Best Books of 2020-History

In The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War – A Tragedy in Three Acts author Scott Anderson tells the story of four of the first agents to join the CIA after the end of World War II. All four thought they were going to help the United States spread democratic ideals around the world. But they found that they were being asked to overthrow democratically elected officials in third world countries, to train emigres for suicide missions within their own native Eastern Bloc countries and to support fascist dictators who were allied with the United States. This is a poignant story of the people who fought on the front lines of the CIA’s clandestine 1950’s war against Communism. See my full review of the Quiet Americans in the Post dated October 16, 2020.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Eric Larson, which has made everyone’s Best Books list of 2020, is the story of Winston Churchill’s leadership during the German blitz of London from September, 1940 to May, 1941. What struck me most about this book is the realization that there was a time when our elected officials could actually act like heroes.

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Family, Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz is both a story about the negotiations at the Yalta summit when the United States, Russia and Great Britain tried, but ultimately failed, to find a path to lasting peace at the end of World War II and about the intimate relationships between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Averill Harriman and their respective daughters who accompanied them to the summit. Katz is flawless in her juxtaposition of a World War and close interpersonal relationships. See my full review of The Daughters of Yalta in the Post dated October 21, 2020.

The Golden Thread: The Cold War Mystery Surrounding the Death of Dag Hammarskjold by Ravi Somaiya is a mystery arising out of time in the 1950s when African colonization was changing to self-rule. When the Congo gained its independence from Belgium in 1960 the southernmost province, Katanga, declared its own independence from the Congo. The United Nations sent in troops to support Congo’s effort to reunite the country. In September, 1961, United Nations Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold flew to a meeting in Rhodesia with the hopes of negotiating a peace settlement. However, his plane crashed on its approach to the airport. While the initial inquest found that the crash was caused by pilot error, The Golden Thread describes hidden evidence, flawed investigations and motiviations of multiple parties that support continuing theories that the plane was sabotaged. See my full review of The Golden Thread in the Post dated October 3, 2020.

In Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich author Thomas Levenson manages to tie together Isaac Newton’s development of differential calculus, England’s unending wars with France and Robert Walpole’s term as Prime Minister of England to explain the origins of the South Sea Bubble and how it almost brought down the British financial system in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This book is both a good history of early modern England and a primer on how financial markets work and how easily they can fail. See my full review of Money for Nothing in the Post dated October 22, 2020.