Category: Commonplace

Sharon McMahon — “America’s Government Teacher,” former high school government teacher turned educator with a massive non-partisan following — stopped by Ryan Holiday’s Painted Porch bookstore in Bastrop, Texas, for a book conversation that got immediately added to my watch list.

I follow both of them. McMahon, because she does what great history education should do: she makes the stakes of the past feel present without manufacturing false urgency. Holiday because he reads seriously and recommends honestly, and because his bookstore is the kind of independent shop that invests in curation rather than bestseller display tables. When these two sit down to geek out about overlooked American history, the reading list they produce is worth paying attention to.

The conversation covered a lot of ground — from Booker T. Washington’s pragmatism to Taylor Branch’s monumental civil rights trilogy to the kind of narrative nonfiction that turns history into something you can’t put down. What I appreciate about both of them is the underlying argument running through the whole exchange: that knowing history isn’t a luxury or an academic exercise. It’s how you understand how the present got built and what actually holds it together.

Below is the full list they produced, with notes on the ones I’d prioritize or already recommend to others.

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The Full List

Up from Slavery — Booker T. Washington
The book Holiday kept returning to throughout the conversation. Washington’s autobiography is one of the most influential American texts ever written, and it’s been criminally underread. His pragmatism, his insistence on building from where you are rather than waiting for ideal conditions — these ideas rippled through American history in ways McMahon traces brilliantly (Julius Rosenwald, Toni Morrison’s relationship to his legacy, John Lewis). Read this before almost anything else on this list.

A Slave in the White House — Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
The story of Paul Jennings, James Madison’s enslaved manservant, who witnessed some of the most consequential events in early American history and whose own story has been largely invisible to that history. The kind of primary source experience that reframes everything you thought you knew about the period.

The Mind on Fire — Mark Noll
An intellectual biography of 19th-century American Christianity and its relationship to questions of history, science, and social change. For educators considering the relationship among values, knowledge, and action, this is rich territory.

Her Right Foot — Dave Eggers
A children’s book about the Statue of Liberty — specifically about why she’s mid-stride, walking forward, and what that movement means about America’s promise and its unfulfilled obligations. Short enough to read in one sitting. Hits harder than its length suggests.

The Devil in the White City — Erik Larson
If you’ve never read Larson, start here. The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the architect building a city from scratch, and a serial killer operating in its shadow. Larson is the gold standard for narrative nonfiction that reads like a novel without sacrificing accuracy. I’ve recommended this book to more people than any other on this list.

The Demon of Unrest — Erik Larson
Larson again, covering the months between Lincoln’s election and the first shots at Fort Sumter. What’s striking about this period is how many people on all sides believed the catastrophe could still be avoided right up until it wasn’t. A deeply uncomfortable read in the current climate.

Dead Wake — Erik Larson
The Lusitania. The convergence of the ship’s last voyage and the U-boat tracking it, told with the same intercutting technique that makes all of Larson’s books compulsive. Once you read one Larson, you will read them all.

A Woman of No Importance — Sonia Purnell
Virginia Hall ran resistance operations in occupied France during World War II with a prosthetic leg, a price on her head, and constant sabotage from the OSS bureaucrats who didn’t believe a woman could do what she was doing. The title is what the Gestapo put in her file. This is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read in years.

The River of Doubt — Candice Millard
Theodore Roosevelt, after losing the 1912 election, led an expedition into an unmapped tributary of the Amazon that nearly killed him. Millard writes the whole thing with propulsive momentum and no sentimentality. Remarkable story, excellently told.

In a Sunburned Country — Bill Bryson
Bryson’s account of Australia — its history, its absurdity, its extraordinary natural world, and the peculiar fact that everything there seems designed to kill you. His best travel book, which is saying something. A palate cleanser between heavier reads.

Tunnel 29 — Helena Merriman
Thirty-five people tunneled under the Berlin Wall to freedom in 1962. Merriman spent years tracking down the survivors and reconstructed the story from their accounts. Holiday’s 2024 best-of list called it so good he sometimes had to put it down and walk around to calm down. That tracks.

Say Nothing — Patrick Radden Keefe
The Troubles in Northern Ireland through the story of the Price sisters, Jean McConville’s disappearance, and what happens to people who commit violence in the service of a cause and then have to live with what they did. Keefe is the best longform journalist working, and this is his masterwork. Required reading.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times — Doris Kearns Goodwin
Goodwin on Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, and TR — four presidents whose capacity to lead was forged through adversity and failure rather than smooth ascent. Less hagiographic than most political biographies. Useful as a study of how leadership actually develops.

Parting the Waters — Taylor Branch
Volume one of Branch’s trilogy on the civil rights movement. 900 pages. Worth every one. The most comprehensive and human account of that period in American history, and the one that connects the movement’s internal debates, personal relationships, and strategic decisions in ways no shorter account can. McMahon talked about this throughout the conversation as essential reading. She’s right.

The Year of Living Constitutionally — A.J. Jacobs
Jacobs spent a year trying to live according to the Constitution as literally as possible — including the 18th-century context, the historical debates, and the original meanings of phrases we’ve since abstracted into symbols. Funny and genuinely illuminating. Good entry point for anyone who teaches government or civics.

Why Fish Don’t Exist — Lulu Miller
Ostensibly a biography of taxonomist David Starr Jordan, this book is actually about what happens when the systems we build to make sense of the world collapse — and what it might mean to keep going anyway. One of the most unusual nonfiction books I’ve read. Harder to describe than to read.

Everything Happens for a Reason — Kate Bowler
Bowler, a historian of prosperity gospel, was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at 35 while pregnant. This book is her account of what it’s actually like to live inside a culture that can’t tolerate the absence of meaning — and what honest faith looks like when the easy answers are stripped away. Devastating and necessary.

A Gift from the Sea — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Written in 1955, this slim meditation on solitude, simplicity, and the pressures of modern life has sold millions of copies over seven decades because it remains true. A different pace than the rest of this list. Worth it.

Good Inside — Dr. Becky Kennedy
The parenting book that connects most directly to Self-Determination Theory — Kennedy’s framework is built around the idea that behavior is communication and that children need autonomy, connection, and competence rather than compliance. Useful for parents and anyone who works with children.

Bury the Chains — Adam Hochschild
The British abolition movement is told as the improbable story of a small group of people who decided to dismantle an institution that was economically foundational to the empire in which they lived. Hochschild is meticulous and morally serious. One of the best books on how social change actually happens.

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Where I’d Start

If you’re new to this kind of narrative history and want to know where to begin, Say Nothing (Keefe), A Woman of No Importance (Purnell), and Up from Slavery (Washington) will pull you in immediately and leave you wanting more. The Devil in the White City (Larson) is the gateway drug for this entire genre. Parting the Waters (Branch) is the most important book on the list and the most demanding — save it for when you have time to commit.

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The original conversation between McMahon and Holiday is worth watching in full: “Sharon McMahon’s Reading List” (from Ryan Holiday). It’s the kind of book talk that makes you want to buy five things immediately.

Affiliate disclosure: Some links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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