Start with high-confidence 21st century history books, then narrow by subgenre or adjacent topics.
The Day the World Came to Town
Jim DeFede, Ray Porter
The End Is Always Near
Dan Carlin, Harper
The Desert and the Sea
Michael Scott Moore
The Best Strangers in the World
Ari Shapiro, HarperOne
Imminent
Luis Elizondo, Christopher Mellon
Firestorm
Jacob Soboroff
On the Grand Trunk Road
Steve Coll
David and Goliath
Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown & Company
King of Kings
Scott Anderson
Almighty
Dan Zak
Blank Spots on the Map
Trevor Paglen
Banana
Dan Koeppel
Fire Weather
John Vaillant
The Revolutionists
Jason Burke
The River of Doubt
Candice Millard
Big Dead Place
Nicholas Johnson, Eirik Sonneland - foreword
The Looming Tower
Lawrence Wright
The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Joshua Hammer
Midnight in Chernobyl
Adam Higginbotham
The Moth and the Mountain
Ed Caesar
Only Plane in the Sky
A Full 45-Person Cast, Garrett M. Graff
Atlas of Unidentified Flying Objects
Andy McGrillen
Cities Under Siege
Stephen Graham
