What a year!

Nonfiction that tackles a single, momentous year examining its cultural, political and historical significance to help readers better understand our current lived experience.

Updated April 13, 2026
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1929 : The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History
Sorkin, Andrew Ross.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "It is one of the best narrative histories I've read." --The Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 * One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 * Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by The Washington...
The 1619 Project a new origin story
Hannah-Jones, Nikole
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER * A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. "[A] groundbreaking compendium . . ....
1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus
Mann, Charles C.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492--from "a remarkably engaging writer" (The New York Times Book Review).   Contrary to what...
1968 : the year that rocked the world
Kurlansky, Mark
Paper Book
In this monumental new book, award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has written his most ambitious work to date: a singular and ultimately definitive look at a pivotal moment in history. With1968, Mark Kurlansky brings to teeming life the cultural and political history of that world-changing year of...
2020 : One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed
Klinenberg, Eric.
Paper Book
A meticulously reported, character-driven, unforgettable investigation of a time when nothing was certain and everything was at stake, by the acclaimed sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg "A gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history, told...
One summer : America, 1927
Bryson, Bill
Paper Book
A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book A GoodReads Reader's Choice In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 began...
Paris 1919 : six months that changed the world
MacMillan, Margaret
Paper Book
National Bestseller New York Times Editors' Choice Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Silver Medalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations Finalist for...
Freedom riders : 1961 and the struggle for racial justice
Arsenault, Raymond.
Paper Book
They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet...
Pandemic 1918 : eyewitness accounts from the greatest medical holocaust in modern history
Arnold, Catharine
Paper Book
Before AIDS or coronavirus, there was the Spanish Flu -- Catharine Arnold's gripping narrative, Pandemic 1918, marks the 100th anniversary of an epidemic that altered world history. In January 1918, as World War I raged on, a new and terrifying virus began to spread...

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