I’ve read almost everything on Lincoln and Battle Cry of Freedom is the best on the Civil War. Meacham’s book was weak on the Great Awakenings, which What Has God Wrought fleshes out the Second GW in Upstate NY and elsewhere in the early 1800s quite well. David McCollough is splendid with his bios and Gaddis and Dallek the two best on the twentieth century in all its aspects.

It’s 3AM and I can’t remember the alternative take on the Great Depression by Amity Schlaes, but she debunks much of the standard Dem hagiography of FDR.

As for writing skills and evocation of a time and a personality, I consider Chernow & McCollough & David Hackett Fischer win, place & show on the race for the best books.

Harrite Beecher Stowe’s “Poganuc People” for life in Puritan New England.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson together with Franklin’s writings in New America edition to get a feel for his America.

American Sphinx for Thomas Jefferson

Friedman’s 5 volume biography of Washington — sorry, doesn’t seem to be anything shorter that gets his character across, and with him character was everything.

There is no single outstanding biography of Lincoln, unfortunately, but you get great insights from Edmund Wilson’s biographical sketch in his Patriotic Gore, plus leads on lots of other gems in American literature of the period.

Lincoln’s law partner’s oral history of Lincoln’s friends

The first volume of Beveridge’s biography of Lincoln gives good descriptions of what life was really like on the American frontier during that period.

Sandburg’s 6 volume biography of Lincoln has tons of material on Lincoln and his times. The best part is you get to be your own editor.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is not to be missed — one of the great novels in American history.

Olmstead’s “Cotton Kingdom” for a journalistic account of life in the South right before the Civil War

The Civil War series on public television is indispensible for the war itself.

Moving south, Remini’s one volume paperback condensation of his biography of Jackson has all the essential facts and tells a great story.

Flush Times in Alabama is a hilarious collection of satires and tall tales about life on the Alabama frontier by a Virginia gentlemen eyewitness with literary talent.

Cash’s Mind of the South is THE book about the South by a literary genius.

For the 20th century, the first two volumes of Geoffrey C. Ward’s biography of Roosevelt is by far the best of the best.

Francis Perkins oral history online at Columbia University is a funny, fastastic inside story of the first half of the century. I especially like her accounts of her early history and times spend with Governors Smith and Roosevelt in Albany and beginning of the New Deal.

All of the above are chosen for their good writing as well as informational qualities, culled from a lot of second-rate work.

Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment. New York: Random House, 1975.

Carl Oglesby, The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976.

Next up for me is “Battle Cry of Freedom” which many consider the best one volume work on the Civil War ever written (it is also part of Oxford’s series on American History, which include “What Hath God Wrought”).

Looking over your list again, it seems like you need a good book or two focused more on the Revolution. I know you want a theoretical framework, but I don’t think you should ignore the great Founders and their thinking/writing. So for example, a book like “Founding Brothers” by Joseph Ellis would be a good addition to get a sense of some of those key players and their ideas.

Also, I know it is sort of cliched at this point for a conservative like me to reference Tocqueville, but it is amazing how well “Democracy in America” holds up, especially for its theoretical framework.