Entrepreneurial historians pay attention to under-covered times, places, or concepts. World War II books often ignore India, but Srinath Raghavan’s India’s War (Basic, 2016) shows how 2.5 million Indians, the largest volunteer army in history, made a crucial contribution. Ben Wilson’s Heyday: The 1850s and the Dawn of the Global Age (Basic, 2016) overviews a decade often ignored as writers scrutinize the revolutions of 1848 and the Civil War. Maury Klein’s Stealing Games (Bloomsbury, 2016) shows how the 1911 New York Giants (Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs get a lot more attention) changed baseball for a decade by stealing more bases, 347, than any other major league team post-1900. (The Oakland Athletics in 1976 stole 341.)

Thomas Kidd’s American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths (Yale, 2016) is true to its title for two reasons that make it an outstanding work. He pays attention to the under-covered and doesn’t cover only the British colonies: The first three chapters describe the Native American encounter with Europeans, the Spanish empire, and the French empire. Most important is his examination of the religious dimensions, which materialist historians tend to ignore. For example, John Sedgwick’s War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel That Stunned the Nation (Berkley Books, 2015) shows no understanding of the Christianity that animated Hamilton early and late in life.

Several other books are not so entrepreneurial but they tell interesting stories. D. Peter MacLeod’s Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution (Knopf, 2016) sees glory in the 1759 fight in which both commanding generals died honorably. For explorations of character, see Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 2016), Custer’s Trials by T.J. Stiles (Knopf, 2015), and Toussaint Louverture by Philippe Girard (Basic, 2016). East West Street by Philippe Sands (Knopf, 2016) is an intriguing but rambling account of the dishonorable World War II origins of what we now call “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” as well as a personal story of tracing family members killed by the Nazis.

In one sense the 1960s began with John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and ended with the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. Craig Simpson and Gregory Wilson’s Above the Shots (Kent State University Press, 2016) details the tragic National Guard killing of four protesters and the end of anti-war demonstrations. Douglas Schoen’s The Nixon Effect (Encounter, 2016) is a surprisingly positive reappraisal of a surprisingly imaginative president. The title of Uri Bar-Joseph’s The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel (Harper, 2016) refers to the 1973 war that Israel almost lost: The book will intrigue readers who like real-life spy stories.

Bookmarks

Steve Fraser’s The Limousine Liberal (Basic, 2016) slams conservative populists who attack affluent leftists. Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal (Holt, 2016) denounces the Clintons and others for not being left enough. G. Edward White’s Law in American History, Vol. II (Oxford, 2016) is a scholarly overview of court directions from reconstruction through the 1920s. John Vile’s Conventional Wisdom (University of Georgia, 2016) examines the Constitution’s Article V process for amending itself.

Lyle Goldstein’s Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry (Georgetown, 2015) provides step-by-step ways on key issues—Taiwan, South China Sea, economics—to bring about upward cooperation spirals rather than conflict. Daniel C. Lynch’s China’s Futures (Stanford, 2015) shows statements by Chinese elites display two diametrically opposed strands of thinking. Many economists think China “must change and change quickly or else face a severe crisis,” but many international relations specialists “evince an almost mystical belief in the inevitability of China’s rise, coupled with the certainty of America’s decline.”

Question: What effect will the growth of Christianity have? —M.O.