Telling America’s story through books – NPR

July 4, 2026 by Chloee Weiner, producer of NPR’s Book of the Day Happy July 4th, newsletter readers! Last week’s note was all about the books we’ve loved so far this year. Some of you shared your own favorites from the first half of 2026 – those replies are below. As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org. If you want to hear the latest author interviews from across NPR, subscribe to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. Here we go!

In Washington, D.C., a fireworks show is poised to break a record. In New York, there’s the annual hot dog eating contest and a procession of tall ships. And across the country, George Washington impersonators are booked and busy. America’s 250th anniversary is officially here. Of course, these celebrations come at a tumultuous moment for the country, between economic uncertainty, foreign conflicts and political polarization. But American history has always been a mixed bag.

Historian and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. has been making the argument that this anniversary should reckon with the way the U.S. has failed to deliver on its founding principles. He has a new book out called America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. Here’s the “blunt advice” he relayed to Fresh Air’s Tonya Mosley:

“America has to grow up. It can no longer hide in its adolescence … America imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And to hold those two things together … deposits the kind of madness at the heart of the country.”

In the spirit of celebrating this milestone birthday while acknowledging the United States’ complexity, our colleague Ivy Buck put together a list of 10 books that might help us better understand American history. These are all recent-ish nonfiction reads: There’s a second volume on the American Revolution by Rick Atkinson, a history of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore and Mary Annette Pember’s book about Indian boarding schools that’s “part journalistic research, part spiritual pilgrimage.”

But this very short list barely scratches the surface of the nation’s history. So we’re asking you – what one book, fiction or nonfiction, would you recommend to someone hoping to better understand America? Tell us at bookoftheday@npr.org.

Source: Telling America’s story through books – NPR Books Newsletter