In 2008, we were blessed with absorbing new books about world-changing figures and fascinating eras – a true cause for celebration. Indeed, award-winning correspondent Dexter Filkins delivered a courageously monumental book that stands out from the pack: The Forever War, a searing and brutally honest narrative that has become an instant classic of war literature.

1. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
2. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
3. Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made A Nation by John Carlin
4. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
5. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
6. To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 -- The Epic Battle That Ended the First World War by Edward G. Lengel
7. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
8. Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick
9. The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester
10. Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World by Jed Perl