WPEC Retirees have started a list of some books that they've read and enjoyed.
1941 by Charles Mann. This books combines scholarly research from multiple sources in a readable presentation describing societies in the Western Hemisphere before Christopher Columbus. Although it's impossible to put together precise population numbers, the author deflates the notion that the Americas were an empty land with just a few nomadic tribes.
The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War, 2014, by Don H. Doyle. This book is about the PR battle, not the military battles