With the nation's big 2-5-0 coming up next year, NPR staff and critics recommended a lot of U.S.-focused titles for Books We Love, our annual year-end reading guide. Below you'll find 10 favorites — perfect for the history buff on your gift list, or anyone looking to learn more about how the U.S got to where it is today. Read on, or check out our full 2025 list here.
American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation, by Jarvis R. Givens
In this deeply researched book, Harvard University professor of education and African American studies Jarvis R. Givens locates 1819 as a "crossroads" in the history of education in the United States. That year, Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, providing funding for assimilative boarding schools for Native American children, and the governor of Virginia signed an anti-literacy law that made it a crime to teach enslaved people to read and write in schools. Amid the Trump administration's effort to dismantle the Department of Education, Givens' clear-eyed assessment of American education offers an opportunity to reflect on the long-standing relationships among race, power and schooling in the U.S. — Kristen Martin, book critic and author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, by Rick Atkinson
I've been eagerly waiting years for this book! This is the second volume of Rick Atkinson's trilogy on the American Revolution. Atkinson makes good use of letters and diaries. You feel like you're in the middle of a battle, with all the sights, sounds and tragedy. Harrowing tales of hand-to-hand fighting, scalping and desperate evacuations. Fine detail: the waxed mustaches of the Hessian forces, the number of rum barrels distributed to weary and ill-clad troops, the dull thud of cannonballs smacking into ships. The stench of makeshift hospitals, with piles of limbs stacked outside. He carefully lays out how the battles began, and the successes, mistakes and missed opportunities – on both sides. — Tom Bowman, Pentagon reporter
History Matters, by David McCullough, Dorie McCullough Lawson (contributor), and Michael Hill (contributor)
If history can be a comfort read, this is it. David McCullough's daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill, assembled this posthumous collection over two years. Some of the historian's old manuscripts and files were kept in a New England barn, so the occasional acorn and nest turned up along with the historian's glorious observations about Americans and their history. The essay subjects are diverse – painter Thomas Eakins, Harriet Beecher Stowe in Paris, "A Book on Every Bed" (it will melt your heart). One theme emerges that you might find reassuring in its own way: There was no "simpler time." — Shannon Rhoades, supervising senior editor, Weekend Edition
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, by Judith Giesberg
In 2017, historian Judith Giesberg and her team of graduate student researchers launched a website called the "Last Seen" project. It now contains over 5,000 ads placed in newspapers by formerly enslaved people hoping to find family members separated by slavery. The ads span the 1830s to the 1920s and serve as portals "into the lived experience of slavery." In Last Seen, her book drawn from that monumental website, Giesberg closely reads 10 of those ads placed in search of lost children, mothers, wives, siblings and comrades who served in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. — Maureen Corrigan, book critic, Fresh Air
Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, by Mary Annette Pember
Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe and a national correspondent at ICT News, grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as her mother's "secret confessor," listening to fairy-tale-like stories of the horrors she endured at an assimilative boarding school. In Medicine River, Pember traces the repercussions of her mother's maltreatment, situating her family's story within the United States' systemic use of education to eradicate Native cultures. Through an approach that is "part journalistic research, part spiritual pilgrimage," Pember provides a cuttingly personal account of the history of federally funded Indian boarding schools and a moving look at how Indigenous traditions and rituals can light the path for healing. — Kristen Martin, book critic and author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church, by Kevin Sack
There was great symbolism when a white supremacist targeted Charleston's Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, killing nine Black worshippers as a means to ignite a race war. As we learn in this deeply researched history, the congregation has been involved in the struggle for racial justice ever since it was founded in an "act of bold subversion" by enslaved and free African Americans in the 1800s. I am struck by the stories of clergy and members who fought against seemingly insurmountable odds at nearly every turn of history, truly living out their faith and believing in a better America. — Debbie Elliott, correspondent, National Desk
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, by Brian Goldstone
In this paradigm-shifting, immersive book, journalist and anthropologist Brian Goldstone follows five families in Atlanta who, despite working full time, struggle to stay housed amid gentrification, a lack of tenants' rights and low wages. These families, all Black, fall into a "shadow realm" – they are not considered officially homeless by the federal government, but lack a fixed living place as they double up with friends and family, sleep in their cars, or pay exorbitant rates at extended-stay hotels. Woven throughout their stories is a trenchant exploration of how America's disinvestment in public housing and relentless pursuit of free-market growth have fueled housing insecurity for poor working families. — Kristen Martin, book critic and author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
The War of Art: A History of Artists' Protest In America, by Lauren O'Neill-Butler
This book is about the creative – if often short-lived and not always successful – ways in which artists have fought for social change in the U.S. since the 1960s. Personal favorite: a chapter on how the scrappy video collective, Top Value Television (TVTV), changed the public's view of political conventions. With artist-led protests once again becoming a thing – from the thousands of actors and filmmakers who recently pledged to boycott the Israeli movie industry in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to the presence of a 12-foot statue depicting President Trump and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein frolicking on the National Mall, this book about the past provides a powerful frame for thinking about artist-led actions today. — Chloe Veltman, correspondent, Culture Desk
We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, by Jill Lepore
As the U.S. approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, it feels like an appropriate time to reflect on where we're at as a country and how we got here. We the People, by Jill Lepore, a history and law professor at Harvard University, helps satisfy that impulse. It tells the story of the U.S. Constitution, which is among the world's oldest constitutions. Lepore focuses on battles over amendments, which were fought not just by politicians but by ordinary Americans. The founders designed the Constitution to be amended, but it has become much more difficult to do so over the years. As the Constitution becomes harder to amend, Lepore writes, the risk of political violence becomes greater. — Milton Guevara, producer, Morning Edition and Up First
Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service, by Michael Lewis (editor)
Thousands of unsung heroes in the government are making life better for Americans. But because of bureaucracies being made up of bureaucrats, we rarely hear those stories. This book showcases them. Like a coal-mining safety official who helped the U.S. reach zero mine-collapse deaths. Or the man who has led the National Cemetery Administration to the top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. As the federal government is in its biggest shake-up in a generation, it's worth learning about where the bright spots are. — Darian Woods, host, The Indicator from Planet Money
This is just a fraction of the 380+ titles we included in Books We Love this year. Click here to check out this year's titles, or browse nearly 4,000 books from the last 13 years.
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