and colonial conceptions of justice. Whereas the former emphasized what would now be considered restorative justice (an approach that seeks to repair harm caused by a crime), the latter focused on harsh reprisal, meting out swift executions for suspects found guilty. “The Pennsylvania colonists never really say explicitly, ‘We’re following Native protocols. We’re accepting the precepts of Native justice,’” Eustace explained to Smithsonian . “But they do it because in practical terms they didn’t have a choice if they wanted to resolve the situation.”

Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

An immersive tale of the killing of a Native American man and its far-reaching implications for the definition of justice from early America to today

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Sackler family’s role in triggering the U.S. opioid epidemic attracted renewed attention this year with the release of “ Dopesick ,” a Hulu miniseries based on Beth Macy’s 2018 book of the same name , and Patrick Radden Keefe ’s award-winning Empire of Pain , which exhaustively examines the rise—and very public fall—of the drug-peddling American “dynasty.”

Meticulously researched, the book traces its roots to the early 2010s, when the journalist was reporting on Mexican drug cartels for the New York Times magazine . As Keefe tells the London Times , he realized that 25 percent of the revenue generated by OxyContin, the most popular pill pushed by Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma, came from the black market. Despite this trend, the family was better known for its donations to leading art museums than its part in fueling opioid addiction. “There was a family that had made billions of dollars from the sale of a drug that had such a destructive legacy,” Keefe says, “yet hadn’t seemed touched by that legacy.” Infuriated, he began writing what would become Empire of Pain .

The resulting 560-page exposé draws on newly released court documents, interviews with more than 200 people and the author’s personal accounts of the Sacklers’ attempts to intimidate him into silence. As the New York Times notes in its review, the book “paint[s] a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest responsibility or show the least sympathy for what it wrought.”

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain

Historian Keisha N. Blain derived the title of her latest book from a well-known quote by its subject, voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer : “We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or Black, until I am free.” As Blain wrote for Smithsonian last year, Hamer, who grew up in the Jim Crow South in a family of sharecroppers , first learned about her right to vote in 1962, at the age of 44. After attempting to register to vote in Mississippi, she faced verbal and physical threats of violence—experiences that only strengthened her resolve.

Blain’s book is one of two new Hamer biographies released in 2021. The other, Walk With Me by historian Kate Clifford Larson , offers a more straightforward account of the activist’s life. Comparatively, Blain’s volume situates Hamer in the broader political context of the civil rights movement. Both titles represent a long-overdue celebration of a woman whose contributions to the fight for equal rights have historically been overshadowed by men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

Explores the Black activist’s ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel

On April 30, 1942, 11-year-old Philip Lazowski found himself separated from his family during a Nazi selection in the Polish town of Zhetel. Realizing that the elderly, the infirm and unaccompanied children were being sent in one direction and families with work permits in the other, he tried to blend in with the children of a woman he recognized, only to hear her hiss , “Don’t stand next to us. You don’t belong in this group.” Looking around, Lazowski soon spotted another stranger and her daughters. Desperate, he pleaded with her to let him join them. After pausing momentarily, the woman— Miriam Rabinowitz —took his hand and said, “If the Nazis let me live with two children, they’ll let me live with three.”

All four survived the selection. From there, however, their paths temporarily diverged. Lazowski reunited with his family, remaining imprisoned in the Zhetel ghetto before fleeing into the nearby woods, where he remained hidden for the next two and a half years. Miriam, her husband Morris and their two children similarly sought refuge in a forest but did not encounter Lazowski again until after the war. (Lazowski later married one of the Rabinowitz daughters, Ruth, after running into Miriam at a 1953 wedding in Brooklyn—a “stroke of luck that … mirrors the random twists of fate that enabled the family to survive while so many others didn’t,” per Publishers Weekly .)

