As the weather cools and the days grow shorter, there is no better time to settle in with a sweeping look at the past. This October brings a fascinating new crop of history releases, taking us from the dazzling city of Vienna to the First Lady’s court in the East Wing. Whether you are looking to dive deep into an already familiar era or find a fresh perspective on a well-known historical figure, here are the new books to add to your reading list this fall.
Major Pierre “Pete” Ortiz was a Manhattan-born and Paris-educated polymath fluent in five languages. An adventuresome French Foreign Legion veteran, Ortiz was deployed multiple times to complete a string of clandestine missions, from enemy-held North Africa to Occupied France.
By the time he retired as a United States Marine Corps colonel, he received two Navy Crosses for extraordinary heroism in World War II. He was one of the very few U.S. Marines to serve in combat in Europe during World War II, and one of the most decorated Marine officers of the war.
This is the untold story of Marine legend Pete Ortiz.
Spanning the most defining decades of the twentieth century, from the New Deal era, to the myth-making Kennedys, to the turbulent, MAGA-influenced 2020s, The East Wing is the captivating true story of the First Lady’s staffers and their role in the executive branch of governance, as well as the evolution of female leadership in our country.
Academic and Pulitzer-Prize finalist Azadeh Moaveni blends original reporting, including extensive interviews with key players from past East Wings, with expert research and analysis to take readers deep inside the fascinating and high stakes world of the First Lady’s office like never before.
Hailed as one of America’s great novelists, little is known about the man behind the stories filled with greed, violence, and love. With precision and grace, Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited recounts his story from poverty to riches, obscurity to worldwide acclaim, and unveils the man behind the myth in a must-read biography for both lifelong fans and new McCarthy readers alike.
What can Americans learn about our divided country today from the Civil War that divided us in the past?
Connor Williams’s The Confederacy Myth answers that question with a blistering historical exposé that reframes our understanding of the Confederacy towards with what it really was—a relatively small insurrection of fanatics that plunged the nation into its deadliest war.
In his new book, Williams reveals the truth about the Confederacy by unraveling its myths and uncovering its perilous political tactics, irate ideologies, reckless brand of warfare, impotent governance, and enduring commitment to slavery.
In the waning days of the antebellum South, millions of African Americans were suddenly released from enslavement. But they soon realized that “freedom” was not free; they were subject to hundreds of laws aimed at preventing them from voting and, in many cases, learning. Were it not for the work of an exceptional group of women—activists, educators, mothers, organizers—the foundations for Black education might never have been laid.
With Freedom’s Daughters, Headlee set out to write into the record book the untold stories of these remarkable women who worked tirelessly to secure access to literacy and education for a generation of children born into freedom.
From the creator of the long-running, smash-hit podcast Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities comes the book—a riveting look inside some of history’s strangest stories filled with tales of wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. It makes the perfect gift for trivia aficionados, history readers, or anyone with a thirst for unusual knowledge.
Now available in paperback.
This is the untold story of the last performance of Harry Houdini, who—inspired by his hero Abraham Lincoln—devotes himself full-time to a personal crusade against Spiritualism, the practice of speaking to the dead. In a spellbinding journey across Jazz Age America, haunted by the aftermath of the Great War and a deadly pandemic, Houdini encounters modern-day haunted houses, warlocks, and monsters, and uncovers a shocking conspiracy that stretches all the way to the American presidency—and to the House of Houdini itself.
In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Houdini’s 1926 dramatic courtroom testimony before Congress and the last otherworldly cases he takes on that lead him there, Lincoln’s Ghost is a powerful examination of deception, love, politics, the afterlife, and the very nature of magic itself.
Now available in paperback.
In Mortal Secrets, Frank Tallis brilliantly illuminates Sigmund Freud, one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, and chronicles Vienna’s Golden Age. It is a thrilling book about a heady time in one of the world’s most beautiful cities that became the birth place of modern times.
Now available in paperback.