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Explore Our Digital Libraries While the library is closed, all digital resources will remain available. Visit this link to see all the eBooks, audiobooks, magazines, videos and more that you have access to with your library card.
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History and Current Events May 2020
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America's Buried History : Landmines in the Civil War by Ken Rutherford"America's Buried History traces the development of landmines from their first use before the Civil War, to the early use of naval mines, through the establishment of the Confederacy's Army Torpedo Bureau, the world's first institution devoted to developing, producing, and fielding mines in warfare."
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"A brilliantly conceived and vividly drawn story-Washington, D.C. on the eve of Abraham Lincoln's historic second inaugural address as the lens through which to understand all the complexities of the Civil War," (Hoopla, 2020).
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We recall Roosevelt's efforts to redeem the challenge of the Declaration of Independence and renew the promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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The Great Influenza : The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry"Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart. At the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease," (Sunflower Library, 2020).
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Midwest Futures by Phil Christman"Inspired by the Jeffersonian grid, the famous rectangular survey of the Old Northwest Territory that mapped everything from Ohio to Wisconsin into square-mile lots of 1,000 square feet, Midwest Futures is structured as 36 brief, interconnected essays — six “rows” each containing six “plats” — of approximately 1,000 words. Elaborating on ideas first given voice in his celebrated 2018 essay “On Being Midwestern,” Christman here leverages his formidable creativity to explore the idea of the region as a site of technological change and hope in a perilous future. Sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently surprising, he deftly connects the growth of the railroads and Chicago’s futures market to the Great Migration, the recession, and pivotal place of the Midwest and the Great Lakes in the face of climate change — all the while taking readers on a looping ride through Midwestern literature and culture."
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Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
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Pacific : Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester"Following his acclaimed Atlantic and The Men Who United the States, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature.As the Mediterranean shaped the classical world, and the Atlantic connected Europe to the New World, the Pacific Ocean defines our tomorrow. With China on the rise, so, too, are the American cities of the West coast, including Seattle, San Francisco, and the long cluster of towns down the Silicon Valley. Today, the Pacific is ascendant. Its geological history has long transformed us—tremendous earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis—but its human history, from a Western perspective, is quite young, beginning with Magellan's sixteenth-century circumnavigation. It is a natural wonder whose most fascinating history is currently being made," (Sunflower Library, 2020).
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Lost kingdom : Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler"Deftly weaving together a memorable cast of characters, Lost Kingdom brings to life the clash between a vulnerable Polynesian people and relentlessly expanding capitalist powers. Portraits of royalty and rogues, sugar barons, and missionaries combine into a sweeping tale of the Hawaiian Kingdom's rise and fall.
At the center of the story is Lili'uokalani, the last queen of Hawai'i. Born in 1838, she lived through the nearly complete economic transformation of the islands. Lucrative sugar plantations gradually subsumed the majority of the land, owned almost exclusively by white planters, dubbed the "Sugar Kings." Hawai'i became a prize in the contest between America, Britain, and France, each seeking to expand their military and commercial influence in the Pacific," (Hoopla, 2020).
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The Chinese and The Iron Road : Building the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H Chang"The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out West, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90% of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible. This landmark volume shines new light on the Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West," (Hoopla, 2020).
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Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II by Anne M. Blankenship"Anne M. Blankenship's study of Christianity in the infamous camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II yields insights both far-reaching and timely. While most Japanese Americans maintained their traditional identities as Buddhists, a sizable minority identified as Christian, and a number of church leaders sought to minister to them in the camps. Blankenship shows how church leaders were forced to assess the ethics and pragmatism of fighting against or acquiescing to what they clearly perceived, even in the midst of a national crisis, as an unjust social system," (Hoopla, 2020).
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Han in the Upper Left : A Brief History of Korean Americans in the Pacific Northwest by Korean American Historical Society"This in-depth look at one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the Pacific Northwest provides a much-needed overview of the Korean American experience as well as moving personal anecdotes. Graphs offer information about Korean immigration patterns over time, while black-and-white portraits reveal the people behind the statistics," (Hoopla, 2020).
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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