The sinking of the Lusitania, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and recent national tragedies are all hot topics in the history books this season. In addition, many of the top titles pay special attention to the role of family in making history.

The Roosevelt family is no stranger to the history books, especially on the heels of Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward’s family biography. This time around, first cousins Eleanor and Alice (Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter) take center stage—or rather fight for the spotlight—in Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer’s Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough examines a more congenial relationship in his upcoming book, The Wright Brothers, which tells how a couple of unschooled bicycle mechanics—with little-known contributions from their sister, Katharine—built the first successful airplane.

Less uplifting but more timely is journalist Masha Gessen’s latest, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013. And in One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, a harrowing account of the July 2011 attacks in Oslo and on the nearby island of Utøya, Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, author of The Bookseller of Kabul, examines a recent tragedy in her homeland.

With the 150th anniversary of his assassination in April, there is no shortage of books on Abraham Lincoln. Richard Wightman Fox’s Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History stands out from the bunch for presenting an original aspect of Lincoln’s legacy, the president’s ungainly, awkward physique.

In The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, Barry Strauss, a leading expert on ancient military history, offers a dramatic account of the death of Julius that will surprise those who know about it only from Shakespeare. Fans of medieval history will appreciate Helen Castor’s Joan of Arc: A History, which includes a panoramic view of 15th-century France, alongside a portrait of a fascinating person.

Megabestseller Erik Larson’s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the ‘Lusitania’ is a masterful work of historical suspense on the sinking of the British ocean liner by a German U-boat. That disaster is also one of the three attacks examined in British historian Diane Preston’s A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare. Preston says that these attacks, all launched by the Germans in 1915, marked the dawn of the era of weapons of mass destruction.

Pulitzer winner Joseph J. Ellis returns with The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789, his ninth book on the Founding Fathers, in which he proves, yet again, that some topics can’t be exhausted.

PW’S Top 10: History & Military History

Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer. Doubleday/Talese, Mar. 31

The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy. Masha Gessen. Riverhead, Apr. 7

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Erik Larson. Crown, Mar. 10

The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination. Barry Strauss. Simon & Schuster, Mar. 3

A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare. Diana Preston. Bloomsbury, Feb. 24

Joan of Arc: A History. Helen Castor. Harper, May 19

Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History. Richard Wightman Fox. Norton, Feb. 9

One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacres in Norway. Åsne Seierstad, trans. by Sarah Death. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr. 21

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789. Joseph J. Ellis. Knopf, May 12

The Wright Brothers. David McCullough. Simon & Schuster, May 5

History & Military History Listings

Algonquin

Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb (May 19, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-61620-175-3). In Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s, a charming con man kept a Ponzi scheme alive for longer than perhaps anyone else in history in this rollicking story of greed, financial corruption, dirty politics, and illicit sex.

Amistad

Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press by James McGrath Morris (Feb. 17, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-219885-3). Morris brings into focus the life of one of the least known figures of the civil rights era—pioneering journalist Ethel Payne, the “First Lady of the Black Press”—elevating her to her rightful place in history. 20,000-copy announced first printing.

Atlantic Monthly

First to Fly: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, the American Heroes Who Flew for France in World War I by Charles Bracelen Flood (June 2, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8021-2365-7). From a critically acclaimed historian comes this lively story of American pilots who defied neutrality and flew for France before the United States entered WWI.

Basic

King John and the Road to Magna Carta by Stephen Church (Apr. 7, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-465-09299-4). In this biography of King John (1166–1216), medieval historian Church describes how a king famous for his misrule gave rise to Magna Carta, the blueprint for good governance.

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse (Apr. 14, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-465-04949-3) describes how, in the middle of the 20th century, corporate titans and evangelical activists rewrote history and created the pervasive myth that America was, is, and always will be a fundamentally Christian nation

Beacon

One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne (June 30, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-8070-1260-4). A history of African-Americans in New York City from the 1910s to 1960 is told through the life of Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first black officer. Battle commissioned Langston Hughes to write his biography, but it was never published. Using Hughes’s manuscript and his own archival research, journalist Browne has created a fascinating narrative of this unheralded figure.

Bloomsbury Press

Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes (Feb. 24, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-62040-970-1). Holmes’s biography of Eleanor Marx (1855–1898), daughter of Karl Marx, paints her subject as the first modern feminist, who spent her life fighting for the principle of equality.

A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare by Diana Preston (Feb. 24, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-62040-212-2). Preston offers a new window onto WWI with her chronicle of the birth of weapons of mass destruction, as Germany altered the way war would be fought during six weeks in April and May 1915.

Chicago Review

The Madman and the Assassin: The Strange Life of Boston Corbett, the Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth by Scott Martelle (Apr. 1, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-61373-018-8). As thoroughly examined as the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth have been, little attention has been paid to the life of the Union cavalryman who killed Booth, an odd character named Boston Corbett.

