Last week, resident how-to blogger and Stuff Mom Never Told You podcaster extraordinaire Cristen Conger explained how to buy a book for Dad. But if you’re looking for your own summer read, NPR has a few nonfiction suggestions, one of which piqued my interest — Margaret MacMillan’s Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History.

John Freeman, who compiled the list of nonfiction picks, says: “By revealing time and again how often the stories nations tell themselves are in fact wrong, and reminding us of those consequences, MacMillan has formed a powerful and important argument that people — and not just the people in power — must know their true histories.” There’s an excerpt available for you to read on NPR. org. While it offers just a taste of MacMillan’s thesis, you can get a sense of what she’s gearing up to explain.

History is popular, she points out, because it’s “fascinating,” “fun” and “helpful in making sense of the world we live in.” But if we live by the dictum that we must study history in order to avoid making the same mistakes again, we’ve got to know more than names and dates. It’s essential to know the hows and whys of history, the nitty-gritty details that might be less palatable than flashy stories of intrigue and bravura biographies. And this seems to be where the book’s subtitle comes in. History can be used as a reference point for events occurring today (for instance, attempting to pinpoint the genesis of conflict in the Middle East). But it can also be abused when leaders offer dubious analogues for their agendas (such as when, Freeman says, “George Bush [...] wrapped his policies in the mantles of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman”).

Based on Freeman’s glowing review and the excerpt I’ve read, I’m adding this book to my list. As someone tasked with presenting history to a diverse audience with far-flung interests, I’m curious to learn more about the most responsible way to do that — and MacMillan seems to offer a few perspectives on that topic.

History is fun:
What was in Peter the Great’s cabinet of curiosities?
Top 5 Marie Antoinette Scandals
Was there really a pied piper of Hamelin?