Last Updated: September 29, 2026
The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier
by Megan Kate Nelson
The Westerners tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West — Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants — in the 19th century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity.
The National Road: George Washington and America’s First Highway West
by Brady J. Crytzer
The National Road is the first narrative history of the federal project–begun decades before the nation itself was born and ranging through the 1830s–that connected the United States across the Alleghenies and into the western frontier.
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
by David S. Reynolds
A revelatory deep history of American division, through the prism of the two ships whose widespread use to define that division has been lost to memory but whose legacy endures in the bitterly polarized decades leading up to the American Civil War.
The remarkable untold story of a network of amateur researchers who debunked the Warren Report, raising questions about JFK’s assassination that remain unanswered to this day-a riveting history of obsession, heartbreak, and the myth of the great American century from an Atlantic staff writer.
The Last of the Old Breed is an unprecedented oral history of the final living United States Marines from World War II, featuring over 130 veterans, ranging in age from 90 to 103. Told in harrowing detail, the witnesses reveal the brutal reality of combat against a fanatical enemy and the heavy toll it took on their post-war lives.
Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War
by James M. Scott
From the acclaimed Pacific War historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, the harrowing story of America’s bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the dramatic struggle to end World War II.