Columbia Univ.

Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army by Phyllis Birnbaum (Apr. 14, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-231-15218-1). Aisin Gioro Xianyu (1907–1948) was the 14th daughter of a Manchu prince and a legendary figure in China’s bloody struggle with Japan. Novelist and journalist Birnbaum presents a colorful portrait of the controversial figure as she participated in conflicts that transformed East Asia.

Cornell Univ.

Class Divide: Yale ’64 and the Conflicted Legacy of the Sixties by Howard Gillette Jr. (June 2, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8014-5365-6) draws on more than 100 interviews with representative members of the Yale class of 1964 to examine how they responded to the issues that would define the 1960s. Among those profiled in the book are Joe Lieberman, John Ashcroft, Stephen Greenblatt, Gus Speth, Stephen Bingham, and Jerry Brown.

Crown

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson (Mar. 10, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-307-40886-0). From the author of The Devil in the White City comes the story of the sinking of the Lusitania, one of the most tragic events of WWI, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

Doubleday/Talese

Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer (Mar. 31, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-385-53601-1). A double biography of first cousins Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, two extraordinary women whose tangled lives provide a sweeping look at the 20th century.

Duke Univ.

When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier’s Story by Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez, trans. by Margaret Randall (Apr. 3, paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-8223-5851-0) is the autobiography of a child soldier who fought for both the Peruvian guerrilla insurgency the Shining Path and the Peruvian military during the Peruvian civil war. After escaping the war, he became a Franciscan priest.

Ecco

Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles by Les Standiford (Mar. 31, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-225142-8). The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever created, a tale of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man whose vision shaped the future and continues to influence the city today. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann (Apr. 14, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0-374-11825-9). In this 800-plus–page tome, Wachsmann offers an unprecedented, integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933 through their demise in the spring of 1945.

One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacres in Norway by Åsne Seierstad, trans. by Sarah Death (Apr. 21, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-374-27789-5). The Norwegian journalist and author of The Bookseller of Kabul offers a thorough account of the massacre that upended Norway on July 22, 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik killed eight people in Oslo, and proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 more, most of them teenage members of Norway’s governing Labour Party.

Globe Pequot/Lyons

Lincoln’s Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed the Future of Espionage by Jane Singer and John Stewart (Apr. 1, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-4930-0810-0). A month after Lincoln’s assassination, William Alvin Lloyd arrived in Washington, D.C., to collect payment for his work as an undercover spy within the Confederacy. Lloyd’s claim convinced Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, but was it true? This historical caper examines the evidence and draws a verdict.

Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World by Henry Hill and Daniel Simone (Mar. 1, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-4930-0849-0). The inside story-–from the organizer himself–of the largest unrecovered cash haul in history, memorialized in the movie Goodfellas. Hill (played by Ray Liotta in the film) died in 2012 as he was finishing this book, which reveals new details about the crime.

Grand Central

17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis, and the Biggest Cover-Up in History by Andrew Morton (Mar. 10, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4555-2711-3) tells the story of feckless Edward VIII, duke of Windsor, and his wife, Wallis Simpson, whose affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop embroiled the duke in a German plot to use him as a puppet king during their takeover of the British Empire. Although the war ended with Hitler’s defeat, Edward’s story was far from over. 75,000-copy announced first printing.

Harper

Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (Apr. 21, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-233381-0). The author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana relates how First Lt. Ashley White and a groundbreaking team of female American warriors served alongside Special Operations soldiers on the battlefield in Afghanistan. 200,000-copy announced first printing.

Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor (May 19, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-238439-3). The author of the acclaimed She-Wolves tells afresh the gripping story of the peasant girl from Domremy who hears voices from God, leads the French army to victory, is burned at the stake for heresy, and eventually becomes a saint. 30,000-copy announced first printing.

History U.K.

(dist. by IPG)

Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the Country House by Susan C. Law (July 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7509-5669-7). A deft analysis of sex, power, and the media in the Regency era describes how the scandalous private lives of the Georgian aristocracy were used to undermine hereditary power.

Holt

Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II by Richard Reeves (Apr. 21, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-8050-9408-4) provides an account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during WWII.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition by Nisid Hajari (June 9, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-547-66921-2). Journalist Hajari recounts the bloody months during the summer of 1947 as independence neared for India and Pakistan and millions of Muslims and Hindus crossed the new border. The massacres that occurred planted the roots for the enmity between India and Pakistan that still exists. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, Hajari’s searing tale explains all too many of the headlines we read today.

Knopf

Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership by Susan Butler (Mar. 3, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-307-59485-3) examines the relationship between the two leaders and offers insight into the profound bond between them to show just how FDR methodically and successfully pushed Stalin to reinstate religion in the Soviet Union, which he did in 1943.

