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Library Journal's Best History Books 2019 January 2020
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A Castle in Wartime: One Family, Their Missing Sons, and the Fight to Defeat the Nazis
by Catherine Bailey
What it's about: an aristocratic German Italian family living in northern Italy who resisted the Nazi regime and were later targeted for their connections to a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.
Read it for: a pulse-pounding story of courage and survival.
For fans of: Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin.
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Time song : journeys in search of a submerged land
by Julia Blackburn
Blends travelogue and history in a lyrical exploration of Doggerland, once connected to Britain, that draws on myriad disciplines to explore its human settlements and rich ecosystem before it was subsumed by the North Sea 6,000 years ago. Illustrations.
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The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
by Eric Foner
What it's about: how the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th constitutional amendments (also known as the Reconstruction amendments) impacted an America still reeling from the aftermath of the Civil War.
Don't miss: an incisive and resonant look into how the Reconstruction amendments are interpreted and debated in contemporary political discourse, particularly in relation to voter rights.
Book buzz: Library Journal calls Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner's latest "a must-read for anyone interested in U.S. history."
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The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip
by Jeff Guinn
What it's about: Every year between 1914 and 1924, inventor pals and "autocamping" enthusiasts Henry Ford and Thomas Edison embarked on a cross-country summertime jaunt through America.
Why it matters: The pair's highly-publicized adventures contributed to the car industry boom, spurred the improvement of roadways, and inspired the concept of the road trip.
Read it for: a quirky blend of history, biography, and travelogue.
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Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
by Adam Higginbotham
What it's about: the catastrophic April 26, 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine.
Why you might like it: Suspenseful and sweeping, this vivid account includes recently declassified documents and interviews with survivors.
Try this next: For a moving look at the disaster's ongoing environmental damage, read Kate Brown's Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future.
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Crusaders : an epic history of the wars for the holy lands
by Dan Jones
The best-selling author of The Templars presents a wide-ranging, narrative history of the Crusades that examines 8th-century Christian-Muslim relations from the perspectives of diverse people on all sides of the wars. Illustrations. Maps.
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The global age : Europe, 1950-2017
by Ian Kershaw
A concluding chapter in the series that includes To Hell and Back traces the latter half of the 20th century to the present and includes coverage of the impact of nuclear threat, accelerating globalization and the post-2008 financial crises. Illustrations
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The darkest year : the American home front 1941-1942
by William K Klingaman
A psychological history of the American home front at the peak of World War II argues that class and partisan divides of the mid-20th century as well as Roosevelt administration blunders had rendered the United States vulnerable to losing the war.
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The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government...
by Heath Hardage Lee
What it is: the forgotten story of the military wives who mobilized to bring their POW husbands home from Vietnam.
How they did it: After forming the National League of Families, the women organized media campaigns, lobbied politicians, learned encryption to send and receive coded messages (earning the nickname "Jane Bonds"), and even negotiated directly with the North Vietnamese.
Reviewers say: Book clubs will flock to this "unputdownable" tale (Library Journal) that "begs for discussion" (Booklist).
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Return to the Reich : a Holocaust refugee's secret mission to defeat the Nazis
by Eric Lichtblau
"The remarkable story of Fred Mayer, a German-born Jew who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission behind enemy lines. Growing up in Germany, Freddy Mayer witnessed the Nazis' rise to power. When he was sixteen, his family made the decision to flee to the United States--they were among the last German Jews to escape, in 1938. In America, Freddy tried enlisting the day after Pearl Harbor, only to be rejected as an "enemy alien" because he was German. He was soon recruited to the OSS, the country's first spy outfit before the CIA. Freddy, joined by Dutch Jewish refugee Hans Wynberg and Nazi defector Franz Weber, parachuted into Austria as the leader of Operation Greenup, meant to deter Hitler's last stand. He posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW for months, dispatching reports to the OSS via Hans, holed up with a radio in a nearby attic. The reports contained a goldmine of information, provided key intelligence about the Battle of the Bulge, and allowed the Allies to bomb twenty Nazi trains. On the verge of the Allied victory, Freddy was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and waterboarded for days. Remarkably, he persuaded the Nazi commander for the region to surrender, completing one of the most successful OSSmissions of the war. Based on years of research and interviews with Mayer himself, whom the author was able to meet only months before his death at the age of ninety-four, Return to the Reich is an eye-opening, unforgettable narrative of World War II heroism"
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Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
by Iain MacGregor
What it's about: how Cold War tensions spurred the construction of Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing separating East and West Germany that became a powerful symbol of the era.
Why you might like it: This dramatic, well-researched account was published to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
What sets it apart: never-before-seen interviews with border guards, intelligence operatives, and escapees.
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A good American family : the Red Scare and my father
by David Maraniss
An account of the mid-twentieth-century Red Scare and its impact on families describes how the author's World War II veteran father was spied on by the FBI, accused of communist sympathies, fired from his job, and blacklisted
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Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement
by Jessie Morgan-Owens
What it's about: how the photograph of seven-year-old light-skinned slave Mary Mildred Williams was used to stoke abolitionist ire.
Unwitting celebrity: Brought onstage during Senator Charles Sumner's 1855 antislavery tour, Mary's white-passing appearance earned her the nickname "white slave" and garnered sympathy from audiences who otherwise ignored the plight of her darker-skinned counterparts.
Why you might like it: Girl in Black and White offers an illuminating new perspective on the racial politics of the abolitionist movement.
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Learning from the Germans : race and the memory of evil
by Susan Neiman
A philosopher and director of the Einstein Forum examines the recent surge in white nationalism in an increasingly polarized America through the lens of Germany and how that country was able to come to terms with its own historical wrongdoings.
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A new world begins : the history of the French Revolution
by Jeremy D. Popkin
A comprehensive analysis of the principles, events and influences of the French Revolution examines the roles of such contributors as Mirabeau and Robespierre while explaining the violent debates that led to modernism and the rise of Napoleon. 30,000 first printing.
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Sudden courage : youth in France confront the Germans, 1940-1945
by Ronald C. Rosbottom
The author of When Paris Went Dark describes the contributions of young adults to the French Resistance, revealing how teen revolutionaries acquired skills ranging from sabotage and patrol evasion to intelligence smuggling and lethal self-defense. 75,000 first printing.
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The Borgias : power and fortune
by Paul Strathern
The award-winning author of The Medici traces the story of the infamous Borgia family against a backdrop of a thriving Renaissance period, examining the paradoxes that surrounded the family and the role of corruption in establishing their legacy. Illustrations.
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Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule
by Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis
What it's about: how Germans from all walks of life resisted and undermined Hitler throughout his rise to power.
What sets it apart: This stirring rejoinder to the notion that Germans supported Hitler en masse highlights both famous and lesser-known resistance efforts.
Don't miss: the disturbing story of Kurt Gerstein, a Gestapo officer who became one of the first people to publicize the horrors of the Holocaust.
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Sea people : the puzzle of Polynesia
by Christina Thompson
Explores the origins of the Polynesian people, attempting to answer the questions about who founded and settled these remote Pacific islands in an era before writing or metal tools. 25,000 first printing.
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Daughters of chivalry : the forgotten princesses of King Edward Longshanks
by Kelcey Wilson-Lee
Describes the lives of the five daughters of King Edward I, whose experiences highlight what was expected of royal, Medieval women, including cementing alliances and securing lands through marriages, birthing heirs, managing enormous households and navigating messy diplomatic situations. Illustrations.
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