Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Easy Prey | 1931 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 2 | Roll Call | 1981 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 3 | Getting the Most out of Washington | 1982 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 4 | U. S. Strategic Airlift Choices | 1986 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 5 | Men of Zeal | 1988 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 6 | Report Of The Quadrennial Defense Review | 1997 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 7 | Love in Black and White | 2006 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
| 8 | Race and Reconciliation in America | 2009 | William S. Cohen | Buy |
Cohen came to non-fiction naturally. He had spent years in positions where the gap between public presentation and private reality was obvious, and writing offered a way to describe how institutions actually worked. His early non-fiction, like Getting the Most Out of Washington, was practical in orientation. Later books engaged more directly with the substance of policy.
Love in Black and White, the memoir he co-wrote with Janet Langhart Cohen and published in 2006, stepped back from policy to describe the personal. Cohen is white and Langhart is Black, and the book addresses the social realities they encountered together alongside the story of their relationship. It is among his most widely read non-fiction works and the one that departs most clearly from his national security focus.
His non-fiction career stretches across three decades and reflects the different phases of a long public life: congressman, senator, cabinet secretary, private citizen. The books shift in tone and subject accordingly, but share a ground-level familiarity with American political institutions that makes them useful primary sources as much as personal accounts.