Books like First by Evan Thomas

Jared Diamond explains how geography, biology, and human ingenuity shaped the world’s unequal societies in his Pulitzer‑winning study of civilization and social evolution.

A compelling overview of American history through the eyes and experiences of its women, workers, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working poor.

Walter Isaacson chronicles the minds that forged the digital age, from Ada Lovelace to Larry Page, showing how vision, collaboration, and engineering transformed abstract ideas into the computers, Internet, and technology we use today.

A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, detailing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Third Reich during World War II.

A detailed biography of Ulysses S. Grant, former Union general and 18th President of the United States, by historian Ron Chernow, examining his military campaigns and presidency.

David McCullough’s Pulitzer‑winning biography chronicles Harry S. Truman’s life from Missouri frontier to presidency, detailing his pivotal decisions—atomic bombing, Cold War diplomacy, and Korean conflict—while drawing on new archival sources and personal interviews.

David McCullough’s *1776* chronicles the human drama surrounding the American Revolution’s pivotal year, tracing ordinary soldiers, notable leaders, and British forces as they shape the fate of the fledgling nation.

A richly detailed biography that traces John Adams’s rise from Revolutionary patriot to the United States’ second President, highlighting his political convictions, marriage to Abigail Adams, and lasting impact on American governance.

The Bully Pulpit traces the complex friendship and bitter rivalry of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, showing how their 1912 presidential battle reshaped the Republican Party and weakened progressivism.

A collection of writings and speeches by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice whose career shaped law, women's rights, and popular culture.

Pulitzer‑winning account of the first month of World War I, detailing the causes and 30 days of battle that set Europe on a collision course.

Joseph J. Ellis’s *American Sphinx* offers a balanced portrait of Thomas Jefferson, drawing on archival evidence to chart his retreat from public life, his famed Monticello estate, and his enduring mythic status.

Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir traces her journey from a Bronx housing project to becoming the first Hispanic woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, revealing the grit, mentorship, and self‑belief that propelled her success.

David McCullough chronicles the daring brothers who, in 1903, achieved the first human‑powered flight on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, revealing their ingenuity, determination, and the family support that drove their success.

A biographical examination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first two women Supreme Court justices, exploring their religious and political convictions and their impact on constitutional law and gender equality.

"The author of The Butler presents a revelatory biography of the first African-American Supreme Court justice--one of the giants of the civil rights movement, and one of the most transforming Supreme Court justices of the 20th century,"--Novelist.

"The first full life--private; public; legal; philosophical--of the 107th Supreme Court Justice, one of the most profound and profoundly transformative legal minds of our time; a book fifteen years in work, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the Justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and associates. In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg's passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs--her Jewish background. Tikkun Olam, the Hebrew injunction to "repair the world," with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter's feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at 17, graduated from high school). From Ruth's days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn's James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia Law School (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing her job; founding the Women's Rights Law Reporter, writing the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school's first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women's rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with men. Her years on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs--aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court. A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond"-- "The life and legal career of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg"--