I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Timothy Egan, The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero: ( in New York you can be a new man ).

Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster: ( gripping )
Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland:  ( the evil that men and women do )
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom: ( American hero )
Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America: ( race related )
Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy: ( navies as race enforcers )
Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think: ( Modified optimism? )
Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific: ( eyewitness to history )
Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment: ( great book, unpleasant truths )
Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland: ( you don't need to read this but might want to anyway )

Alejandro de la Fuente & Ariela J. Gross, Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana: ( regional differences )
Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World: ( making of empire )
Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth: ( fake history )