August 11, 2026

Best Non-fiction Reads of 2012

Last year was a great year for good books. I tend to prefer history over other topics, but this year’s non-fiction picks included sociology, economics, and literature…but all, still, with a link to history.

In no particular order, then, my favorite non-fiction reads of 2012 are…

When every country is a “close and strong ally,” are any of them? [video]

With his eyes turned more towards reelection than America’s future and standing in the world, Obama (and his foreign policy speech writers) may have had his keyboard stuck on copy/paste. By seeing through eyes that neglect America’s unique “exceptionalism” in the world, Obama Administration foreign policy have threatened our stature on the world stage. In hitting the “reset” button, Obama has failed to consider the ultimate result in that reset on America and the world.

Book Review: “Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order” by Charles Hill

IIn Hill’s eye, fiction is more than just a story. In literature, we see the great ideas and forces that move history worked out, argued, and recorded. The “international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm,” he argues. “[I]t is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.” Nothing may come closer to a thesis for his opus. [cont…]