Books I Read in 2013

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Here’s a list of books I read in 2013, in chronological order. Pretty much just nonfiction, as usual. Actually, a couple of weeks ago I started reading The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s new novel (I really enjoyed The Secret History way back when), but for some reason fiction never absorbs me anymore, and instead I found myself pulled into a biography of Alfred Hitchcock.

Anyway, here’s what I read in 2013, starting in January. (Here is last year’s list.)

  • The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, David Nasaw (started at end of 2012)
  • The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America, James T. Patterson
  • George F. Kennan: An American Life, John Lewis Gaddis
  • The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies, David Thomson (first third or so)
  • Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945, Max Hastings
  • Communism: A History, Richard Pipes
  • Ancient Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, Volume 1, Anthony Kenny (almost finished)
  • On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present, Alan Ryan (2 vols.)
  • Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, Gordon S. Wood
  • The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, Eric Foner
  • Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes
  • The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, Dan Jones
  • The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England, Marc Morris
  • Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors, Peter Ackroyd
  • Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, Peter Ackroyd
  • Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vincent Bugliosi (all except first part, which I’d previously read)
  • The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy, Larry J. Sabato
  • Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage, Jeffrey Frank
  • (Passage of Power – reread various parts of it – intro, JFK assassination, transition)
  • The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence, Robert Klara
  • Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Peter Baker
  • The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer