My Endless Curiosity With What Others Are Reading

Casey Michel’s Favorite (Non-Fiction) Books For 2022

Earlier this year, Casey Michel’s debut book “American Kleptocracy:How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History,” crept onto my radar screen. 

Michel, who is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative and is one of America’s premier journalists, unearths a mountain of research about how the U.S. has constructed one of the biggest illicit offshore finance systems in the history of the world. It’s a riveting true account that will keep you on the edge of your seat like a good mystery thriller. 

Highly recommend it!

“Kleptocracy — A government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed.” 

Speaking of recommendations, Casey posted his top-10 (non-fiction) reads of 2022 recently on LinkedIn. With his permission, you’ll find them posted below with a brief commentary from him:  

1. "Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds," by Scott Weidensaul. If birds are poetry, Weidensaul is the poet. Blending science and stories, it weaves a tapestry as incredible as the feat of migration itself.

2. "The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia," by Anna Reid. If you're looking for an introduction to Russia's grotesque colonial conquest of Siberia, this is it. Stories of Indigenous slaughter and survival—and hints of what may re-emerge as Putin continues his disaster.

3. "Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire," by Jonathan Katz. Phenomenal blend of historic and contemporary reportage, exploring legacies of the American empire (especially in the Caribbean and Central America) that are still ignored across American history.

4. "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union," by Vladislav Zubok. The best beat-by-beat read on the breakdown of the Soviet Union, of Gorbachev's mulishness, of the end of the Kremlin's empire—and of the other colonized nations who the Kremlin prevented from tasting freedom.

5. "El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America," by Carrie Gibson. A monumental reframing of American history and American expansionism, and how former Spanish colonial holdings play a far more outsized role in American trajectories than we realize.

6. "Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers," by Doug Swanson. The past few years have seen spectacular revisionist reads on Texas history, but this might be the best of the bunch. It takes down this drunken, incompetent, white supremacist paramilitary.

7. "Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism," by Reginald Horsman. Already 40 years old, this book seems ahead of its time. Despite being academic in its orientation, it completely annihilates America's expansionist mythology. A continent-wide exercise in ethnic cleansing.

8. "Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation," by Peter Cozzens. Reintroduces Tecumseh as one of the key North American figures of the 19th century—and just how close the U.S. was to watching its westward momentum go up in flames.

9. "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland," by Patrick Keefe. I was in Belfast earlier this year, touring the murals, and got to talking about this book with our guide. His review: "Who knew an American would write the best book about the Troubles?"

10. "Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power," by Philip Dwyer. I... don't understand the hagiography of Napoleon. At all. A tyrant, tossed from power *twice*, he was solely responsible for one of the greatest military debacles of the millennium. A pure disaster for France, and for Europe.