WSJ Bookshelf

Listen to the authors talk about their books that have been featured in the Wall Street Journal Bookshelf Section.

Book cover of Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President by Jonathan Darman
Book cover of Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by William D. Cohan
Book cover of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff
Book cover of The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II by Buzz Bissinger
Book cover of The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire by Joseph Sassoon
Book cover of The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris
Book cover of Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities by Adrienne Mayor
Book cover of The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor
Book cover of A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik
Book cover of Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss
Book cover of Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy by Matthew Campbell
Book cover of Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives by Stefan Al
Book cover of A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
Book cover of The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine that Made the Modern World by Bryan Appleyard
Book cover of The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry Strauss
Book cover of Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin
Book cover of Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Book cover of The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter  by Govert Schilling
Book cover of By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners by Margaret Burnham
Book cover of The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind by Martin Sixsmith
Book cover of Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II by Paul Kennedy
Book cover of The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation by Mark Lee Gardner
Book cover of Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History by Ian Morris
Book cover of Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them by John Jr. Bainbridge
Book cover of Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid by Gregory Forth
Book cover of Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond by Robin George Andrews
Book cover of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Book cover of The War on Music: Reclaiming the Twentieth Century by John Mauceri
Book cover of Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion by Wendy Suzuki
Book cover of Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast by Joan DeJean
Book cover of The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain's Most Terrifying Prison by Nicholas Guyatt
Book cover of The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All by Mary Childs
Book cover of Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace by Christopher Blattman
Book cover of River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard
Book cover of Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert Kaplan
Book cover of Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday
Book cover of Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War by Phil Klay
Book cover of The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard
Book cover of Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic by Scott Gottlieb
Book cover of Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World by Scott Reynolds Nelson
Book cover of Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein
Book cover of Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong by Greg Brennecka
Book cover of A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain by Sara Manning Peskin
Book cover of The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill
Book cover of Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule  by Katherine Pangonis
Book cover of When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance by Michael Neiberg
Book cover of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer
Book cover of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War by Nicholas Mulder
Book cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Wengrow and David Graeber
Book cover of Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth
Book cover of The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World by Edward Shawcross
Book cover of The Ambassador: Joseph P. Kennedy at the Court of St. James's 1938-1940 by Susan Ronald
Book cover of Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
Book cover of Conquering The Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery 
Book cover of Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare by Paul Lockhart
Book cover of The Making of Oliver Cromwell by Ronald Hutton
Book cover of What's Eating the Universe?: And Other Cosmic Questions by Paul Davies
Book cover of The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World by Fernanda Pirie
Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City by Andrew Lawler
Book cover of The Business of Tomorrow: The Visionary Life of Harry Guggenheim: From Aviation and Rocketry to the Creation of an Art Dynasty by Dirk Smillie
Book cover of Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War by Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman
Book cover of The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer
Book cover of Spies and Traitors: Kim Philby, James Angleton and the Friendship and Betrayal that Would Shape MI6, the CIA and the Cold War by Michael Holzman
Book cover of The Amur River: Between Russia and China by Colin Thubron
Book cover of Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard W. French
Book cover of Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern by Mary Beard
Book cover of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones
Book cover of Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World by Nina Kraus
Book cover of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge A. Colby
Book cover of Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside by Nick Offerman
Book cover of Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
Book cover of Water: A Biography by Giulio Boccaletti
Book cover of On Animals by Susan Orlean
Book cover of Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan
Book cover of Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Book cover of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts
Book cover of Churchill's Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Book cover of When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves by Steven M. Nadler
Book cover of To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World's Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers by Bruce Jones
Book cover of Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
Book cover of The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World by Arthur Herman
Book Cover of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us by Carole Hooven
Book cover of The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World by Linda Colley
Book cover of Madhouse at the End of the Earth

 

Book cover of Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President by Jonathan Darman
Biography & Autobiography

Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President

In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery.  […Learn More]

Book cover of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff
Biography & Autobiography

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

A revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father—the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire by Joseph Sassoon
Biography & Autobiography

The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire

A spectacular generational saga of the making (and undoing) of a family dynasty: the riveting untold story of the gilded Jewish Bagdadi Sassoons, who built a vast empire through global finance and trade—cotton, opium, shipping, banking—that reached across three continents and ultimately changed the destinies of nations. With full access to rare family photographs and archives. […Learn More]

Book cover of Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities by Adrienne Mayor
Ancient Civilizations

Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities

Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights—glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth—embedded in myth, legends, and folklore. Combing through ancient texts and obscure sources, she has spent decades prospecting for intriguing wonders and marvels, historical mysteries, diverting anecdotes, and hidden gems from ancient, medieval, and modern times. Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws is a treasury of fifty of her most amazing and amusing discoveries. […Learn More]

Book cover of A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik
Biography & Autobiography

A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland

A long-overdue biography of Grover Cleveland—the honest, principled, and plain-spoken president whose country has largely overlooked him.

Featuring a wealth of in-depth research and newly uncovered details, A Man of Iron explores the remarkable life and extraordinary career of Grover Cleveland—one of America’s most unusual presidents and the only one to serve two non-consecutive terms. […Learn More]

Book cover of Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss
Biography & Autobiography

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe 

Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind. […Learn More]