2025’s Best New History Books

Legendary humorist and novelist Samuel Clemens cycled through a series of careers—typesetter, journalist, steamboat pilot—before adopting the river slang for “safe water depth” as his nom de plume: Mark Twain. In this new monumental biography, Ron Chernow applies his unique eye to the contradictions of Twain’s character. He notes that the native Missourian was a self-professed “chronically lazy” man who nevertheless produced some 30 books, thousands of articles and 12,000 letters; a crusader known as the “scourge of fools and frauds” who nevertheless fell for multiple schemes and squandered his fortune; and “an emblem of Americana” who was at heart “a fiercely pessimistic man.” Chernow “tracks, with patience and care, Twain’s journey over nearly eight tumultuous decades,” writes The Wall Street Journal, creating what The Guardian calls “an admirably animated, readable account of one of the modern world’s first celebrities.”

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Forty years ago, Eugene Sledge’s harrowing account of fighting in World War II was hailed by some historians as the finest war memoir of the 20th century. Now, his son Henry has helped “complete the narrative” with a new book that includes unpublished sections from the original manuscript, alongside his own memories about how his father grappled with returning to civilian life, says John Curatola, military historian at the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum. “Not only does Henry provide further insight into his father’s experiences in the Pacific War, but also sheds light on his famous father’s postwar years,” making this book “a must” for people seeking a deeper understanding of World War II veterans.

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With the suspense of a thriller, Sorkin drops readers into the sordid machinations leading up to the 1929 stock market crash, when Wall Street titans built up the market on rotting foundations of corruption, bribery and greed—then watched in horror as it collapsed. Sorkin draws unmistakable parallels to our current age of crypto and artificial intelligence, warning, “Each wave seduces us into thinking that we’ve learned from history and, this time, we can’t be fooled. Then it happens again.” Drawing on previously untapped sources, including an unpublished memoir and Federal Reserve Bank of New York deliberations, “Sorkin carries his readers along a current of astonishing detail” as he “narrates a fable of greed, corruption and incompetence to shock the conscience,” writes The New York Times.

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A’Lelia Walker was an unlikely heiress, born in 1885 to a poor, orphaned laundress whose parents had been emancipated slaves. Their lives changed after her mother, Madame C.J. Walker, built a thriving haircare business for Black consumers, becoming the first self-made woman millionaire in U.S. history. With her inheritance, Walker forged her own legacy in New York’s Harlem community, hosting influential salons that convened Black political, intellectual and cultural leaders—including renowned poet Langston Hughes, who anointed her the “joy goddess” of Harlem. Bundles, a journalist, historian and Walker descendent, “masterfully establishes her great-grandmother and namesake as a cultural and social force in the Harlem Renaissance,” says Allison Robinson, associate curator of history exhibitions at The New York Historical.

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Starting in 1860, U.S. authorities removed thousands of Native American children from their families and placed them in boarding schools meant to “civilize” them by severing ties to their communities and culture. Instead, they were routinely abused, humiliated and subjected to violence and sometimes death. Journalist Mary Annette Pember’s mother was one such child; taken at age 5 to a Catholic-run school in Wisconsin, she survived, but never fully recovered from the trauma. Pember weaves her mother’s memories with decades of archival research and interviews to trace the origins and generational consequences of this devastating policy. The result, writes The New York Times, is both a solemn history of widespread abuse and a visceral family memoir.

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The Fate of the Day, the second volume in Atkinson’s American Revolution trilogy, charts the war’s pivotal middle years, when colonial hopes teetered and the conflict spread globally. Framed by British victories at Fort Ticonderoga and Charleston, the narrative plunges readers into George Washington’s clashes with Congress, Benedict Arnold’s agonized betrayal and the decisions that drew Europe, India and the Caribbean tumbling into the conflict. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Atkinson imbues each narrative thread with vivid, human detail as he “animates an entire world—from battlefields and commanders to sounds and smells,” writes The New York Times, calling the book “compulsively readable.”

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Harriet Tubman is best known for her daring escape from slavery in 1849 and heroic trips along the Underground Railroad, where she led more than 60 people to freedom. Combee, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize, sheds light on another brave act that has received far less attention: Tubman’s role as a Union Army leader, spy and commander in a raid that burned deadly rice plantations along the Combahee River and ultimately freed 756 enslaved people. History professor Fields-Black, a descendant of one of the raid participants, draws on a trove of original sources, including pension files, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, planters records and her own boat trips along the river to create what the Pulitzer committee hailed as “a richly textured and revelatory account” that weaves “military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom.”

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With her record-breaking flights, dazzling charm and mysterious disappearance in 1937, Amelia Earhart has long captivated American imaginations. But Shapiro argues we barely knew her. This fresh look reveals how a complicated marriage to a P. T. Barnum-style huckster helped launch Amelia Earhart into legend while possibly endangering her life. George P. Putnam, a publisher drawn to daring adventure tales, discovered Earhart as a young hobbyist pilot and quickly leveraged her charisma, drive and courage. After their 1931 marriage, the pair pursued increasingly ambitious flights, and lucrative tie-ins, even as Earhart’s fame began to outpace her flying skills. Their fraught partnership pushed her toward ever-riskier ventures while Putnam stinted on safety measures, according to this “sympathetic, well researched biography,” says Kirkus.

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In 1976, soldiers stormed through the streets of Buenos Aires and executed a military coup. The new regime kidnapped and murdered Argentinians it deemed subversive—including hundreds of pregnant women, who were kept alive only long enough to give birth; the government then secretly distributed the babies to new families. A Flower Traveled in My Blood tells the extraordinary story of a group of brave grandmothers who fought back, forming a resistance movement and spy ring at a time when protest could mean death. Told mainly through the prism of one grandmother’s search, Gilliland’s debut book “leads readers through half a century of Argentine politics, a revolution in genetics and fierce debates about what defines a family,” writes The Atlantic.

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During the Roman Empire, a rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth amassed a following and was ultimately crucified by authorities—facts widely accepted by historians. Miracles and Wonder, by acclaimed history of religion professor Elaine Pagels, explores the harder questions: If Jesus lived, what kind of person was he, and what can history reveal about his conception, death, resurrection and reported miracles? Pagels draws on rich primary sources to thrust readers into the daily reality of ancient Rome, the competing pressures of the time as well as the enduring power and meaning of miracle stories. Called a “culminating work” by The New Yorker, the book probes why these narratives still resonate today.

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How did Vikings brew beer—and what did it taste like? That’s the kind of question driving the emerging field of experiential archaeology, where practitioners seek to recreate experiences from the past, whether it’s mummifying a body, building and launching a giant catapult or reviving ancient yeast to bake the type of sourdough King Tut might have eaten. Kean’s new book dives deep into this new field, delivering a “charming romp” that “takes readers to the fringes of knowledge production,” says Publishers Weekly, “revealing along the way that there is as much art as there is science to the study of history.”

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On April 14, 1975, art thief Myles Connor and an accomplice donned disguises, purchased tickets to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, strolled into its Dutch Masters gallery and snatched Rembrandt’s Portrait of Elsbeth van Rijn off the wall, escaping in broad daylight. Connor, a rock musician turned prolific art thief, used the artwork to bargain for a reduced sentence in a separate heist. Now Amore, director of security at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has delivered a “propulsive new account” of the theft, drawing on his own security experience with art thieves and personal conversations with Connor, who improbably became a friend, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

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