H.W. Brands' 6 favorite books that reflect on American history

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Historian and best-selling author H.W. Brands is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. His new book, "America First," revisits the debate between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh over how the U.S. should respond to Adolf Hitler's rise.

'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin' (1791)

D.H. Lawrence begrudged Benjamin Franklin's unwillingness to confront the dark side of human nature, and it's true that Franklin's story, as he tells it, is pretty much a feel-good affair. But there was a lot in Franklin's path from Boston commoner to Enlightenment celebrity to feel good about, and there's a twinkle in his eye on every page. Buy it here.

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'The Education of Henry Adams' by Henry Adams (1907)

This is the inverse of the Franklin story. Henry Adams was born a short distance from Franklin's birthplace, but at the top of Boston's Beacon Hill rather than the bottom. And he spent his life pondering the decline of the Adamses, from presidents to ambassadors to mere scribblers like himself. His allusions can be hard to follow, but his mordant wit repays the effort. Buy it here.

'Life on the Mississippi' by Mark Twain (1883)

Mark Twain became world-famous while living in Connecticut, but the kid from Hannibal, Missouri, never got the Mississippi River out of his blood. This memoir might not be Twain's greatest book, but it's the one that's most revealing of what he was most proud of. Buy it here.

'Twelve Years a Slave' by Solomon Northup (1853)

It's not unusual for a book to be better than the movie, even when the movie is quite good. Yet Northup's account of being kidnapped from freedom into slavery has more nuance than almost any movie could capture. Even the villains are fully formed individuals, some as trapped by circumstances as he became. Buy it here.

'Moby-Dick' by Herman Melville (1851)

The operatic parts aside, this novel reeks of memoir. Melville was as proud of his whaling adventures as Mark Twain was of steamboating. No better portrait exists of the first truly global industry or the remarkably cosmopolitan crews who chased giant cetaceans to the watery ends of the earth. Buy it here.

'Geronimo's Story of His Life' edited by S.M. Barrett (1906)

Geronimo wanted President Theodore Roosevelt to let him go home to die, and to this end, he told his story while in captivity in Oklahoma and dedicated the completed book to Roosevelt. The strategy didn't work for Geronimo, but it works for readers, who get a gripping tale of resourceful resistance from the great warrior himself. Buy it here.

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