The task of coming up with reading lists is never easy, and often arbitrary. Pressed once by a friend very actively engaged in politics and trans-Atlantic affairs, I fired off this off-the-cuff list of necessary books on politics and history:
Hayek's Constitution of Liberty - the best introduction to the conservative case for limited government.
Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a great introduction to the drama of what happened in 1776.
Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution - everyone reads Democracy in AMerica, but this book is a better introduction to France & French history than anything the maitre wrote about the US.
Vol. 2 of Robert Skidelsky's Biography of JM Keynes - a great introduction to the financial history of our century.
R. SHerwood, Roosevelt & Hopkins. The best ever white House memoir, and one that summons up the most intense description of Washington in the olden days before imperial power. If you make it to the WHite House, it'll help you feel like you were there all along. It's long, but the last 1/3 is far less interesting ....
Richard Pipes, first volume of his trilogy on the Russian Revolution - shows you the continuity of Russian history and how Putinism throws back to czarism.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital. Ignore the awful title - a great introduction to problems of third world development. (Disclosure: I ghostwrote it, but the research & concepts are all his ...)
Robert Axelrod, The Origins of Cooperation: very short but fascinating study of the robustness of human cooperation, growing out of a fascinating computer experiment.
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton. My hero! - also the founder of the financial system of the United States, and a man around whom all practical govt debates tend always to revolve.
Philippe Roger The American Enemy - a great study of anti-Americanism, a dominant ideology of our time .
James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy. The eternal subject!