Garrett M. Graff Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Garrett M. Graff

Super excited to read this. I’ve followed Summers for 20 years and always thought he’d make a good biography — except that it would require spending too much time thinking about Larry Summers. So glad @EricLevitz is giving us the second best thing: https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1485598551182827522

Garrett M. Graff

2) HOW THE WORD IS PASSED, by Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) — this travelogue/history of slavery and it's modern place in America was the book I've thought more about since than any other I read this year....

Garrett M. Graff

Wow! Al Baldwin, the Watergate lookout, has died. It was Baldwin's first-person tale, told by @latimes Jack Nelson and Ron Ostrow in October 1972, was what blew Watergate wide open: https://wapo.st/3sbGKDC

Garrett M. Graff

Amazed by this @NYTimes Douglas Brinkley review: "Dazzling … A lively writer, Graff explores the dramatic scope of the Watergate saga through its participants—politicians, investigators, journalists, whistle-blowers and, at center stage, Nixon himself..." https://nyti.ms/3sLLz6h

Garrett M. Graff

Join me virtually tonight at Politics & Prose, at 8 pm ET, for my first book talk, about WATERGATE: A NEW HISTORY, which is now officially a @nytimesbooks bestseller for the second week in a row. Register here with @PoliticsProse: https://bit.ly/3pCpiqK

Garrett M. Graff

@sheeraf @ceciliakang @Theeditorspeaks 7) TO START A WAR, by Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) — I never thought I'd enjoy a history of the run-up to the Iraq War as much as I did this; every page feels both newly eye-opening and newly forehead-smacking and the lies, half-truths, and missteps that propelled us into Iraq.

Garrett M. Graff

4) TEST GODS, by Nicholas Schmidle (@nickschmidle) — About the new race for space and the larger-than-life personalities who become enmeshed in such grand endeavors, this isn't the book you think it is when you start. With a twist, it ends up as much about the past as the future.

Garrett M. Graff

12) WILDLAND, by Evan Osnos (@eosnos) — Building off his New Yorker writing, Evan traces how the American dream broke over the over last generation, focusing on Chicago, Greenwich, CT, and Clarksburg, WV, and created the "dry kindling" necessary to ignite the Trump era and 1/6.

Garrett M. Graff

Picking up where Tom Wolfe left off, this book stands as the fascinating sequel to THE RIGHT STUFF, mixing together science, politics, and space exploration and providing a unique window into the lives of those Americans who have reached for the stars. Even though you know how the story ends, you’ll eagerly turn the beautifully written pages wondering what comes next. CHALLENGER is one of the generation’s best nonfiction writers working at the top of his game.

Garrett M. Graff

5) William Taubman wrote two easy-to-access biographies of two key Soviet leaders, GORBACHEV: https://bookshop.org/books/gorbachev-his-life-and-times/9780393356205… and KHRUSCHEV, both of which are critical to understanding the world in which we live today: