On the eve of WWII, scientists across the globe – in Germany, Britain, America and France, among others – came to the realization that splitting the atom could bring enormous power. So began the race to develop an atomic bomb, a power so great that entire cities could be destroyed in an instant with a single weapon.

After Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli is the most interesting and perhaps consequential British Prime Minister of the last two centuries. Born a Jew, he was baptized and raised as an Anglican by a father who wanted to widen the range of possibilities for his gifted son in a country in which Jews faced tremendous barriers.

It started with a handful of disciples in a backwater of the Roman Empire, so how did Christianity become a global religion? How were its institutions and practices created and formalized? How did its leaders resolve doctrinal disputes and come to articulate a cohesive, universal faith?

One of the preeminent historians of the Progressive Era and Gilded Age has written a slim, lively volume about Woodrow Wilson’s reelection bid in 1916, an election that often gets overlooked.