As journalist Rebecca Frankel writes in Into the Forest , the Rabinowitzes and Lazowski were among the roughly 25,000 Jews who survived the war by hiding out in the woods of Eastern Europe. The majority of these individuals (about 15,000) joined the partisan movement , eking out a meager existence as ragtag bands of resistance fighters, but others, like the Rabinowitzes, formed makeshift family camps, “aiming not for revenge but survival,” according to the Forward . Frankel’s account of the family’s two-year sojourn in the woods captures the harsh realities of this lesser-known chapter in Holocaust history, detailing how forest refugees foraged for food (or stole from locals when supplies were scarce), dug underground shelters and remained constantly on the move in hopes of avoiding Nazi raids. Morris, who worked in the lumber business, used his pre-war connections and knowledge of the forest to help his family survive, avoiding the partisans “in the hope of keeping outside the fighting fray,” as Frankel writes for the New York Times . Today, she adds, the stories of those who escaped into the woods remain “so elusive” that some scholars have referred to them as “the margins of the Holocaust.”

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love

From a little-known chapter of Holocaust history, one family’s inspiring true story

The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age by Amy Sohn

Though its title might suggest otherwise, The Man Who Hated Women focuses far more on the American women whose rights Anthony Comstock sought to suppress than the sexist government official himself. As novelist and columnist Amy Sohn explains in her narrative non-fiction debut, Comstock , a dry goods seller who moonlighted as a special agent to the U.S. Post Office and the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, spent more than four decades hounding activists who advocated for women’s reproductive rights. In 1873, he lobbied Congress to pass the Comstock Act , which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious” material—including documents related to birth control and sexual health —through the mail; in his view, the author adds, “obscenity, which he called a ‘hydra-headed-monster,’ led to prostitution, illness, death, abortions and venereal disease.”

The Man Who Hated Women centers on eight women activists targeted by Comstock: among others, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; anarchist and labor organizer Emma Goldman; Planned Parenthood founder and notorious eugenicist Margaret Sanger ; abortionist Ann “ Madam Restell ” Lohman; and homeopath Sarah Chase , who fought back against censorship by dubbing a birth control device the “Comstock Syringe.” Weaving together these women’s stories, Sohn identifies striking parallels between 19th- and 20th-century debates and contemporary threats to abortion rights. “Risking destitution, imprisonment and death,” writes the author in the book’s introduction, “[these activists] defined reproductive liberty as an American right, one as vital as those enshrined in the Constitution. … Without understanding [them], we cannot fight the assault on women’s bodies and souls that continues even today.”

The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

A narrative history of Anthony Comstock, anti-vice activist and U.S. Postal Inspector, and the remarkable women who opposed his war on women’s rights at the turn of the 20th century

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

In this sweeping chronicle , scholar Olivette Otele challenges white-centric narratives of European history by tracing African people’s presence on the continent from the 3rd century to the 21st. Featuring a rich cast of characters, including Renaissance duke Alessandro de’ Medici , 18th-century polymath Joseph Boulogne , and actress and artists’ muse Jeanne Duval , African Europeans artfully examines changing conceptions of race and how these ideas have shaped both real-world experiences and accounts of the past.

“The term ‘African European’ is … a provocation for those who deny that one can have multiple identities and even citizenships, as well as those who claim that they do not ‘see color,’” writes Otele in the book’s introduction. “The aims of this volume are to understand connections across time and space, to debunk persistent myths, and to revive and celebrate the lives of African Europeans.”

African Europeans: An Untold History

A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent

The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson

Life at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated between August 1942 and November 1945, was punctuated by harsh winters, inadequate medical care, and racist treatment by white staff and locals. A year or so after the camp’s opening, however, prisoners gained an unlikely source of hope: high school football. As journalist Bradford Pearson writes in The Eagles of Heart Mountain , the team—made up mainly of second-generation immigrants who’d never played the sport before—went undefeated in the 1943 season and lost just one game the year after that.

Pearson juxtaposes the heartwarming tale of the underdog Eagles with details of how players resisted the draft. Reluctant to fight on behalf of a country that had ordered their detainment, several of the young men refused to enlist, leaving them vulnerable to (additional) imprisonment. “We are not being disloyal,” declared the Heart Mountain–based Fair Play Committee. “We are not evading the draft. We are all loyal Americans fighting for justice and democracy right here at home.”

