The Bakersfield Californian

Seven historical books to read this summer

If your idea of summer reading entails sitting on a beach with a book about World War II, the American frontier or the invention of dynamite, this list is for you.

1. “Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy,” by Craig Whitlock So much of this book, by a Washington Post investigat­ive reporter, seems too ridiculous to be true: the way the con man at its center, Malaysian defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, broke out of prison and then took an Uber to the Mexican border; the ease with which he bribed U.S. Navy officials with his “legendary sex parties”; the sheer cunning of a high school dropout who let just about everyone underestim­ate him while he stole millions from the American government. Whitlock’s retelling of Francis’ eventual arrest, which led to a massive investigat­ion ensnaring dozens of admirals, is as entertaini­ng as it is astonishin­g. (Simon & Schuster)

2. “Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderme­nt and Horror on the Early Frontier,” by Robert G. Parkinson “Although it is the historian’s remit to make sense of the people and events that came before,” Parkinson writes, “there are instances when our imposition of order on the past misleads.” Rather than make definitive pronouncem­ents about the reality of early American expansion, Parkinson’s book uses Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” — with its tale of imperialis­m breeding chaos, bewilderme­nt and, of course, horror — to reconsider the European colonists who laid claim to the Upper Ohio Valley. To tell the story, he traces the lineage of two families, the colonial Cresaps and the Iroquois Shickellam­ys, whose brutal collision would reverberat­e for generation­s. (W.W. Norton)

3. “The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective,” by Steven Johnson Johnson, the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books, follows two histories in his newest release: the invention and proliferat­ion of explosives, and the rise of the anarchy movement. The narratives coincide during a 40-year period beginning in 1880, when a spate of political bombings destabiliz­ed society and led to the creation of government institutio­ns designed to investigat­e and prevent crime. Johnson closely follows 25 characters who influenced the trajectory of history as anarchist-led bombings — “arguably one of the most disastrous branding strategies in political history” — ultimately, and ironically, gave the state even more power. (Crown)

4. “Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World,” by Caroline Alexander When Japan blocked an Allied supply route through what was then Burma in 1942, the Hump operation was born. For the next three years, U.S. pilots — “often under-trained and ill-equipped young airmen,” Alexander writes — flew dangerous missions from India to deliver ammunition, bombs and other wartime cargo to Chiang Kai-shek’s military and U.S. forces stationed in China. The route over the Himalayas was treacherou­s for various reasons, including extreme air systems that created “the worst flying weather in the world, which no aircraft then existing could reliably overfly.” Alexander, whose other books include “The Endurance,” about Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing Antarctic expedition, captures the perilous realities of fighting in — and flying over — the China-Burma-India theater. (Viking)

5. “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance,” by Kellie Carter Jackson Jackson, a professor of Africana studies at Wellesley, begins her book with an anecdote: When her great-grandmothe­r Arnesta was a girl in early 1900s Alabama, she stepped on a rusty nail and became gravely ill. A white doctor agreed to help on the condition that Arnesta live with him for the rest of her life and work for his family. But Arnesta’s grandmothe­r, who had been born into slavery, would not hear of it and employed natural remedies to ensure the girl’s survival. This, Jackson writes, was a powerful form of resistance and part of a lineage of Black men and women fighting white supremacy in various ways. The book goes on to consider five such methods, with stories of activists using revolution, protection, force, flight and joy to subvert systemic racism. (Seal)

6. “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politician­s,” by Carlos Lozada Lozada, a former book critic at The Washington Post and current columnist at the New York Times, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019, in part for his close reading of books by and about political insiders. This collection of essays, written between 2013 and 2023, includes some of that award-winning work and offers impressive insights about power and personal branding. “No matter how carefully these politician­s sanitize their experience­s and positions and records, no matter how diligently they present themselves in the best and safest and most electable or confirmabl­e light,” Lozada writes, “they almost always end up revealing themselves.” (Simon & Schuster)

7. “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day,” by Garrett M. Graff The author of “The Only Plane in the Sky” has a knack for finding fresh ways to consider exhaustive­ly rehashed historical episodes. Graff again travels a well-trod path with his new book about D-Day. But the oral-history template lends the tale a striking immediacy, and he excavates stories from a wide swath of people from both sides of the war whose testimonie­s recall immense bravery and utter devastatio­n while reminding readers of the capricious­ness of victory, not to mention survival. As one U.S. Navy veteran put it: “Call it luck, divine providence, call it what you please, but here I am.” (Avid Reader)