Thread by @cjcmichel

Read a bunch of books in 2021! Here are my top-10 (non-fiction) reads:

1. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed, on the humanity and myopia that inflicted the Great Depression on the world—and the inflection points that got us there.

2. The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, by James Wilson, which should be required reading for every American (and then some). Somehow manages to weave a concise story of centuries of settler-colonialism in North America, and the stories buried under myth.

3. The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by Elizabeth D. Samet, a book that somehow not only lives up to the hype, but only grows in more relevancy—and reveals Grant's prescience on where America would go after his presidency.

4. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty, which is somehow significantly less radical seven years after publishing—but which remains the titan of insight it ever was.

5. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, by Stephanie McCurry, on how fractured the Confederacy—the first state "dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal"—truly was.

6. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, by Amy Greenberg. If you read one book on the Mexican-American War, make it this one. Frames that blatant land-grab as one of America's greatest sins, and identifies those responsible—and those opposed.

7. How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by @ClintSmithIII, which will likely be viewed as one of the seminal reads of this era, especially when historians look to explain the collapse of Confederate hagiography in the 2010s/2020s.

8. The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War – a Tragedy in Three Acts, by Scott Anderson. Incredible look at just how much the Soviets had the Americans over the barrel when it came to post-WWII espionage—and how the US lost the plot along the way.

9. The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, by Brenda Wineapple. Intimate look at the president who most closely resembles Trump, and the furies (and corruption) that saved him from impeachment.

10. Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris. Revealing why Teddy Roosevelt is considered one of the US's greatest presidents (and should maybe be ranked even higher?)—and the chauvinism and imperialism that motivated this asteroid of a man, blasting apart Washington.

And for the first time, I can say: In 2021, I also *wrote* a book! Here are some reviews of 'American Kleptocracy,' on the US's transformation into the world's greatest offshore haven:

—theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
—economist.com/books-and-arts…
—nybooks.com/articles/2021/…