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History and Current Events March 2017
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| Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission by Bret BaierIn Three Days in January, political journalist Bret Baier (Fox News) details President Dwight Eisenhower's last three days in office. The transition to John F. Kennedy's administration came at a time when nuclear war seemed not just possible but (to many) imminent. Reviewing Eisenhower's entire presidency through the lens of his farewell address of January 17, 1961, Baier connects the issues that preoccupied Eisenhower with later events that Kennedy faced. He also sheds light on Eisenhower's growing respect for the much younger Kennedy. For another thorough and accessible account of Eisenhower's two terms, take a look at Jim Newton's Eisenhower. |
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How America Lost its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft
by Edward Jay Epst
Shares key details and analyzes the debates surrounding the controversial activities of whistleblower Edward Snowden, challenging popular conceptions of his heroism while revealing the growing vulnerabilities of the American national security systems.
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Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
by Robert D. Kaplan
The best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography reflects on his truck-driver father's evocative travel stories while recounting his own experiences during a cross-country journey in an effort to recapture and understand America's landscapes from a ground-level perspective.
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Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City
by Steve Early
In Refinery Town, Early chronicles the ten years of successful community organizing in Richmond, California that raised the minimum wage, defeated a casino development project, created a municipal ID to aid undocumented workers, reduced crime through “community policing,” challenged home foreclosures, and took on a big oil giant. This compelling story of a city remade provides a model for citizens engaged in local politics and community building anywhere.
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Gunpowder Girls: The True Stories of Three Civil War Tragedies
by Tanya Anderson
Relates three stories of deadly accidents at Civil War arsenals, where women and girls worked to support the war effort, examining what it was like to work in this environment and whether anyone was held responsible for the tragedies.
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| The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis by Patrick KingsleyChronicling the experiences of a single Syrian migrant and documenting the journeys of thousands of refugees from several Middle Eastern countries, journalist Patrick Kingsley paints a gut-wrenching picture of the current humanitarian crisis. Zooming in on duplicitous smugglers who advertise their services on Facebook, comparing the numbers of refugees to the population of Europe (0.2%), and highlighting rescue work by particular volunteers, Kingsley includes his personal views on these migrations by people fleeing from danger, while backing up his observations with impersonal data. |
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The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece
by Jennifer Tolbert Roberts
Tracing the conflict among the city-states of Greece over several generations, this book argues that the Peloponnesian War did not entirely end in 404 with the capture of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 404 B.C. but rather continued in one form or another well into the fourth century.
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The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region
by Michael R. Auslin
As China’s stock market crashes and its economy falters, as navies confront each other in the South China Sea, and as North Korea’s nuclear program casts its shadow, the world is waking up to the risks that threaten Asia’s future. International relations scholar and frequent media commentator Michael Auslin has long argued that far from being a cohesive powerhouse, Asia is a fractured region at risk of decline and instability. Here, he provides a comprehensive account of the economic, military, political, and demographic dangers that bedevil the region and argues that the United States is the only outside power that can help avert catastrophe. Bringing together firsthand observations and decades of research, Auslin’s “risk map” will be a must-read for investors, politicians, scholars, and manufacturers for years to come.
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Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy
by Earl J Hess
Presents an analysis of the Confederate general's successes and failures during the Civil War, discussing how he became a scapegoat for the failure of the South to win the war and offering a more balanced account of his legacy.
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| The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. TysonThough several books have covered the 60-year-old case of Emmett Till's lynching in Mississippi, historian Timothy Tyson's new history freshly illuminates the trial of Till's murderers. He analyzes the trial transcript, which had been missing since 1955, interviews the key witness (now 80 years old) to Till's allegedly inappropriate behavior, and provides details from a recent FBI investigation. This riveting account immerses readers in the case and offers the definitive summary of its impact on subsequent history. For an absorbing study of one aspect of the case, try John Edgar Wideman's Writing to Save a Life, which focuses on Emmett's father Louis Till. |
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| The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPhersonIn their activities that sound like feminist initiatives of a century later, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee "Tennie" Claflin shocked and fascinated Gilded Age America and the world: together they opened the first woman-owned stock brokerage; Victoria ran for president, choosing Frederick Douglass to join her ticket; Tennie ran for Congress and became the honorary colonel of a black National Guard regiment. They also published a newspaper and exposed prominent citizens' misdeeds through their investigative reporting. In The Scarlet Sisters, journalist Myra MacPherson vividly portrays their campaign to improve the status of women. For a compelling episode in 19th-century women's history, be sure to read this well-researched and engaging dual biography. |
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| The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys' Club by Eileen PollackIn 2005, Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard University, asked: why are there so few tenured women professors in the hard sciences? Physicist Eileen Pollack (now a creative writing teacher) decided to find the answer to his question. Relating her own reasons for abandoning her dream of becoming a theoretical physicist after earning a bachelor's degree in physics in the 1970s, she discusses her findings about 21st-century women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Their reasons for staying out of those fields are complex; her analysis is fascinating. Kirkus Reviews calls this "unvarnished" report "impossible to put down." |
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| Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate SummerscalePopular historian Kate Summerscale delves once more into Victorian society's dirty little secrets. Legal divorce was made available to England's common citizens for the first time in 1858. The same year, Henry Robinson sued for divorce after finding a secret diary in which his wife had allegedly penned erotic musings about her doctor. Isabella dared to counter-sue, presenting the court with (among other evidence of marital neglect) Henry's two illegitimate children as proof of his adultery. Summerscale seamlessly weaves private letters, newspaper stories, public documents, and Isabella's infamous diary into a moving portrait of history's real "Mrs. Robinson." |
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| Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach LemmonDuring the early years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan launched in 2001, intelligence officers couldn't collect complete information from Afghan civilians because the male personnel weren't permitted to have any contact with women. Though high-level Army leaders were skeptical, Special Operations strategists convinced them in 2010 that they needed women to gather intelligence -- and that women were capable of the stringent physical demands of Special Ops. In Ashley's War, journalist Gail Tzemach Lemmon relates the successful experiences of the first such female officer in the U.S. Army: First Lt. Ashley White. For more on women in the contemporary U.S. military, try Helen Thorpe's Soldier Girls. |
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| The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court by Anna WhitelockFor Queen Elizabeth I, life at court often focused on her bedchamber, where she could be herself and entrust her hopes and fears to the ladies who waited on her and slept with or near her. In the award-winning Queen's Bed, historian Anna Whitelock depicts the queen's private daily life: she vividly describes the beds in each of her residences, including her traveling bed, and she details Elizabeth's relationships with the women close to the throne and her love affairs. This unusual study expands on the more formal view of her public life; you might also enjoy Tracy Borman's The Private Lives of the Tudors. |
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Never be without a book you love! |
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Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative (813) 273-3652 www.hcplc.org
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