Conrad Black Books in Order

If you want his biggest presidential biographies: Franklin Delano Roosevelt → Richard M. Nixon
If you want Canadian history at full scale: Rise to Greatness, Volume 1: Colony → Rise to Greatness, Volume 2: Dominion → Rise to Greatness, Volume 3: Realm
If you want sweeping world history: The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol. 1 → The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol II
If you want Black's own story: A life in progress → A Matter of Principle → Backward Glances
If you want Trump-era politics: Donald J. Trump → A President Like No Other

Conrad Black was born in Montreal in 1944 and grew up mostly in Toronto. He came from a prominent Canadian business family, but his long public life has never been only about business. From early on, he was pulled toward politics, history, and the way powerful people shape events. That appetite for big subjects never really left him, and it still defines the books he writes.

Newspapers came early.

He studied history and political science at Carleton University, earned a law degree at Laval University, and later completed a master's degree in history at McGill. His master's thesis focused on Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, a subject that would stay with him for years, and it became his first major book. That early mix, politics, law, and history, explains a lot about the writing that followed. He likes institutions, leaders, and turning points.

In the late 1960s he moved into newspaper publishing by buying small papers in Quebec with partners, then building outward. Over time he became one of the best-known newspaper proprietors in the English-speaking world, leading the Hollinger group and publishing papers that included the Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Jerusalem Post. In Canada, he also founded the National Post. His public career was unusually large, even before he turned back to books in a major way.

He writes history like someone who has spent a lifetime around power.

That comes through clearly in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon. These are long, crowded political biographies, but they are also character studies of men who carried enormous public burdens. Readers who enjoy them usually like the scale. Black is interested in decisions, pressure, rivalry, timing, and the gap between a leader's public image and private habits. He tends to write from the top down, starting with presidents, prime ministers, generals, and publishers rather than ordinary daily life.

His big national histories work the same way. Flight of the Eagle looks at the rise of the United States as a world power, and the three Rise to Greatness volumes follow Canada from early settlement to the twenty-first century. The newer Political and Strategic History of the World books widen the lens again, reaching back to the ancient world. Even readers who disagree with him usually know where he stands. These are not shy books, and they are not written to sound neutral for the sake of it.

He has also written about himself. A life in progress appeared during the years when his newspaper empire was still expanding. Much later, A Matter of Principle revisited the legal battle in the United States that reshaped his later life and public image. Between those two books, and in collections like Backward Glances, you can see the same voice in different settings, combative, historically minded, and always eager to place current events in a much longer story.

In recent years, Black has continued to write columns, comment on politics, and publish large works of history. He became Lord Black of Crossharbour in 2001, and he has remained a very visible public figure in Canada, Britain, and the United States. Whether he is writing about Roosevelt, Nixon, Trump, Canada, or Rome, the pattern is much the same. He likes big canvases, decisive personalities, and arguments about how countries rise, falter, and hold together.