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789 by Joseph J. Ellis (May 5, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-385-35340-3). From the author of Founding Brothers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and American Sphinx, winner of the National Book Award, comes an account of the years when four of the Founding Fathers disregarded public sentiment and set a new course for our young democracy.

Library of America

President Lincoln Assassinated!! The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning, compiled by Harold Holzer (Feb. 24, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59853-373-6). For the 150th anniversary, onApril 14, 2015, the Library of America and editor Harold Holzer present a firsthand chronicle of the crime that changed a nation. 25,000-copy announced first printing.

Little, Brown

No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII by Robert Weintraub (May 5, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-33706-9) tells the story of Royal Air Force technician Frank Williams and Judy, a purebred pointer and the only canine POW, who met in an internment camp during WWII. It’s a tale of friendship and survival between a man and a dog in war. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

The Rival Queens: Catherine de’ Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom by Nancy Goldstone (June 23, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-316-40965-0) recounts the story of mother-and-daughter queens whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the course of their tempestuous and dangerous century. 25,000-copy announced first printing.

Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa by James Neff (July 7, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-73834-7). Investigative reporter Neff examines the clash of two American titans: Robert Kennedy and his nemesis Jimmy Hoffa. 65,000-copy announced first printing.

Morrow

PT-109: J.F.K.’s Night of Destiny by William Doyle (May 19, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-234658-2). A moment-by-moment account of the sinking of PT-109 and John F. Kennedy’s heroic actions that saved his crew. 200,000-copy announced first printing.

Texas Rising by Stephen L. Moore (May 19, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-239430-9). The official nonfiction companion to the History Channel miniseries Texas Rising offers a history of the Texas revolution and the rise of the legendary Texas Rangers who patrolled the violent western frontier. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

Nation

The 51 Day War: Resistance and Ruin in Gaza by Max Blumenthal (June 30, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-56858-511-6). An account of the 2014 Israel-Palestine war that killed more than 2,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and the toxic politics that caused it, written by one of the few Western reporters in Gaza at the time.

Wages of Rebellion by Chris Hedges (May 12, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-56858-966-4) combines original reporting, historical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to investigate the factors that cause individuals to rebel, and offers a compelling case for building a movement to overthrow corporate capitalism.

New Press

(dist. by Perseus)

Sherman’s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War by Matthew Carr (Mar. 3, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-59558-955-2). Opening with a retelling of General Sherman’s decision to turn his sights on the South’s civilian population in order to break the back of the Confederacy, Carr assesses the impact Sherman’s slash-and-burn policies have had on subsequent wars, including in the Philippines, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and even Iraq and Afghanistan.

Norton

Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History by Richard Wightman Fox (Feb. 9, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-393-06530-5). Though many found Lincoln to be physically unattractive, Fox shows how the president’s ungainly appearance became a “symbol of republican simplicity and American self-making” by the American public while he was alive. That body took on new importance in death, elevating the assassinated president to martyrdom.

Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott (Apr. 13, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-393-08962-2) recounts one of America’s most celebrated—and controversial—military campaigns. The top-secret bombing mission, led by daredevil Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Habor, was fraught with problems, but Doolittle and his men succeeded in striking the heart of the Japanese empire in April 1942.

Norton/Liveright

Lincoln’s Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America by Brian McGinty (Feb. 9, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-87140-784-9) focuses on the now obscure 1857 trial over the crash of a steamboat on the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa and how a legal battle over transportation propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight.

Oneworld

A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield (June 9, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-78074-708-8). She had affairs with H.G. Wells and Maxim Gorky, and it was said that no man could resist her. McDonald and Dronfield offer the true story of the notorious seductress Moura Zakrevskaya who spied for both the Russians and the English during the Bolshevik revolution, and who sacrified everything for love—only to be betrayed.

Osprey

(dist. by Random)

Airborne: The Combat Story of Ed Shames of Easy Company by Ian Gardner (Apr. 21, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-4728-0485-3). Col. Ed Shames, one of the Band of Brothers featured in the book and film, is the sole surviving officer of the 101st Airborne Division, and has revisited all the major European battle sites with author Gardner.

Oxford Univ.

Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution by David L. Preston (July 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-984532-3). On July 9, 1755, British and colonial troops under the command of Gen. Edward Braddock suffered a crushing defeat to French and Native American enemy forces in Ohio country. Preston explores how the battle was the testing ground for the American Revolution, spawning ideas of American identity and anticipating many of the political and social divisions that would erupt with the outbreak of the Revolution.

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Methodists, Murder, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Neshoba County by Carol V.R. George (May 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-023108-8).

