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History and Current Events October 2020
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| Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. What it's about: how James Baldwin's writings on the failures of the civil rights movement remain just as relevant today.
Read it for: an impassioned and incisive blend of history, literary analysis, and own voices memoir.
Topics include: mass incarceration; the Black Lives Matter movement; Confederate monument removals; the election of Donald Trump. |
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Too much and never enough : how my family created the world's most dangerous man
by Mary L. Trump
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world's health, economic security, and social fabric.
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The room where it happened : a White House memoir by John R. BoltonAs President Trump's National Security Advisor, Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened. After working in the Reagan and both Bush presidencies, he has a great eye for the Washington inside game. What Bolton saw with Trump astonished him: a President for whom getting re-elected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. Here he shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government.
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| Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil PriceWhat it is: a demythologizing history of the Viking Age (750-1050 CE) written by archaeologist and longtime Viking scholar Neil Price.
Why you might like it: Aided by archaeological discoveries, this nuanced and well-researched account offers vivid recreations of Viking rituals that have often been misrepresented in popular culture.
Don't miss: a gruesome description of a Viking funeral. |
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| Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel WilkersonWhat it's about: the "shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based" caste system that has shaped four centuries of American history.
Read it for: a timely and thought-provoking exploration of how rigid social hierarchies dehumanize the people who live within them.
Book buzz: This impassioned latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns) was recently named an Oprah's Book Club pick. |
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Fridays With Jim : Conversations About Our Country With Jim Bolger by David CohenA self-taught son of Irish immigrants, devout Catholic, King Country farmer, and farming lobbyist, Jim Bolger entered New Zealand political life in the 1970s. He was a flinty Minister of Labour under Robert Muldoon and Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997. As ambassador to Washington, he helped create warmer relations with the United States. In recent years, he has chaired boards, has been the chancellor of the University of Waikato, and marked more than a half-century of marriage to Joan. Never given to orthodoxies, yet staunchly National in his politics, in his still-energetic eighties he remains an impressively brisk progressive thinker. For six months he regularly sat down on Fridays with the writer David Cohen to reflect on his life and times, our nation and the world. Fridays with Jim reveals a quintessential man of the old New Zealand who is fully in sync with the new New Zealand, and with plenty of ideas about where it's all heading.
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Soldiers, Scouts & Spies : A Military History of the New Zealand Wars 1845-1864 by Cliff SimonsSoldiers, Scouts and Spies offers a unique insight into the major campaigns fought between 1845 and 1864 by British troops, their militia and Māori allies, and Māori iwi and coalitions. It was a time of rapid technological change. Māori were quick to adopt western weaponry and evolve their tactics - and even political structures - as they looked for ways to confront the might of the Imperial war machine. And Britain, despite being a military and economic super power, was challenged by a capable enemy in a difficult environment. This detailed examination of the Wars from a military perspective focuses on the period of relatively conventional warfare before the increasingly 'irregular' fighting of the late 1860s. It explains how and where the battles were fought, and their outcomes. Importantly, it also analyses the intelligence-gathering skills and processes of both British and Māori forces as each sought to understand and overcome their enemy.
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| Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight That Broke the Democratic Party by Jon WardWhat it is: a captivating account of the 1980 Democratic primary battle between sitting president Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy.
Did you know? Incumbent presidents seeking reelection have been challenged from within their own party "only a handful of times."
Why it's significant: Campaign tensions led to divisions within the Democratic party that continue to resonate. |
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Contact your librarian fore more great books!
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