Reading Project Goals

This blog will follow my personal project to read through US history from the revolution to the present, roughly one book per decade or era. I love history and am always reading some book or studying some topic for fun. But after reading Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" I saw how useful it was to read through a long narration spanning different eras in chronological order to see how they all fit together. So my goal is to get a better understanding and context of US history across the eras by reading chronologically.

I hope to mix the books up by political histories, biographies, niche subject histories, economic history, event histories, etc. I would even like to mix in some fiction written in and about the era as a follow up to the non-fiction entry.

The following are the eras : decades that I want to cover.

Revolution

Late 1700s: 1780s

Late 1700s: 1790s

Early 1800s: 1810s

Early 1800s: 1820s

Early 1800s: 1830s

Pre-Civil War: 1840s

Pre-Civil War: 1840s

Pre-Civil War: 1850s

Civil War

Reconstruction: 1860s

Reconstruction: 1870s

Reconstruction: 1880s

Gilded age: 1890s

Turn of the Century: 1900s

Turn of the Century: 1910s

WWI

Between Wars: 1920s

Between Wars: 1920s

Between Wars: 1930s

WWII

Mid 1900s: 1940s

Mid 1900s: 1950s

Mid 1900s: 1960s

Late 1900s: 1970s

Late 1900s: 1980s

Late 1900s: 1990s

The most difficult part is choosing books. There are countless options, but I only want to read a few at most for each decade. I am naturally interested in certain subjects more than others so there is a risk of not being balanced. And while I had a list of potential books in mind at the beginning, I hope to find a lot of good recommendations.

Please leave any recommendations in the comments!