The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America

The impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told tale about a World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney

“[F]or thousands of years,” argues David Rooney in About Time , humans have “harnessed, politicized and weaponized” time, using clocks to “wield power, make money, govern citizens and control lives.” A former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time , Rooney traces his fascination with horology to his childhood, when his parents ran a clockmaking and restoration business. Over a lifetime spent studying clocks, the scholar realized that the devices could be used as windows into civilization, revealing insights on “capitalism, the exchange of knowledge, the building of empires and the radical changes to our lives brought by industrialization.”

About Time centers on 12 clocks created over some 2,000 years, from a sundial at the Roman forum in 263 B.C.E. to a plutonium time-capsule clock buried in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. As the centuries progressed, timekeeping tools became increasingly accurate—a development that could “never [be] politically neutral,” notes the Washington Post in its review of the book. Instead, the standardization of time enabled capitalist endeavors like the opening and closing of financial markets and social control measures such as laws limiting when consumers could purchase alcohol. Overall, writes Rooney, his “personal, idiosyncratic and above all partial account” seeks to demonstrate that “monumental timekeepers mounted high up on towers or public buildings have been put there to keep us in order, in a world of violent disorder, … as far back as we care to look.”

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks

A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton

Between July 1964 and April 2001, almost 2,000 urban rebellions sparked by racially motivated police intimidation, harassment and violence broke out across the U.S. These “explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order,” in Elizabeth Hinton ’s words , are often characterized as riots—a term the Yale historian rejects in favor of “rebellion.” Citing a rich trove of historical data, Hinton’s America on Fire convincingly argues that Black rebellions occur in response to police violence rather than the other way around. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s “ War on Crime ,” for example, contributed to the growth of local police forces that “encroach[ed on] all aspects of Black social life, transforming typical youthful transgressions into fodder for police assaults on young Black people,” per the New Yorker .

Published almost exactly a year after George Floyd was killed in police custody, America on Fire deftly draws parallels between the violence that followed the assassinations of civil rights leaders in the 1960s and the 2020 protests. Only “extraordinary” acts of police violence, like the well-documented murder of Floyd, prompt such rebellions today: “[T]he daily violence and indignities that Black people experience in encounters with police go unaddressed,” notes the Washington Post in its review of the book. “In this sense, Hinton argues that the status quo has won. Ordinary police violence has become normalized, run-of-the-mill. We respond to only its most brutal forms.”

