These are some the historically significant books that have made it onto my reading list. One of the threads here is researching publicly funded healthcare in the USA, which currently doesn't exist in a universal no cost at the point of delivery form where everyone is covered. Another thread is news reporting and its reliability.

UK History

1. Social Insurance And Allied Services by Sir William Beveridge (His Majesty’s Stationary Office) 1942 ( Wikipedia | Full Text | Summary ) 
   Also known as The Beveridge Report, and the founding document behind the UK’s National Health Service.
2. To Provide All People: A Poem in the Voice of the NHS by Owen Shears (Faber & Faber) 2018 
   This was turned into a Vox Pictures/BBC television production to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the NHS, and contains a historical narrative of the birth of the N.H.S Act. ✔️
3. England’s Road To Social Security by Karl de Schweinitz (University of Pennsylvania Press) 1943 
   An American commentary on the history behind Social Security in the UK, from the Statute of Laborers in 1349, to the Beveridge Report in 1942.
4. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (multiple editions/publishers) 1910 ( Wikipedia | Full Text | Summary )         
   Set in the fictional town of Mugsborough a decade before the First World War, the novel explores the plight of working men trying to make sense of a capitalist society without a social safety net. The original manuscript is available from the TUC History Online archive. The book was written in the seaside town of Hastings (which Mugsborough is based upon) around the time my great grandparents owned and ran pubs there.

US History

1. Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class by Dan Canon (Basic Books) 2022 ( Summary )      
   This is a hugely significant book that lays out how 97% of all criminal cases never go to trial, and how the plea bargaining system undermines the protections guaranteed in the US Constitution. Dan is one of the few authors here that I know personally, and we are both GIT graduates at Musician’s Institute.
2. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Liveright) 2020
3. Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec (Broadleaf Books) 2022
4. The Tragic Era By Claude G Bowers (Riverside Press) 1929
5. Beveridge and The Progressive Era by Claude G. Bowers (The Literary Guild) 1932
6. Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe (Quill) 1991         
   The history of America’s future from 1584 to 2069.

News Media

1. The Power of News: The History of Reuters by Donald Read (Oxford University Press) ✔️ ( Summary )
2. The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune by Richard Kluger (Knopf) 1986 ( Summary )

Music

1. Water Sound Images by Alexander Lauterwasser (Macromedia Publishing) 2006 ✔️

Statistics

1. Visualizing Change by Jeff Desjardins, Nick Routley, Salina Vuong, Angelique Ahlstrom, Anupa (Iman) Ghosh, Melissa Haavisto, Joyce Ma, Harrison Schell, Bennett Slater, Clayton Wadsworth (The Visual Capitalist Team) 2018

Hollywood

1. Fatal Subtraction by Pierce O’Donnell and Dennis McDougal (Doubleday) 1992 ( Summary )   
   The Inside Story of [Art] Buchwald vs. Paramount. The epic legal battle over the way Hollywood does its accounting at the expense of the talent. ✔️
2. Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes & Dawn Chmielewski (William Morrow) 2022 ✔️
3. All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks (Ballantine Books) 2021

Religion

1. Sola Mysterium by Keith Giles (Quoir) 2022 ✔️
2. Flip It Like This by David Haywood (Broadleaf Books) 2022 ✔️