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Ayers, Edward L. American Visions: The United States, 1800–1860. Norton. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780393881264. $32.50. HISTORY

In the early 1800s, as the United States expanded westward toward its Manifest Destiny, with growing enslavement, growing attacks on Indigenous peoples, growing conflict with new immigrants, and wars with neighboring countries, voices of dissent and transformation still flourished. So argues the National Humanities Medal–winning Ayers, citing Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, Samuel Morse, Henry David Thoreau, and biracial Pequod activist William Apess as examples.

Clarren, Rebecca. The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance. Viking. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593655078. $32. HISTORY

To escape antisemitism in Russia, Whiting Grant winner Clarren’s great-great-grandparents fled to the United States with their six children at the turn of the 20th century, finally settling in South Dakota. What they did not acknowledge, and what Clarren knows and explores here, is that their 160-acre homestead was taken from the Lakota by the U.S. government.

Davenport, Matthew J. The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 448p. ISBN 9781250279279. $35. HISTORY

It actually took less than a minute, but the earthquake that struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906, devastated the largest city in the Western United States. Drawing on letters, diaries, unpublished memoirs, and newly discovered archives, plus interviews with engineers and geologists, litigation attorney Davenport, author of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize finalist First Over There, reconstructs what happened. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Inskeep, Steve. Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. Penguin Press. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593297865. $30. HISTORY

Cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition and a Loeb Award winner, Inskeep highlights Abraham Lincoln’s political smarts, showing that he managed a divided nation because he knew how to manage those who opposed him—by working with them or getting around them—even as he succeeded in making his own beliefs reality in clearly contentious times.

Inskeep, Steve. Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. Penguin Press. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593297865. $30. HISTORY

Cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition and a Loeb Award winner, Inskeep highlights Abraham Lincoln’s political smarts, showing that he managed a divided nation because he knew how to manage those who opposed him—by working with them or getting around them—even as he succeeded in making his own beliefs reality in clearly contentious times.

Leonhardt, David. Ours Was the Shining Future: The Rise and Fall of the American Dream. Random. Oct. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9780812993202. $30. HISTORY

It’s “the American Dream”: anyone can do well, and anyone can do better. But the dream has corroded in the 21st century as life expectancy falls, living standards flatten, income inequality soars, and the Black-white wage gap endures. A Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist who specializes in the economy, Leonhardt explains why by considering corporate culture, government investments, and the political power of grass-roots movements over the last decades.

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