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era

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Best History & Biography 2022
WINNER 22,711 votes. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History. by. Huw Lemmey (Goodreads Author), Ben Miller. Based on the popular podcast series, Bad Gays is a mischievous variation on the usual approach to popular history. Rather than focus on LGBTQ icons and heroes, the book profiles various villains, rogues, and baddies from the pages of history.
The Ten Best History Books of 2022
November 29, 2022. This year's picks include Half American , Saving Yellowstone and River of the Gods . Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz. For many, 2022 was a year of momentous change and loss ...
Best History & Biography 2022
Discover the Best History & Biography in the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards, the only major book awards decided by readers.
Award Winning Biographies of 2022
The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography The Elizabeth Longford Prize is an award set up in 20o3 in memory of Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), a British biographer who wrote biographies of both Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. This year's prize went to a book about George III: The Last King of America by the British biographer Andrew Roberts.
15 Memoirs and Biographies to Read This Fall (Published 2022)
Friends, Lovers and the Terrible Thing: A Memoir, by Matthew Perry. Perry, who played Chandler Bing on "Friends," has been candid about his substance abuse and sobriety. In this memoir, he ...
The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022
To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness". -Laura Feigel ( The Guardian) 2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland.
Best Biographies of 2022
Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir History. Current Events & Social Issues Graphic Novels & Comics Teens & Young Adult Children's. Popular Content. Bestsellers Book lists Best Of 2023. ... Best Biographies of 2022. NONFICTION. OCT. 18, 2022. BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR. AND THERE WAS LIGHT.
Best History & Biography 2021
WINNER 19,969 votes. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. by. Patrick Radden Keefe. This year's winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for History/Biography, Empire of Pain is an exhaustively researched profile of the Sackler family, the aristocratic American clan that made its fortune making and marketing the painkiller ...
Smithsonian's Best History Books of 2022
For many, 2022 was a year of momentous change and loss, marked by events that will undoubtedly be discussed in history books for generations to come. Russia invaded Ukraine, launching a war that ...
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The Best History Books: the 2022 Wolfson Prize Shortlist
3 Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson. 4 Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme. 5 God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. 6 Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann. B efore we get into discussing what you and your fellow Wolfson History Prize judges regard as the best ...
The 8 Best Biographies Of 2022
Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley. This is another best biography of 2022 that many, many readers will want to sink into. The audio is also by the author so you may want to read it that way. Whether someone reads it with eyes or ears (or both!), this book is sure to interest many curious Christie fans.
10 Best History Books of 2022
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Pulitzer Prize Winner) By Beverly Gage. In Stock Online. Few names from the 20 th Century political landscape are more recognizable than J. Edgar Hoover. Now, decades of research have been compiled in this first major biography in over a quarter of a century of this indomitable ...
30 Best Biographies to Read Now 2024
The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography by Miriam Pawel (2014) Read More. Shop Now. 4. Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White (2004) Read More. Shop Now. 5. In Love and Struggle: The ...
The 10 Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2022
Best Biographies and Memoirs 2022. By Brittany Bunzey / October 10, 2022 at 6:50 am Share ... B&N Reads, Best Books Of The Year, Fiction, History, Memoirs, Mystery, Romance, Science. Best Books of the Year (So Far) B&N Reads, Movies, We Recommend. Studio Ghibli Movie to Book Pairings.
Barnes & Noble's Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2022
Explore our list of Barnes & Noble's Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2022 Books at Barnes & Noble®. Get your order fast and stress free with free curbside pickup. ... Barnes & Noble's Best History of 2023; Barnes & Noble's Best Cookbooks of 2023; Barnes & Noble's Best Teens & YA Books of 2023;
The Ten Best History Books of 2023
Wade in June 2022, Jennifer Wright was putting the finishing touches on her latest book, Madame Restell, a biography of the woman she deems "a businesswoman, a scofflaw, an immigrant and an ...
Best History & Biography 2023
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. by. David Grann (Goodreads Author) Journalist and veteran researcher David Grann profiles the bloody fate of an 18th-century British warship that generated two groups of survivors, each telling a different tale of What Really Happened. Perhaps this year's most expansive book, The Wager ...
Notable books from 2022 according to NPR staff and critics : NPR
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. William Morrow. Lucy Foley is back with her latest whodunit, this time set in an eerie Parisian apartment complex. Running from her own problems, Jess decides to ...
The Ten Best History Books of 2021
Blain's book is one of two new Hamer biographies released in 2021. The other, Walk With Me by historian Kate Clifford Larson, offers a more straightforward account of the activist's life ...
The 16 Best History Books to Read in 2022
The Best History Books to Read in 2023. #1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. by Timothy Snyder. Via Amazon. Summary: In On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century ...
The Best Books of 2022: Biography
Angela Y. Davis. £20.00. Hardback. In stock. Usually dispatched within 2-3 working days. Reissued in a boldly designed new hardback edition, the intensely powerful memoir of political activist Angela Davis is a touchstone of the Black Liberation movement and packed full of incredible first-hand accounts of key events.
The 10 Best Presidential Biographies to Refresh Your Political ...
Here, we round up 10 of the best presidential biographies you should add to your reading list right now. amazon.com 1) 'JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956' by Fredrik Logevall
Barnes & Noble's Best History Books of 2022
Explore our list of Barnes & Noble's Best History Books of 2022 Books at Barnes & Noble®. Get your order fast and stress free with free curbside pickup.
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Stay up-to-date with the AHA View All News The American Historical Review is the flagship journal of the AHA and the journal of record for the historical discipline in the United States, bringing together scholarship from every major field of historical study. Learn More Perspectives on History is the newsmagazine…