Books like Ill Winds by Larry Diamond

Ernest Hemingway’s classic follows an old Cuban fisherman and his young companion as they battle a massive marlin, exploring themes of endurance, solitude, and the human struggle against nature.

A weary father and his young son journey across a bleak, post‑apocalyptic America, battling cannibals, starvation, and a harsh winter in a desperate quest for safety and a glimpse of remaining civilization.

The Kite Runner follows an unlikely friendship between a privileged boy and the son of his father’s servant amid Afghanistan’s turbulent history, exploring betrayal, redemption, and the father‑son bond.

A sweeping historical portrait of the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction, centered on the life of Scarlett O'Hara.

In *To the Lighthouse*, Virginia Woolf follows the Ramsay family as they spend a summer at their Scottish holiday home, exploring the depths of memory, longing, and the changing dynamics of adult relationships. The novel blends lyrical prose with a keen awareness of transience.

The Notebook tells the enduring love story of Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson, set in coastal North Carolina in 1946, following their journey from wartime romance to a second chance to be together.

Macon Leary, a cynical travel writer, shuns itineraries until a fuzzy-haired dog‑trainer sparks an unexpected voyage of love and self‑discovery.

The Hundred‑Year Marathon exposes China’s long‑term strategy to become the world’s dominant power by 2049, uncovering how historical statecraft and modern policy moves have outpaced U.S. expectations.

Charles Clover examines how the Eurasianist ideology, rooted in Russian geography and ethnicity, has shaped Vladimir Putin’s foreign and domestic politics, including the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s anti‑Western stance.

"The shocking story of how America became one of the world's safest postwar havens for Nazis. Until recently, historians believed America gave asylum only to key Nazi scientists after World War II, along with some less famous perpetrators who managed to sneak in and who eventually were exposed by Nazi hunters. But the truth is much worse, and has been covered up for decades: the CIA and FBI brought thousands of perpetrators to America as possible assets against their new Cold War enemies. When the Justice Department finally investigated and learned the truth, the results were classified and buried. Using the dramatic story of one former perpetrator who settled in New Jersey, conned the CIA into hiring him, and begged for the agency's support when his wartime identity emerged, Eric Lichtblau tells the full, shocking story of how America became a refuge for hundreds of postwar Nazis"--

"We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the idea of 'Christian America' is an invention--and a relatively recent one at that. As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR's New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of 'pagan statism' that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for 'freedom under God' culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. But this apparent triumph had an ironic twist. In Eisenhower's hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture, inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance and made 'In God We Trust' the country's first official motto. With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%. For the first time, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation. During this moment, virtually all Americans--across the religious and political spectrum--believed that their country was 'one nation under God.' But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders rejected this 'lowest common denomination' public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Richard Nixon's hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right. Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day"-- "In One Nation Under God, award-winning historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the story of Christian America begins with the Great Depression, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to the New Deal. As Kruse shows, corporations from General Motors and Kraft Foods to J.C. Penney and Hilton Hotels, poured money into the coffers of conservative religious leaders, who in turn used those funds to attack FDR's New Deal administration as a program of "pagan statism" that perverted the central tenet of Christianity: the salvation of the individual"--

From Goodreads (edited by me though): **One of our most important public intellectuals reveals the hidden history of our current global crisis** Modernity, secularism, development, and progress have long been viewed by the powerful few as benign ideals for the many. Today, however, botched experiments in nation-building, democracy, industrialization, and urbanization visibly scar much of the world. As once happened in Europe, the wider embrace of revolutionary politics, mass movements, technology, the pursuit of wealth, and individualism has cast billions adrift in a literally demoralized world. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected and the spiritually disorientated, that the militants of the nineteenth century arose—angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally. Many more people today, unable to fulfill the promises—freedom, stability, and prosperity—of a globalized economy, are increasingly susceptible to demagogues and their simplifications. A common reaction among them is intense hatred of supposed villains, the invention of enemies, attempts to recapture a lost golden age, unfocused fury and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra explores the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world—from American “shooters” and ISIS (ISIL) to Trump, Modi, and racism and misogyny on social media.