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History and Current Events May 2021
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Persist
by Elizabeth Warren
A former presidential candidate, in this deeply personal book and a powerful call to action, writes about six perspectives that have influenced her life and advocacy, inspiring us to believe that if we’re willing to fight for it, profound change is within our reach.
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Icebound : shipwrecked at the edge of the world
by Andrea Pitzer
Documents the remarkable survival tale of 16th-century Dutch explorer and talented navigator Williams Barents, whose obsessive quest to chart the remote regions of the Arctic prompted three harrowing expeditions.
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| We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy by Natalie BaszileWhat it is: an inspiring collection of interviews, essays, photographs, and poems chronicling Black farming in the United States, from the Emancipation to the present.
Why you should read it: Queen Sugar author Natalie Baszile's engaging and well-researched anthology pays tribute to an essential (but lesser-known) facet of American history. |
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Buses are a comin' : memoir of a freedom rider
by Charles Person
A surviving original Freedom Rider recounts his firsthand experiences with the South’s historical and ongoing resistance to racial equality, sharing insights into what is required for progressive change to become possible in America.
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Julian Bond's Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
by Julian Bond
What it is: an incisive collection of college course lectures delivered by professor, social activist, and civil rights leader Julian Bond (1940-2015).
Why you might like it: Photographs, intimate firsthand accounts, and detailed historical context enrich this detailed you-are-there chronicle of many of the civil rights era's pivotal moments.
Who it's for: This accessible work will enlighten and inspire history buffs, general readers, and activists alike.
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Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
by Simon Winchester
What it is: a sweeping and richly detailed global history of humankind's relationship to land ownership.
Topics include: the ecological impact of colonization; land reclamation efforts; the politics of cartography; Indigenous land rights.
Did you know? America's top 100 private landowners own acreage equal to the size of Florida.
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Covered with night : a story of murder and indigenous justice in early America
by Nicole Eustace
An immersive tale of the killing of a Native American man and its far-reaching consequences for Colonial America. In the summer of 1722, on the eve of a conference between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and British-American colonists, two colonial furtraders brutally attacked an Indigenous hunter in colonial Pennsylvania. The crime set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge, with many believing that war was imminent. Frantic efforts to resolve the case created a contest between Native American forms of justice, centered on community, forgiveness, and reparations, and an ideology of harsh reprisal, based on British law, that called for the killers' execution.
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| The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights by Dorothy WickendenStarring: "co-conspirators and intimate friends" Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Coffin Wright, each of whom played a key role in the women's suffrage and abolitionist movements.
Read it for: an accessible and eye-opening history of the intersection of progressive causes in 19th-century America and the often unheralded women at the forefront of fighting for them. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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