Read Becoming

Mandela's autobiography from the Transkei to Robben Island to the presidency.

From Detroit Red to Mecca, told to Alex Haley in the year before his assassination.

Sorkin's Bartlet administration and the walk-and-talk; the fantasy of competent government.

Solzhenitsyn's literary investigation of the camps from 227 witnesses; the abridged edition is enough.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his son about being Black in America; a letter in the tradition of Baldwin.

John Lewis's civil rights years, from Nashville lunch counters to Selma, in three books.

Three daughters of China: a warlord's concubine, a communist official and the author, through Mao's century.

Margaret Thatcher in old age, remembering the rise; Streep won her third Oscar for it.