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History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. - Dexter Perkins.

The American philosopher George Santayana is quoted as saying that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. With more than 27,000 books in the Amazon Kindle bookstore "history" category, Kindle-owning history buffs will not run out of reading material any time soon. Recent history nonfiction includes:

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor. Viking. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (14 reviews). Kindle edition $18.12. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"It's not the title of Antony Beevor's new book that tells the tale, but the subtitle. One third of the way through his more than 500 pages of text, Beevor has finished off D-Day. Allied troops and materiel have successfully (if bloodily) secured the beaches of Normandy, but their job has only just begun. Ahead lies the battle for Normandy itself, two and a half months of vicious fighting, frequently hand to hand, before the liberation of Paris in late August. It is a dramatic, important and instructive story, and Beevor tells it surpassingly well. D-Day is very much a work of military history, so of necessity it is chockablock with the sort of battlefield chess-playing that can leave the nonmilitary mind in a state of considerable confusion. But Beevor is less interested in moving troops from pillar to post than in telling us what war was like for them and for the civilians whose paths they crossed. Readers fortunate enough to know his previous books - among them Paris After the Liberation (with Artemis Cooper, 1994), Stalingrad (1998) and The Fall of Berlin 1945 (2002) - are aware that his fascination with warfare is compounded by a deep knowledge, not always encountered in military histories, that war is hell." - Jonathan Yardley for The Washington Post.

Dancing in the Dark, by Morris Dickstein. Countryman. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $15.82. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"From Agee to Astaire, Steinbeck to Ellington, the creative energies of the Depression against a backdrop of poverty and economic disaster. In this timely and long-awaited cultural history of the 1930s, Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called 'one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature,' explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of distressed Americans at a time of dire economic dislocation. Bringing together a staggering range of materials-from epic Dust Bowl migrations and sharecropper photographs to zany screwball comedies, wildly popular swing bands, and streamlined Deco designs-this eloquent work highlights the pivotal role of culture and government intervention in hard times. Exploding the myth that Depression culture was merely escapist, it concentrates instead on the dynamic energy and insight the arts could provide and the enormous lift they gave to the nation's morale." - Amazon.

The American Civil War, by John Keegan. Knopf. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $19.25. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America’s most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name. Now Keegan examines these and other puzzles with a peerless understanding of warfare, uncovering dimensions of the conflict that have eluded earlier historiography... Out of a succession of mythic but chaotic engagements, he weaves an irresistible narrative illuminated with comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and other conflicts." - from the hardcover edition.

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy, by David Hoffman. Doubleday. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $18.48. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the 'Dead Hand,' a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States, and developed a fearsome biological warfare machine. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to awe the Soviets into submission, pushed hard for the creation of space-based missile defenses... Drawing on top-secret documents from deep inside the Kremlin, memoirs, and interviews in both Russia and the United States, David Hoffman introduces the scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies who saw the world sliding toward disaster and tells the gripping story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and many others struggled to bring the madness to an end. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the danger continued, and the United States began a race against time to keep nuclear and biological weapons out of the hands of terrorists and and rogue states." - from the hardcover edition.

The War That Killed Achilles, by Caroline Alexander. Viking. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The story of the Trojan War is immortalized in Homer's epic of epic poems, the Iliad, and brought to new life in Caroline Alexander's The War That Killed Achilles. Beyond the trial of Paris, the battle over Helen of Troy, and the incessant intervention of the gods lies a sincere tale of war. While Homer touches on only a few weeks of what is said to have taken ten years, Alexander brings to light the forgotten message behind the poem: the misery of war and the sacrifice and courage of its soldiers. Through the hero Achilles, the Iliad draws on the true nature of what it means to be a soldier, to fight a bloody conflict whose hallmarks are not honor and glory so much as deception, betrayal, petulance, pride, violence, and the inescapability of fate. The War That Killed Achilles is a poignant dissection of the epic poem relevant to all wars, past and present." - The New York Society Library, Library Notes.

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, by Gordon S. Wood. (Oxford History of the United States). Oxford University Press. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (28 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country. Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation. Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University." - Amazon.

Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power - A Dispatch from the Beach, by Gerald Posner. Simon & Schuster. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $14.85. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Here, in all its neon-colored, cocaine-fueled glory, is the never-before-told story of the making of Miami Beach. Gerald Posner, author of the groundbreaking investigations Case Closed and Why America Slept, has uncovered the hair-raising political-financial-criminal history of the Beach and reveals a tale that, in the words of one character, 'makes Scarface look like a documentary.' From its beginnings in the 1890s, the Beach has been a place made by visionaries and hustlers. During Prohibition, Al Capone had to muscle into its bootlegging and gambling businesses. After December 1941, when the Beach was the training ground for half a million army recruits, even the war couldn't stop the party. After a short postwar boom, the city's luck gave out. The big hotels went bankrupt, the crime rate rose, and the tourists moved on to Disney World and the Caribbean. Even after the Beach hosted both national political conventions in 1972, nobody would have imagined that this sandy backwater of run-down hotels and high crime would soon become one of the country's most important cultural centers. But in 1981, 125,000 Cubans arrived by the boatload. The empty streets of South Beach, lined with dilapidated Art Deco hotels, were about to be changed irrevocably by the culture of money that moved in behind cocaine and crime." - Amazon.

Inside the Kingdom, by Robert Lacey. Viking. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $14.76. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox. It is a modern state driven by contemporary technology and possessed of vast oil deposits, yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back a thousand years to match those of the prophet Muhammad. With Inside the Kingdom, journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. While living for years among the nation's princes and paupers, its clerics and progressives, Lacey endeavored to find out how the consequences of the 1970s oil boom produced a society at war with itself. Filled with stories that trace a path through the Persian Gulf War and the events of 9/11 to the oilmarket convulsions of today, Inside the Kingdom gives us a modern history of the Saudis in their own words, revealing a people attempting to reconcile life under religious law with the demands of a rapidly changing world. ...a penetrating look at a country no one can afford to ignore." - Amazon.