Shogan wrote many works of historical nonfiction and media criticism. Particularly praised was The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising, published in 2004. Kirkus Reviews called it "a stunning re-creation of the great West Virginia uprising of 1921 ... crackingly told." The Journal of Appalachian Studies declared that "among other successes, this book presents a valuable short history of the U.S. labor movement and its discontents through crystalline evocations of figures like Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, the Wobblies, and Mother Jones." Greil Marcus, in a revised edition of The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, cited it as a worthy source about the Battle of Blair Mountain.
Publishers Weekly wrote that Bad News: Where the Press Goes Wrong in the Making of the President, published in 2001, was a "carefully crafted retrospective on the media and presidential campaigns since JFK ... a highly readable chronicle." Reviewing 1991's The Riddle of Power: Presidential Leadership From Truman to Bush, The New York Times stated that it was "on balance ... a lively and straightforward primer on leadership."
Selected bibliography
The Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence, with Tom Craig (1964)
A Question of Judgment: The Fortas Case and the Struggle for the Supreme Court (1972)
Promises to Keep: Carter's First Hundred Days (1977)
Riddle of Power: Presidential Leadership from Truman to Bush (1991)
Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency (1995)
Bad News: Where the Press Goes Wrong in the Making of the President (2001)
The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising (2004)
No Sense of Decency: The Army–McCarthy Hearings: A Demagogue Falls and Television Takes Charge of American Politics (2009)
Prelude to Catastrophe: FDR's Jews and the Menace of Nazism (2010)
Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice (2013)
↑Precoda, Karl (2006). "Reviewed work: The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising, Robert Shogan; the Shot from the Mountain: An Appalachian Odyssey, Claude S. Phillips". Journal of Appalachian Studies. 12 (1): 144–146. JSTOR41446709.