Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Grateful American Book Prize judge John Danielson, founder of Chartwell Education Group and former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Education:

Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President by Jonathan Darman. Historian Michael Beschloss calls this recent work of presidential scholarship “a brilliant, fresh, and vivid book that shows us how a well-meaning and ambitious gentleman turned into the world figure who led Americans to conquer the Great Depression and fight to victory in global war.”

Patriotic Picks is a monthly feature in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.