Two new history books use the past to explain what’s important now

Every day, you make predictions, like when traffic will be heaviest on your route to work or whether the value of a company’s stock will increase or decrease. We use the information from these predictions to guide our decisions. But how can we ensure that we’re making the best predictions possible?

In Superforecasting, authors Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner explore that question by analyzing the strategies of 'superforecasters,' volunteer analysts who predict the likelihood of global events with impressive accuracy. In this guide, we’ll explore the traits and tactics that make superforecasters so “super” and how you can use them to improve your own predictions. We’ll also compare the authors’ approach to predicting the future to those of other influential thinkers like Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

History as a subject for rigorous study in American schools and universities is a thing of the past, scholars say. Fewer people than ever understand what’s happened in our nation’s history and how it informs the present—which has consequences for everyone in the United States.

What can you learn from 5,000 years of history? Are we in truly novel times, or do we face the same problems that the Romans and Egyptians faced 2,000 years ago?

Will & Ariel Durant, Pulitzer Prize winning historians, are famed for writing The Story of Civilization, a massive 9766-page, 11-volume treatise of the entirety of Western history. They compiled the most important recurring patterns in this book. Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater, considers this one of his 3 must-read books.

Learn how human nature hasn’t changed over thousands of years, how societies cycle between inequality and redistribution like a heartbeat, and why eventually all civilizations fall.

Conventional accounts of American history tend to focus on the people at the top—presidents, generals, CEOs, and other influential figures and their struggles, ambitions, hopes, and dreams. But what about average people? The ones who had to live with the consequences of elite decisions, and who often struggled in obscurity? In A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn aims to tell their story, providing a bottom-up view of American history focusing on Indigenous people, Black Americans, women, laborers, and activists.

Our guide outlines Zinn’s interpretation of significant events, themes, and historical trends in American history. Through our commentary, we’ll provide alternative opinions on the motivations behind and consequences of historical events. We’ll also further explain Zinn’s approach to history and provide additional context for his arguments as well as his perspective on events that happened after the book’s publication.

A Promised Land is Barack Obama’s memoir of his early political career and the first two years of his presidency. Obama takes us on his journey from relative obscurity as a biracial kid from Hawaii to becoming a transformative figure as the nation’s first African-American president. At every step of his career, Obama was guided by a deep faith in the fundamental unity of Americans; the potential and promise of America; the necessity of compromise and seeking common ground; and above all, the power of the democratic system to heal our divisions and effect real change for ordinary people.

History as a subject for rigorous study in American schools and universities is a thing of the past, scholars say. Fewer people than ever understand what’s happened in our nation’s history and how it informs the present—which has consequences for everyone in the United States.

In Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, Lincoln history buff James L. Swanson draws on archival material and trial transcripts to create a vivid account of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the 12-day pursuit of killer John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators through Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. This book is condensed from a longer book to adapt it for young readers, but the compelling storyline and many lesser-known historical details will interest adult readers as well. The book evokes the unique time of political division, grievance, and danger that threatened the Union in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln is a central figure in American history: He was the 16th president of the United States, the “Great Emancipator,” and the man who led the US through the Civil War. In And There Was Light, historian and biographer Jon Meacham breaks down the myths and legends that have surrounded Abraham Lincoln, arguing that Lincoln had good intentions, and accomplished great things, but was still as flawed and prone to mistakes as anyone else.

In this guide, we’ll present Lincoln’s remarkable life in chronological order, from his birth in rural Kentucky to his assassination in Washington, D.C. We give particular attention to Lincoln’s political career, especially his actions as president during the Civil War.

In our commentary, we’ll add context for Lincoln’s life and the major events in it, especially the historical and economic motivations behind slavery and the Civil War. We’ll also explore where Meacham’s account of Lincoln’s life differs from other accounts.