I’ve been reading an advance copy of a new book called The Hamilton Scheme. Historian Willam Hogeland tries for a fresh take on George Washington’s treasury secretary. Beyond the affairs and duels and other events that so many people have seen in the musical, there is Hamilton’s actual work — the financial plan that he drew up for the newly founded United States. Hogeland thinks Americans who know of this plan at all have the wrong idea of what its purpose was—and he’s right in my case! I grew up with the wrong idea. I’ll have more to write about this by and by.
The book comes out May 28, which places it in a genre known as “dad history.” I first heard this term recently from the historian Alexis Coe—and it gave me a name for a type of book that I have long known about. In my mind, at least, a dad history is a book about war, heroism, great leaders, inventors, or some other topic that (if the stereotype fits in your case) you might expect your dad to like. And it’s published in late winter or spring, in time to buy and wrap it for Father’s Day in June. (This year, June 16.)
Apparently, this is a good way to sell books! The late David McCullough used to publish his books on this schedule. One best seller after another.
If my wise publisher had her way, all my books would be timed for dad history season. Sometimes they are, and when they aren’t it’s my fault. When scheduling Differ We Must I expected that the 2024 presidential primaries would interfere with a spring book tour, so she agreed to publish earlier, on October 3, 2023. Of course the primaries turned out to be a bust; I easily could have published in the spring; and my publisher was right as always. But Differ reached the bestseller list anyway, and this spring it is still widely available for your dad. Or your mom. (My friend Rachel Martin told me once that “dad jokes” is too restrictive a term, since she tells them too; so I pause here to acknowledge that “dad history” has its limitations too.)
Differ We Must tells Lincoln’s life story through his face to face meetings with people who differed with him—a diverse group of characters who include famous people like Frederick Douglass and Jessie Benton Frémont, as well as obscure figures like Lincoln’s barber William Florville. You’ll decide if I told the story well, but it’s a hell of a story, and relevant. I learned a lot about how Lincoln achieved what he did in a divided country. (Also, it includes war, heroism, great leaders, all that dad history stuff.)
But I like too much history not to recommend other works for the history lover in your life. Below are six popular histories that have come to my attention through my book interviews or because I encountered them on my own.
I suspect that for some people, dad history might connote stories of dead white men, written by white men for white men; but in this post I choose to take a more expansive view of history, its authors, and dads. So here goes.
This year the leading books of dad history season include Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest, a dramatic reconstruction of the months leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter. On stage with me this month in Pennsylvania, the immensely popular writer said it is the only book he will ever write about the Civil War. The topic is classic dad history, as was his previous book The Splendid and the Vile (World War II, Churchill, and a late winter release in time for Father’s Day 2020.)
Doris Kerns Goodwin stretches the genre just a bit with her entry this year. An Unfinished Love Story explores the experiences of her late husband, the presidential speechwriter and adviser Richard Goodwin. Working with his many boxes of papers, she wrote the memoir he didn’t live to finish.
Last year’s dad history season featured King: a Life by Jonathan Eig (released in May 2023) and Master, Slave, Husband, Wife by Ilyon Woo (released in January, admittedly a little early in the season). We interviewed both writers on NPR—and both recently shared the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Eig’s biography of Martin Luther King digs up new details of his early life. Woo tells the mind-blowing story of two enslaved people who escaped from the South while pretending to be a master and servant.
Also from the 2023 season, and a recipient of a Truman Book Award, is my colleague Steve Drummond’s The Watchdog, about Harry Truman’s investigation of corruption and incompetence among contractors in World War Two—a probe that raised Truman’s prominence on his way to the presidency.
A great history from the 2022 season (it came out in May) is my friend Candice Millard’s River of the Gods. It’s the story of nineteenth-century explorers who tried to find the source of the Nile. It’s in the category of history that I thought I knew, having read it somewhere, only to discover I didn’t know it at all. I also listened to the audiobook, which was fantastic and influenced how I thought about the audiobook of Differ We Must.
Needless to say, if these books intrigue you, you need not buy them for someone else. I buy all of Candice’s books for myself. I’m a dad.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must—I hope you or someone close to you enjoys the readings mentioned here.
Steve, it is Always dad history season. Always. It just gets worse now.