Looking for your next summer read?
These captivating books – available at the Atlanta History Center Shop – offer a vibrant mix of history, heart, and adventure perfect for long summer days. We have nonfiction providing powerful insights into undertold histories, as well as fiction offering unexpected journeys of love, self-discovery, and a legendary American hero, live on stage. There’s something here for every reader in the family, so check out our list below!
Literary Fiction
Harriet Tubman Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen
In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say. Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way. Harriet wants to create a hip-hop album and live show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her. Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).
Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley
Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress. While dining out, they’re taken hostage and find themselves living the plot of Jane’s latest book, which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it.
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Beach Reads
Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews
Welcome to the St. Cecelia, a landmark hotel on the coast of Georgia, where traditions run deep and scandals run even deeper. Told with Mary Kay Andrew’s warmth, humor, knack for twists, and eye for delicious detail about human nature, Summers at the Saint is a beach read with depth and heart.
Beach House Rules by Kristy Woodson Harvey
When Charlotte Sitterly’s husband is arrested for a white-collar crime, she and her daughter Iris are locked out of their house by the FBI and—what’s potentially even worse—thrust into the spotlight of @JuniperShoresSocialite, the town’s snarky anonymous Instagram account. Desperate and cut off from her bank accounts, Charlotte moves to a former beachfront bed-and-breakfast that’s home to a community of single mothers and draws plenty of gossip in the small coastal North Carolina town.
Nonfiction
Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.
Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg
We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he’s decided he won’t return to Washington until he’s witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end. To say how a war ends is to suggest how it should be remembered, and Michael Vorenberg’s search is not just for the Civil War’s endpoint but for its true nature and legacy, so essential to the American identity.
COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black
Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman’s legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children’s books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory–Beaufort, South Carolina–to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.
The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines by Jonathan Horn
For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award but found honor on very different paths. A story of war made personal based on meticulous research into diaries and letters including boxes of previously unexplored papers, The Fate of the Generals is a vivid account that raises timely questions about how we define honor and how we choose our heroes, and is destined to become a classic of World War II history.
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
Renowned culinary historian Michael Twitty offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
Upcoming Author Talks
On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR by Steve Oney
An epic reported history of National Public Radio that reveals the unlikely story of one of America’s most celebrated but least understood media empires. In On Air, journalist Steve Oney tells the dramatic history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents, and the rise and fall and occasional rise again of brilliant and sometimes venal executives.
Steve Oney will be in conversation with John Pruitt at the Margaret Mitchell House on July 9. Get your tickets here.
Home Run King: The Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron by Dan Schlossberg
In the fifty years that have passed since Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run and supplanted Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king, his legend and legacy have only grown. Written by a lifelong Braves fan who became a sportswriter, this book traces Aaron’s odyssey from the segregated south to the baseball world revolutionized by Jackie Robinson, who became an early an important ally against bigotry and prejudice.
Dan Schlossberg will be speaking at Atlanta History Center on July 13. Get your tickets here.
Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma
A riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.
Lauren-Francis-Sharma will be in conversation at Atlanta History Center on July 17. Get your tickets here.
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson
From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most momentous events in modern times, the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government, and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism. . Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East.
Scott Anderson will be in conversation at Atlanta History Center on August 12. Get your tickets here.
Taste the State: Georgia – Distinctive Foods and Stories from Where Eating Local Began by Chef Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields
From Brunswick stew to Vidalia onions, from fried apple pies to the storied Georgia Products Feasts of 1913, Taste the State: Georgia is a sweeping, flavorful exploration of the state’s distinctive culinary traditions and the stories behind them. In this richly illustrated and deeply researched volume, chef Kevin Mitchell and food historian David S. Shields highlight more than sixty iconic ingredients and dishes that define the diverse and enduring food culture of the Peach State.
Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields will be in conversation on August 19. Get your tickets here.