I recently finished Jim Rasenberger’s book, America 1908, and started thinking about other books with years or dates in the titles. I’ve read at least ten over the years, and managed to come up with a few others that were reasonably popular. I slipped in five novels (Orwell and Clarke, of course) but left out the many 9/11 titles (including Thomas Friedman and Noam Chomsky) since none shouted the year. Here’s a glance at a chronological book shelf.
- Year 1000 (Robert Lacey)*
- 1066 and All That (Walter Sellar)*
- 1215: The Year of Magna Carta (Danny Danziger)
- 1421: The Year China Discovered America (Gavin Menzies)
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles C. Mann)
- 1776 (David McCullough)*
- The Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six‘ (Henry Steele Commager)
- 1812: The War That Forged a Nation (Walter R Borneman)
- April 1865 (Jay Winik)*
- 1905 (Leon Trotsky)
- America 1908 (Jim Rasenberger)*
- Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (Margaret Macmillan)
- December 7, 1941 (Gordon Prange)
- D Day: June 6, 1944 (Stephen Ambrose)*
- Summer of ’49 (David Halberstam)*
- The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963 (Christopher Paul Curtis)
- 1968: The Year that Rocked the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- 1984 (George Orwell)*
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke)*
- June 8, 2004: Venus in Transit (Eli Maor)*
- 2010: Odyssey Two (Arthur C Clarke)
- 2061: Odyssey Three (Arthur C Clarke)
- 3001: The Final Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke)
Can you think of others?
* The starred books are ones that I’ve read.
