I promised to share my new list on Shepherd.com, the book recommendation site, as soon as it was up. The folks over there got it up pretty quick.

You can check out the new list right here:

The best books about the Declaration of Independence that bring the signers to life, warts and all

That brings my number of book lists on Shepherd to four. Besides the new one, the others are:

Best Books about the Creation of the U.S. Constitution.

Best Books for Discovering Italian Mystery Novels

Best Books for Helping Your Kid Fall in Love with Math

My wife has contributed three lists:

Best Books on or by Maverick Women

Best Books on Writing (from a NY Times Bestseller)

Best Books on the Manhattan Project and the Making of the Atomic Bomb

You might be wondering: Dude, why are you doing these lists? Shouldn’t you, like, be writing?

Good questions.

The easy answer is, writing these lists for Shepherd help my books reach a wider audience. There’s an acknowledged issue with recommendation engines on many sites. You buy a case of ham, and the damn engine keeps recommending the same fucking brand of ham to you, albeit in different size ham cans, even though you are now in the market for a giant wheel of Parmigiana. Or water shoes. Or a life raft.

It’s smarter to get recommendations from a live human being. And when it comes to books, authors know a lot about books—which to read, which to ignore, which really make a difference. So as long as Shepherd allows me to pitch lists to them, I will. I go through a lot of books in my life, and it’s good to pass that knowledge on to someone.

Photo of the National Archives building (above) by me; bobblehead video also, sadly, by me.