NYT's Notable Books of 2015: These are the history books that made the cut
AUGUSTINE: Conversions to Confessions. By Robin Lane Fox. (Basic Books, $35.) This narrative of the first half of Augustine’s life conjures the intellectual and social milieu of the late Roman Empire with a Proustian relish for detail.
THE CRIME AND THE SILENCE: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne. By Anna Bikont. Translated by Alissa Valles. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A beautifully written and devastating reconstruction of mass murder and its denial.
DAUGHTERS OF THE SAMURAI: A Journey From East to West and Back. By Janice P. Nimura. (Norton, $26.95.) In 1871, three clueless Japanese girls were sent to America, to learn how to educate their countrywomen in modern ways.
DESTINY AND POWER: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. By Jon Meacham. (Random House, $35.) A judicious and balanced biography of the elder President Bush.
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe. By Michael Pye. (Pegasus, $27.95.) Pye’s view of the North Sea and European history succeeds in reorienting our thinking about the past.
EMPIRE OF COTTON: A Global History. By Sven Beckert. (Knopf, $35.) A Harvard historian shows how every stage of the industrialization of cotton rested on violence.
THE GAY REVOLUTION: The Story of the Struggle. By Lillian Faderman. (Simon & Schuster, $35.) The progress of gay rights, vividly described.
THE GERMAN WAR: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945. By Nicholas Stargardt. (Basic Books, $35.) A dramatic look at the lives of ordinary German men and women during World War II.
GIVE US THE BALLOT: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. By Ari Berman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) This engrossing narrative history of voting rights since 1965 focuses on the debate between two competing visions.
JONAS SALK: A Life. By Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs. (Oxford University, $34.95.) Salk’s polio vaccine brought instant celebrity, but many colleagues were resentful, this excellent biography shows.
KILLING A KING: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel. By Dan Ephron. (Norton, $27.95.) In an electrifying narrative, Rabin’s attempt to negotiate peace is juxtaposed with his assassin’s plan to thwart it by killing him.
MODERNITY BRITAIN: 1957-62. By David Kynaston. (Bloomsbury, $55.) Kynaston’s brilliant multivolume postwar history continues in this tapestry of social, political and economic change.
THE MONOPOLISTS: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game. By Mary Pilon. (Bloomsbury, $27.) The real story behind Monopoly, and the woman who went unrecognized for her role in its creation.
THE OTHER PARIS. By Luc Sante. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.)Sante, the author of “Low Life,” here celebrates the bohemian, the criminal and the louche in the history of the City of Light.
THE SHAPE OF THE NEW: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World. By Scott L. Montgomery and Daniel Chirot. (Princeton University, $35.) How capitalism, socialism, evolution and liberal democracy broke decisively with the past.
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. By Mary Beard. (Liveright, $35.)Like New Yorkers, Romans were aggressive and acquisitive and came from somewhere else; Beard’s wonderfully concise history unpacks the secrets of the city’s success.
STALIN’S DAUGHTER: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. By Rosemary Sullivan. (Harper, $35.) Sullivan’s biography reveals a complex and tragic figure.