Instaread Summaries: 317 books

Summary of The Terror Years by Lawrence Wright | Includes Analysis   Preview:   Lawrence Wright’s The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State is a collection of Wright’s essays from The New Yorker and other venues about radical Islamic terror in the 2000s. Terrorist...

Summary of First Women by Kate Andersen Brower | Includes Analysis   Preview: Kate Andersen Brower’s First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladiesexamines how women from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama have negotiated the personal and political challenges...

The Quartet by Joseph J. Ellis | Summary & Analysis Preview: The Quartet is an historical account of the debates and events leading up to, during, and immediately following the creation of the Constitution of the United States of America. The quartet is four politicians that played...

Summary of Spain In Our Hearts by Adam Hochschild | Includes Analysis   Preview: Adam Hochschild’s Spain In Our Hearts is an account of the involvement of US citizens in the Spanish Civil War. It focuses on the experiences of a number of individual volunteers and reporters...

Summary of Destiny and Power by Jon Meacham | Includes Analysis   Preview: Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham is a biography of George H.W. Bush,  the 41st president of the United States, who served from 1988 to 1992. The author...

Summary of Strong Looks Better Naked by Khloé Kardashian | Includes Analysis     Preview: Strong Looks Better Naked is a hybrid memoir-lifestyle book in which reality TV star Khloé Kardashian shares hard-won and heartfelt lessons about taking care of her...

Summary of Dead Wake by Erik Larson | Includes Analysis    Preview: Dead Wake by Erik Larson is a non-fiction account of the German Unterseeboot, or U-boat, sinking of Lusitania, a British merchant vessel belonging to Cunard Line, on May 7, 1915 and its aftermath. On...

Summary of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Includes Analysis   Preview: Chapter 1 Marguerite was three and her brother, Bailey, four when they arrived in Stamps, Arkansas. They were to live with their grandmother, Momma Henderson, because their parents...

Summary of Down the Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison | Includes Analysis   Preview: Down the Rabbit Hole is the memoir of former Hugh Hefner girlfriend and former star of The Girls Next Door, Holly Madison. By 2002, Holly was Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend at the Playboy Mansion, but...

Summary of Red Platoon: by Clinton Romesha | Includes Analysis   Preview:   Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor by Clinton Romesha is a memoir of the October 2009 Battle of Kamdesh, in which hundreds of Taliban insurgents attacked Keating, the most remote American...

Legends and Lies by Bill O’Reilly and David Fisher | Includes Analysis   Preview: In Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies: The Real West, each chapter is a standalone account of the life of an individual who was in some way notorious or iconic and lived their life during what...

Blackout by Sarah Hepola | Summary & Analysis   Preview: In her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, Sarah Hepola examines how she drank, why she drank, how others responded to her, and the misfortunes that occurred during her journey to sobriety. Sarah...

Summary of John Adams by David McCullough | Includes Analysis   Preview: David McCullough’s John Adams is a biography designed to establish Adams’s place beside, or even above, better known figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington in the...

Summary of Valiant Ambition: by Nathaniel Philbrick | Includes Analysis   Preview: Nathaniel Philbrick’s Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution focuses on the treachery of Benedict Arnold as it plays out against the wider...