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History and Current Events October 2018
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| Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine ArnoldWhat it is: a stark collection of testimonies from victims and survivors of the influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1919.
Did you know? While reports of the disease were being censored by nations in the midst of WWI, neutral Spain publicized the affliction of its ruler, King Alfonso XIII, leading to the disease becoming known as the "Spanish flu" -- and the mistaken assumption that Spain was experiencing the largest outbreak. |
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Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times
by Mark Leibovich
The award-winning New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent, best-selling author of This Town and lifelong Patriots fan presents a scathing analysis of professional football in the present climate of high success, dangerous injuries and scandal.
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Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam
by Robert K. Brigham
Argues that Henry Kissinger's strategy for Vietnam was driven by his personal and political rivalries and resulted in an unnecessarily long and ultimately ill-conceived war that cost America billions of dollars and 35,000 lives.
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| How Do We Look by Mary BeardWhat it's about: In this accessible, elegantly illustrated volume, classicist Mary Beard reexamines ancient art from viewers' (rather than artists') perspectives, exploring how bodies and the divine have been perceived throughout history.
What sets it apart: its joyful, accessible tone and its focus on non-Western, non-male-centric art.
Media buzz: How Do We Look is a companion to the BBC/PBS series Civilizations, for which Beard serves as a presenter. |
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Race to Hawaii: The 1927 Dole Air Derby and the Thrilling First Flights that Opened the Pacific
by Jason Ryan
Today, a trip to Hawaii is a simple six-hour flight from the West Coast, but almost a century ago, it was a nerve-wracking and twenty-six-hour journey across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights during the Golden Age of Aviation, a time when new airplanes traveled farther and faster but were also unreliable, fragile, and hampered by primitive air navigation equipment.
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A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland
by Seth G. Jones
Traces the Soviet-backed Polish government's 1981 efforts to impose martial law to suppress anti-communist activities, documenting the lesser-known role of the CIA's QRHELPFUL intelligence program and Eastern Europe's dissident groups in establishing a free and democratic Poland.
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Baseball Cop
by Anonymous
A decorated Boston Police Department member who worked in security for the Red Sox describes his work on suppressed cases involving drug use, identity fraud and human trafficking.
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The Death of Hitler: The Final Word
by Jean-christophe Brisard
Answers the lingering questions surrounding Hitler's death in his bunker using new and unprecedented access to secret Russian archives that also detail the layout of the bunker and offer eyewitness accounts of his final days.
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September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series
by Skip Desjardin
Describes the events of September 1918, when America entered World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic was raging and Babe Ruth led the Boston Red Sox to the last World Series victory they would see for 86 years.
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| 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah HarariWhat it is: a multidisciplinary approach to understanding contemporary challenges and maintaining rational thinking in a "post-truth" world.
Lessons include: "When You Grow Up, You Might Not Have a Job;" "Some Fake News Lasts Forever;" "The Future Is Not What You See in the Movies."
Reviewers say: "This well-informed and searching book is one to be savored and widely discussed" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill LeporeWhat it's about: In this engrossing, vignette-laden history of America, Harvard historian and bestselling author Jill Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman) explores the contradictions between the country's founding ideals and its historical and contemporary practices.
Want a taste? "To study the past is to unlock the prison of the present."
Don't miss: mini-biographies of lesser-known historical figures, many of them women and people of color. |
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American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
by Hannah Nordhaus
Journalist Hannah Nordhaus' great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, lived in a grand mansion in Santa Fe, NM, that later became a hotel, now called La Posada. Reports that La Posada had a ghost -- possibly Julia's -- began to appear nearly a century after her 1896 death. In this combination of family memoir and Southwestern history, Nordhaus relates her own recollections of the ghost tales she heard as a girl, her research into her ancestor's life and the possibility of social scandal, and her efforts to learn more about her German-Jewish roots. This moving, wittily narrated account concludes that the truth about Julia -- ghost or not -- may not be in the hard data, but "in the spaces between" (Booklist).
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| American Monsters: A History of Monster Lore, Legends, and Sightings in America by Linda S. GodfreyWhat it's about: Reporter and "creature expert" Linda S. Godfrey draws on eyewitness accounts, historical documents, and folklore to investigate the otherworldly beasts allegedly populating the American landscape.
Featuring: Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, the Mothman, and Wampus cats.
Reviewers say: "a handy encyclopedia for enthusiastic cryptozoologists of all ages" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured... by Peter ManseauWhat it's about: the work of controversial "spirit photographer" William Mumler, who was tried for fraud in a highly publicized 1869 case that featured showman P.T. Barnum as a witness for the prosecution.
Worth a thousand words: Mumler's most famous photograph, taken six years after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, purportedly shows Lincoln's ghost hovering behind his wife.
Why you might like it: This balanced account allows readers to draw their own conclusions about Mumler and his work. |
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| The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway by Ben MezrichWhat it is: a lively and dramatic account of small-town police officer Chuck Zukowski's 3,000-mile quest to prove that UFOs exist, sparked by unexplained livestock mutilations in his rural Colorado town.
Places visited: the usual UFO "hot spots" like Roswell and Area 51, but also underground military bases and sacred Native American sites.
For fans of: The X-Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. |
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| The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem by Stacy SchiffWhat it is: a gripping and vivid retelling of the Salem witch trials and their aftermath, recounted with verve in a conversational tone.
About the author: Historian Stacy Schiff is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra: A Life.
Try this next: Marilynne K. Roach's Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and the Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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