During Freedom Summer 1964, three young civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Miss., by law enforcement and KKK. George offers a microhistory of a community that has broken its silence and is confronting a past of racial injustice and violence.

Penguin Press

Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough (Apr. 7, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-429-6). The author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich recounts the decade-long battle between the FBI and homegrown revolutionary terrorists of the 1970s.

Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab by Steve Inskeep (May 19, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-556-9). NPR Morning Edition’s Inskeep relates a thrilling narrative history of two men—President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee Chief John Ross—who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history.

Picador

90 Church: Inside America’s Notorious First Narcotics Squad by Dean Unkefer (June 2, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-250-06733-3). A former agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, predecessor of the DEA, in the 1960s reveals an agency with few rules and almost no oversight, whose agents were often more vicious than the criminals they chased. Unkefer describes his own spiral into addiction when he goes undercover, providing a fascinating window into New York City in that period.

PublicAffairs

The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy by Henry Hemming (May 5, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-61039-577-9). Geoffrey Pyke was a British inventor, war reporter, escaped prisoner, father, educator, all-around misunderstood genius, as well as the father of the U.S. Special Forces—and possibly a Soviet spy. The complete story of who he was remained secret even after his suicide in 1948, and only now, more than 60 years after his death, is that astonishing story told in full.

Random

Goebbels: A Biography by Peter Longerich, trans. by Alan Bance, Jeremy Noakes, and Lesley Sharpe (May 5, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1-4000-6751-0). A German Holocaust historian presents the biography of Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

Regnery

Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford’s Theatre by Thomas A. Bogar (Mar. 23, paper, $18.99, ISBN 978-1-62157-320-3). The behind-the-curtain accounts of the 46 stagehands, actors, and theater managers who witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the messy aftermath.

Riverhead

The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy by Masha Gessen (Apr. 7, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-59463-264-8). Russian-American journalist Gessen examines the story of the Tsarnaev brothers leading up to the day of the Boston bombings, how the American dream went wrong for two immigrants, and the nightmare that resulted.

Rizzoli

The Photographer and the President: Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner, and the Images that Made a Presidency by Richard Lowry (Mar. 31, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8478-4541-5). Lincoln was an early adopter of photographic technology and visionary in how he used it—as FDR was with radio, JFK with television, and Obama with the Internet. By highlighting this very modern aspect of such a storied presidency, Lowry opens a new door on Lincoln’s relationship to politics and celebrity just as the mass culture of the image was taking root in America.

Simon & Schuster

The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination by Barry Strauss (Mar. 3, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-4516-6879-7). Thanks to William Shakespeare, the death of Julius Caesar is one of the best known assassinations in history. Shakespeare shows Caesar’s assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, according to historian Strauss, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals’ plot, put together by Caesar’s disaffected officers and designed with precision.

The Oregon Trail: An American Journey by Rinker Buck (June 2, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-4516-5916-0) presents the author’s account of traveling the 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way—in a covered wagon with a team of mules—while also telling the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (May 5, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-4767-2874-2). A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the surprising American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who taught the world how to fly. Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing.

St. Martin’s/Dunne

The Politics of Deception: J.F.K.’s Secret Decisions on Vietnam, Civil Rights, and Cuba by Patrick J. Sloyan (Feb. 10, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-03059-7). Pulitzer Prize-winner Sloyan draws from classified White House tapes to present a compelling narrative of John F. Kennedy and the fateful decisions near the end of his presidency.

Univ. of Chicago

Who Freed the Slaves? The Fight over the Thirteenth Amendment by Leonard L. Richards (Mar. 23, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-226-17820-2). In the popular imagination, slavery in the United States ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Richards aims to correct the Lincoln-centric narrative of emancipation, putting the work of Congress and one forgotten Ohio congressman, James Ashley, at the heart of the matter.

Viking

American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity by Christian G. Appy (Feb. 5, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-670-02539-8). The author of Patriots offers profound insights into Vietnam’s place in America’s self-image, examining the relationship between the war’s realities and myths, and its impact on our national identity, conscience, pride, shame, popular culture, and postwar foreign policy.

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden (Mar. 17, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-670-01657-0). The author of Escape from Camp 14 chronicles the murderous rise of North Korea’s founding dictator and the fighter pilot who faked him out—the story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception and escape.

Workman

Party Like a President: True Tales of Inebriation, Lechery, and Mischief from the Oval Office by Brian Abrams, illus. by John Mathias (Feb. 10, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-0-7611-8084-5). A brash, hilarious, illustrated history of the drinking and social lives of our 44 United States presidents. 25,000-copy announced first printing.

Yale Univ.

Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes (Feb. 24, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-300-19580-4). How did individual Americans respond to the shock of President Lincoln’s assassination? Diaries, letters, and intimate writings reveal a complicated, untold story.