“Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West,” by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, 480 pages, $26.95). Sides tells essentially two stories, one of the conquest of the Southwest during the days of the Santa Fe Trail and Manifest Destiny, of how the Navajos were settled and how exploration brought the Pacifi Ocean figuratively closer to the East Coast.
In telling his story, we learn about some of the great names in our history, like John C. Fremont and the Navajo leader Narbona. But mostly we learn about Kit Carson, famed mountain man and tracker.
“Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War With Militant Islam,” by Mark Bowden (Grove, 704 pages, $26). Bowden (“Black Hawk Down,” “Killing Pablo”) gives a well-researched and detailed account of the taking of American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in 1979. The situation lasted for 444 days and is credited with bringing down the re-election bid of President Jimmy Carter.
Bowden recounts the ordeal through the eyes of some of the hostages, public officials working for their release and members of Delta Force, the elite military unit tasked with rescuing them.
“Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” by James L. Swanson (HarperCollins, 448 pages, $26.95). In a sweeping narrative that reads more like a taut mystery or police procedural, Swanson recounts the story of John Wilkes Booth as he prepares to kill Abraham Lincoln, pulls off the feat and then is hunted to ground after making a daring escape into the Virginia farms and forests.
He manages to portray Booth’s desperation and the relentlessness of his pursuers in a gripping story that adds depth to what you may already know about the Lincoln assassination.
“Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War,” by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 480 pages, $29.95). Philbrick won the National Book Award for “In the Heart of the Sea” and follows that with a story of the Pilgrims and their half-a-century effort to establish a colony in a new world.
A revisionist history, Philbrick discounts the myths we learned in grade school and fills in the history with tales of duplicity, bravery, savagery and just plain stupidity in the Pilgrims’ relationship with the local Native Americans.
“Thunderstruck,” by Eric Larson (Crown, 480 pages, $25.95). Larson struck gold with his “Devil in the White City” a few years ago and now is trying to repeat the feat with a similar story of two very different people, one a scientist and the other a psychopath, whose lives cross paths.
After killing and dismembering his wife, physician H.H. Crippen finds himself on an ocean liner trying to elude capture. Then comes the inventor of the wireless, Guglielmo Marconi, whose new invention is used to chase down the killer.
Recommended historical fiction
“Abundance,” by Sena Jeter Naslund
“The Boleyn Inheritance,” by Philippa Gregory
“Cold Mountain,” by Charles Frazier
“The Foreign Correspondent,” by Alan Furst
“Helen of Troy,” by Margaret George
“Labyrinth,” by Kate Masse
“The March,” by E.L. Doctorow
“Ordinary Heroes,” by Scott Turow
“Pompeii,” by Robert Harris
“Water for Elephants,” by Sara Gruen
