Carve Out Time for October’s New History Reads

Among the standout releases of the season is a captivating biographical dive into the life of Major Pierre “Pete” Ortiz. Authored by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, The Phantom brings to light the extraordinary and largely untold story of a Manhattan-born and Paris-educated polymath. Fluent in five languages and boasting a background as an adventurous French Foreign Legion veteran, Ortiz was deployed on a series of perilous, clandestine missions during the Second World War. His assignments took him from enemy-held North Africa straight into the heart of Occupied France, where he operated behind enemy lines under constant threat of discovery and execution.

By the time Ortiz retired as a decorated United States Marine Corps colonel, his wartime exploits had earned him two Navy Crosses for extraordinary heroism. His military service remains notable for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that he was one of the very few U.S. Marines to serve actively in combat roles within the European theater during World War II. Furthermore, these accomplishments cemented his legacy as one of the most highly decorated Marine officers of the conflict. Drury and Clavin’s narrative restores this legendary figure to his rightful place in military history, offering readers a meticulous account of a soldier whose exploits often felt more like fiction than reality.

Shifting the lens from European battlefields to the domestic center of American political power, The East Wing by Azadeh Moaveni offers a timely and rigorously researched exploration of the executive branch. Spanning the most defining and transformative decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—from the sweeping reforms of the New Deal era, through the myth-making years of the Kennedy administration, all the way to the turbulent, politically polarized environment of the 2020s—the book examines the vital role played by the First Lady’s staffers. Moaveni, an academic and Pulitzer Prize finalist, blends original reporting with expert research and analysis. Crucially, her work includes extensive interviews with key players from past East Wings, granting readers an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes world of the First Lady’s office and tracing the broader evolution of female leadership in the United States.

Literary history also takes center stage this fall with Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited, a thoughtful examination of one of America’s greatest and most enigmatic novelists. Despite crafting some of the most celebrated stories in modern literature—works famously filled with themes of greed, violence, and complex human love—Cormac McCarthy famously maintained a fiercely private existence, leaving little known about the man behind the prose. With precision and grace, this new biography recounts his remarkable life story, charting a course from early poverty to immense wealth, and from complete literary obscurity to worldwide critical acclaim. By peeling back the layers of public persona, the book unveils the real man behind the literary myth, making it an essential read for both lifelong fans and newcomers discovering McCarthy’s stark, powerful storytelling for the first time.

The American Civil War and its enduring shadow over modern society are critically reexamined in Connor Williams’s The Confederacy Myth. Posing the vital question of what contemporary Americans can learn about today’s deeply divided country by looking back at the conflict that tore the nation apart in the nineteenth century, Williams delivers a blistering historical exposé. The book reframes the popular understanding of the Confederacy, stripping away romanticized notions to reveal what it truly was: a relatively small insurrection driven by fanatics that nevertheless succeeded in plunging the nation into its deadliest war. By unravelling deep-seated myths, Williams uncovers the perilous political tactics, irate ideologies, reckless style of warfare, impotent governance, and unwavering, foundational commitment to slavery that characterized the Confederate project.

The complex aftermath of the Civil War is further explored in Headlee’s Freedom’s Daughters, which addresses a critical yet often overlooked chapter of American history. In the waning days of the antebellum South, millions of African Americans were suddenly emancipated from enslavement, only to quickly realize that freedom came with severe systemic limitations. Newly freed individuals found themselves subjected to hundreds of restrictive laws explicitly designed to prevent them from voting and, in many instances, acquiring an education. Headlee’s book rescues from obscurity the stories of an exceptional group of women—activists, educators, mothers, and organizers—whose tireless efforts laid the foundational stones for Black education and literacy for an entire generation of children born into freedom.

For readers with an appetite for the unusual and bizarre, the paperback release of Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities brings the smash-hit podcast to the printed page. Authored by the podcast’s creator, the book offers a riveting journey through some of history’s strangest stories, cataloging wonderful, astounding, and occasionally unsettling tales of people, places, and objects from across the centuries. It serves as a natural draw for trivia enthusiasts, history buffs, and anyone harboring a curiosity for the eccentric corners of the past.

Another paperback release exploring the intersection of history, mystery, and cultural obsession is Brad Ricca’s Lincoln’s Ghost. The book chronicles the untold story of legendary escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini during his final performances. Inspired by his personal hero, Abraham Lincoln, Houdini dedicated the latter portion of his life to a full-time crusade against Spiritualism, the popular turn-of-the-century practice of attempting to communicate with the dead. Set against the backdrop of a Jazz Age America still haunted by the trauma of the Great War and a devastating global pandemic, the narrative follows Houdini as he encounters modern-day haunted houses, purported warlocks, and various charlatans, eventually uncovering a shocking conspiracy stretching all the way to the American presidency and the inner sanctum of the House of Houdini itself. Utilizing a compelling dual-timeline structure that alternates between Houdini’s dramatic 1926 congressional testimony and the final otherworldly cases that led him there, the book examines themes of deception, love, politics, grief, and the true nature of magic.

Finally, Frank Tallis’s Mortal Secrets, now available in paperback, transports readers back to the intellectual and cultural ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Tallis brilliantly illuminates the life and work of Sigmund Freud, one of the most profound and influential thinkers of the twentieth century, while simultaneously chronicling the broader Golden Age of the Austrian capital. The book captures a heady, intellectually electric period in one of the world’s most visually and culturally stunning cities—a metropolis that served as the true birthplace of the modern era. Together, these October releases offer a rich and varied tapestry of historical exploration, ensuring that readers settling in for the cooler months will find no shortage of compelling narratives to explore.