Do the hot days of late summer have you feeling lazy? Do you just want to relax in a hammock and read a good book? If so, this post is for you!
Recently, The New York Times published an article titled The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. It’s the kind of thing I just love, so I looked forward to the release of 20 new titles a day for 5 days. Although I like to think that I’m fairly well read, I hadn’t even heard of many of these books.
I thought I’d pass on the titles that seem appropriate for those of us interested in the Cold War, but check out the listing yourself and add or delete as you see fit. (The link is at the end of this post.) You may have read some or all of the selections, or you may agree or disagree with my choices. Be sure to pass on your thoughts in the comments.
The list below is aspirational, with just a few personal reflections or recommendations. The blurbs are drawn from the NY Times article and Amazon. As usual, if you click on the link and purchase one of these books from Amazon, Cold War Studies receives a small commission. We thank you for that! And don’t worry you’ll never pay more for the book!!
15 Cold War Books from The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
(The number represents the book’s place on the Times list.)
#100: Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson (2007)
This is the story of the newly minted CIA operative William “Skip” Sands and the disasters that befall him as he engages in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong. The book is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction. Here’s a quote:
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me.
#90: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon. While embarking on a new life in the US, he continues to secretly report back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the book is both political thriller and personal history. Full disclosure: I’ve been reading this book for years and haven’t finished it yet. That said, I’ve also tuned in to the recent series on Max, but I much prefer the book. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize mentioned above, the book is the winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
#89: The Return by Hisham Matar (2016)
Also a Pulitzer Prize winner, The Return is about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing. The book centers on Matar’s search for the father he lost to a 1990 kidnapping in Cairo and his return (twenty-two years later) to his native Libya in search of the truth. It’s both an absorbing detective story and a portrait of doomed geopolitics. The book is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
#73: The Passage of Power by Robert Caro (2012)
The fourth volume of Caro’s epic chronicle of Lyndon Johnson’s life and times follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant period of his career—1958 to1964. By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. Caro makes you feel the shock of JFK’s assassination, also exploring Johnson’s success in initiating programs designed to transform a nation. The book is the winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and The American History Book Prize.
#72: Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
The Nobel-winning Alexievich chronicles the death of communism in an oral history that presents an unflinching portrait of the people who survived the Soviet state. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, and Kirkus Reviews.
#65: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
What if, in the 1940 presidential election, Charles Lindbergh — aviation hero, America-firster and Nazi sympathizer — had defeated Franklin Roosevelt? Specifically, what would have happened to Philip Roth, the younger son of a middle-class Jewish family in Newark, NJ? Roth dwells on those counterfactual questions, in this reinvention of family and history.
#64: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
It’s mid-1980s Chicago, and young men are stricken with a strange virus. Makkai’s recounting of a circle of friends who die one by one, interspersed with a circa-2015 Parisian subplot, is an AIDS story, but also “a dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss . . .” The book’s many awards include: Pulitzer Prize Finalist; National Book Award Finalist; Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner; ALA Carnegie Medal Winner; and The Stonewall Book Award Winner. The book was named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed,The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and the Chicago Public Library.
#55: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Wright’s gripping narrative spans more than five decades as he re-creates the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. The work also follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track the new threat. The book is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
#48: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
Satrapi’s graphic novel is an account of her early life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and her formative years abroad in Europe. The first of its two parts details the impacts of war and theocracy on both her family and her community. Part 2 chronicles her years as a teenager in Vienna, as well as her return to a much changed Tehran. If you are a fan of visual storytelling, this book is for you.
#43: Postwar by Tony Judt (2005)
First let me just say that I taught the World Since 1945 at two NYC colleges, and I haven’t read this book. As I work my way through this list, I can’t believe how many excellent books I’ve missed. According to Amazon, Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages . . . intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, Postwar is a rare joy. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award.
#42: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014)
This book’s a bit different from others on the list so far. First, it’s a work of fiction based on fact, and second, it’s nearly 700 pages. However, The Times says “To skip even a paragraph. . . would be to forgo the vertiginous pleasures of James’s semi-historical novel, in which the attempted assassination of an unnamed reggae superstar who strongly resembles Bob Marley collides with CIA conspiracy, international drug cartels and the vibrant, violent Technicolor of post-independence Jamaica.” The book is the winner of the Booker Prize, one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Decade, and one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years.
#37: The Years by Annie Ernaux; translated by Alison L. Strayer (2018)
Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work, The Years was a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008. The work is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions, and projections into the future. It includes photos, books, songs, radio, television,advertising, and headlines, all contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries. Jennifer Szalai says: “Most moving to me is how she begins and ends by listing images she can still recall — a merry-go-round in the park; graffiti in a restroom — that have been inscribed into her memory, yet are ultimately ephemeral.” The book is the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature and was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
#5: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
I’m not sure that The Corrections belongs on a list of Cold War books, but I’ve included it because of the many topics that it touches on, and because it fits the timeframe. The book is a moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. The Times calls it a comic novel of family disintegration that touches on everything from yuppie excess to foodie culture to Eastern Europe’s unbridled economy after the fall of communism. The work was the winner of the National Book Award in 2001.
#2: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
The Warmth of Other Suns has 5 stars on Amazon, quite an achievement. Meticulously researched, the book details the Great Migration of almost 6 million Black Americans from South to North and West from 1915 to 1970. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize–winner, interviewed more than a thousand people, also gaining access to new data and official records. The result: a definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. The work won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010.
#1: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein (2012)
The winner was definitely a surprise for me and it happens to be one of the few books on this list that I’ve actually read. My Brilliant Friend is the first volume of Ferrante’s four-book series of Neapolitan novels. The book introduces readers to two girls growing up in a poor, violent neighborhood in Naples, Italy: the diligent, dutiful Elena and her charismatic, wilder friend Lila, who despite her fierce intelligence is constrained by her family’s meager means. The novel (like the series as a whole) encompasses ideas about art and politics, class and gender, philosophy and fate. Ferrante writes under a pseudonym. There’s speculation about who she is but no one really knows. The work provides the basis for an HBO Series. Read a review here. There are so many good reviews of Elena Ferrante’s work that I’m not able to choose. If you want to delve deeper, I suggest you Google.
That’s it!
So that’s it – 15 books in all. I know some of my selections may seem peripheral, and I”m sure that I’ve omitted others. Do you have a top 10 list related to the Cold War? If so, feel free to publish your list in the comments. Meanwhile, there are so many books on this list that I want to read. What about you? Anything pique your fancy?______________________________________________
Want lighter reading for the end of summer? Try something by one of The Goats: 12 Iconic Spy Novelists.
Read The New York Times article here.
Photographs:
Featured by Spezz on Flickr
Hammock by Discover Corps on Flickr
Light Reading by Pierce Martin on Flickr
