The New York Times reviews EMPIRE OF LIBERTY: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
Also taken up in the NY Times are THE LAST EMPRESS: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China by Hannah Pakula, and SOMETHING IN THE AIR: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics by Richard Hoffer.
The idea of time breaks into major media, with a review of Time by Eva Hoffman in the Los Angeles Times. Also reviewed in the LA Times is Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
WOODROW WILSON By John Milton Cooper Jr. is taken up in the Boston Globe. 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe by Mary Elise Sarotte is reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. CLARK CLIFFORD: The Wise Man of Washington by John Acacia is reviewed in the Washington Post.
Via Ralph Luker:
Dominic Sandbrook, "History Books of the Year," Telegraph, 26 November, takes a crack at naming the best of a year's books in history. See also: "100 Notable Books of 2009: Non-fiction," NYT, 6 December; and Benjamin Schwarz, "Books of the Year," Atlantic, December.