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

Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom: ( fascinating comparisons )

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: ( Native biology )
John Harris, The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage: ( the slave trade's end )
David Grann, The Lost City of Z: ( colonial dreams )
Silvana Condemi & François Savatier, A Pocket History of Human Evolution: How We Became Sapiens: ( what it says on the tin )
David Schneider, The Invention of Surgery: ( not really what it says on the tin )
Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: ( Jack the Ripper's victims )
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931: ( the economic consequences of the peace )
Kate Brown, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future: ( yikes )
David McCullough, The Wright Brothers: ( two guys )
Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America: ( railroads and ripoffs )
Thomas Richards, Jr., Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States: ( unfixed 1840s )
Brent Goldfarb & David A. Kirsch, Bubbles and Crashes: ( what's a bubble? )
W. Caleb McDaniel, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America: ( a woman's unequal fight )
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism: ( trying to define fascism )