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History and Current Events December 2018
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| In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family by Fox ButterfieldWhat it's about: Using a case study of the white Bogle family of Oregon (more than 60 of whom have been arrested since 1920), this eye-opening saga of criminal genealogy reveals a sobering reality -- five percent of all families account for almost half the crime in America.
Why it matters: Timely and thought-provoking, In My Father's House interrogates long-held stereotypes linking race to crime, offering an empathetic approach to recognizing crime theories based on family dynamics. |
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On the Rocks With Jack Knox : Islanders I Will Never Forget
by Jack Knox
What it is: From bestselling author and columnist Jack Knox comes a new collection of unforgettable true stories about the people who shape the unique culture of Vancouver Island and its surrounding areas.
What's inside: A celebration of ordinary people who have extraordinary stories to tell. From Alban Michael, the last person on Earth to speak Nuchatlaht, to Diana Deans, the Port Angeles customs inspector who caught the Millennium Bomber, to Victoria’s Rudi Hoenson, who survived a Japanese labour camp and the atomic bomb at Nagasaki to become one of the happiest souls you’ll ever meet.
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Seeking the Fabled City : The Canadian Jewish Experience
by Allan Levine
What it is: A chronicle of a people that takes place at hundreds of locales across the country--mainly in the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg, but also in west coast and maritime villages and tiny prairie towns.
What you'll find inside: A story that unfolds over 250 years--from the decade after the conquest of New France in 1759, when small numbers of Sephardic Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent arrived in British North America, through the great wave of Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigration at the turn of the twentieth century, to the present, in which Canada's large Jewish community, no longer hindered by the anti-Semitism of the past, is free to flourish.
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| The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World by Tim MarshallWhat it is: a sweeping survey of how physical barriers between countries shape political discourse and international relations.
Reviewers say: "This enlightening, shrewd assessment of the walls that separate us proves that there is actually far more that unites us" (Booklist).
Further reading: Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick by David Frye. |
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Final Report
by Rick Mercer
What it is: A volume of never-before-published rants from the last five seasons of the show, plus a selection of the very best rants from earlier years. In a series of brilliant new essays, Rick shares his hilarious, moving and at times hair-raising memories from the past fifteen years.
Who's inside: Rick and Jann Arden travel by helicopter to a terrifying bat cave in a mountain; Pierre Berton demonstrates how to roll a joint; Rick describes the catastrophe that took place in Norman Jewison's bathroom.
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| LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. BrookingWhat it's about: how extremists and authoritarian regimes manipulate social media platforms to serve as "battlespaces" for political disputes, leading to trolling, disinformation, and memetic warfare.
Did you know? ISIS' recruiting tactics include mimicking the authentic feel of Taylor Swift's Instagram posts.
About the authors: Defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking are a contributing editor for Popular Science and a former research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, respectively. |
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| The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg GrandinWhat it's about: In 1804, Amasa Delano, a sea captain with abolitionist sympathies, found the slave ship Tryal in distress off the coast of Chile. Discovering that the 70 enslaved West Africans aboard had revolted (killing many of the crew and taking the ship's captain hostage), Delano reacted with swift violence against the mutineers.
Is it for you? Dramatic and thought-provoking, this gripping history examines the disturbing hypocrisy of the newly "free" Colonial America. |
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| Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade and Don YaegerWhat it's about: the beginning of the Barbary Wars, instigated in 1801 when the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay ransom to the Barbary States for captured American merchant ships.
Why you might like it: Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaegar's lively, suspenseful prose offers a page-turning adventure.
Try this next: For another accessible history of the First Barbary War, check out The Pirate Coast by Richard Zacks. |
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| The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln PaineWhat it is: an ambitious expedition along the earth's oceans, lakes, and rivers that illuminates the remarkable ways in which world history has been shaped by waterways.
Topics include: how Viking expeditions impacted cultural exchange; the influence of religion on maritime law.
Reviewers say: "an invaluable resource for salty dogs and landlubbers alike" (Publishers Weekly). |
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