reading list 2012

the starred ones were the best:

John Guy, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (2012)

Rachel L. Swarns, American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama (2012)

Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America (2012)

William Glover Stanard, Some emigrants to Virginia : memoranda in regard to several hundred emigrants to Virginia during the colonial period whose parentage is shown or former residence indicated by authentic records (1911)

Charles E. Hatch, The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 (1957)

Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America (2012)

Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation (2004)

David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part 1: Foundations (2010)

Francis Pryor, Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons (2005)

Alistair Moffat, The Scots: A Genetic Journey (2011)

*Francis Pryor, Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland Before the Romans (2004)

*Maurice Berger, White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (2000) Berger's book is subjective, fragmented and, most appealingly, devoid of piety.

*Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011)

David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (2011)

James Romm, Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire (2011)

*David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (2007)

Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (2010)

*Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2011)

Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (2012)

Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (2011)

Sally Denton, The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right (2012)

Michael E. Smith, The Aztecs (Peoples of America) (2002)

*Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2003)

Craig Shirley, December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World (2011)

these i thought it might be good to read, but was unable to do so, for a variety of reasons:

Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't (2012)

John McPhee, The Control of Nature (1990)

Lawrence M. Krause, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something rather than Nothing (2012)

Simon Price, The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (2011)