Oliver Kane

The definitive account of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty behind OxyContin, and their role in creating and perpetuating the opioid crisis.

The story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, told through the abduction and murder of Jean McConville and the lives of IRA members Dolours Price and Gerry Adams.

The diary kept by a Jewish teenager hiding in a secret annex in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands — the most widely read personal account of the Holocaust.

Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy to Ithaca — through the Cyclops's cave, Circe's island, the underworld, and the sirens — is Western literature's founding journey narrative.

Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses, the unelected master planner who shaped New York City for four decades and accumulated more power than any other American in the 20th century.

The epic story of the Great Migration — the decades-long exodus of six million Black Americans from the Jim Crow South to the cities of the North and West.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork about racial injustice and moral growth in Depression-era Alabama, seen through the eyes of young Scout Finch.

Tolstoy's vast panorama of Russian society during Napoleon's invasion, following five aristocratic families across fifteen years of war, love, loss, and transformation.

In the totalitarian super-state of Oceania, Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history to serve The Party. His secret rebellion — and its consequences — is one of the most important political novels ever written.

The definitive biography of Alexander Hamilton — orphan immigrant, Revolutionary War hero, first Secretary of the Treasury, and the Founding Father who built the American financial system.

Stephen Ambrose follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division from training through D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the fall of Hitler's Eagle's Nest.

Nicolas Rubashov, a veteran of the Revolution and Old Bolshevik, is arrested by the Party he helped create and subjected to interrogation — a psychological unravelling that forces him to confront the logical endpoint of the ideology he has spent his life serving.

Doris Kearns Goodwin examines Lincoln's political genius through the lens of the three rivals he defeated for the 1860 Republican nomination — whom he then appointed to his cabinet.

The Joad family, driven from their Oklahoma farm by the Dust Bowl, joins the great migration west to California — and finds exploitation, hunger, and community in equal measure.

The final weeks of the Trojan War, focusing on Achilles's wrath, his withdrawal from battle, the death of Patroclus, and his return to fight — and to mourn — with devastating consequence.

William Shirer's definitive account of Nazi Germany — from Hitler's birth to the Reich's collapse — written by a journalist who witnessed much of it firsthand.

The animals of Manor Farm overthrow their human farmer, establish a democracy, and watch helplessly as the pigs gradually become indistinguishable from the humans they replaced.

American volunteer Robert Jordan fights with Spanish guerrillas during the Civil War, assigned to blow a bridge — and falls in love with Maria in the three days before the mission.

David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams, the principled, irascible, and frequently underestimated second president of the United States.

From the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa to the 21st century, Harari traces the full sweep of human history, asking why our species conquered Earth while others failed.

A narrative history of the first month of World War I — August 1914 — tracing how Europe's powers stumbled into catastrophe through a combination of rigid military planning, diplomatic failure, and the momentum of mobilization.

Michelle Alexander's landmark argument that mass incarceration is the newest system of racial caste control in America — the functional successor to Jim Crow laws and before them, slavery.

Erik Larson's account of Winston Churchill's first year as Prime Minister — May 1940 to May 1941 — when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany and Churchill forged a nation's will to endure.

The true story of Louis Zamperini — Olympic runner turned World War II bombardier who survived 47 days adrift in the Pacific and then two years in Japanese POW camps — and his eventual path to redemption through faith.