|
History and Current Events May 2020
|
|
|
|
|
About the Author: The Vietnam veteran and award-winning historian draws on rich archival research and recently discovered evidence in a revelatory account of the onset of the Asia-Pacific War. By the author of Guadalcanal.
|
|
|
About the Author: The Fox News host of The Story with Martha MacCallum. Read it for: Meticulous research, heart-wrenching, and illuminating. Reveals the sacrifices of ordinary Marines.
|
|
|
The Man in the Red Coat
by Julian Barnes
What it is: a gossipy history of Belle Époque France as experienced by the colorful characters who inhabited it.
Starring: licentious gynecologist Samuel Pozzi, subject of John Singer Sargent's famous 1881 portrait Dr. Pozzi at Home and friend of Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and more.
Read it for: the primary sources deployed to humorous effect (the Princess of Monaco referred to Pozzi as "disgustingly handsome.")
|
|
|
Read it for: Sankovitch leavens her deeply researched account with wit, and presents a persuasive and entertaining portrait of life in colonial Boston. Revolutionary War buffs will savor this thoughtful addition to popular histories of the period.
|
|
|
Read it for: Skillfully interweaving anecdotal accounts with big-picture analysis, Fritzsche deepens readers’ understanding of how Hitler consolidated power. This is a worthy look at a moment too often hurried through in histories of the period.
|
|
| Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental... by Gordon H. ChangWhat it is: an ambitious chronicle of the mid-19th century Chinese laborers who endured meager wages, dangerous working conditions, and racist hostility to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
What sets it apart: With no firsthand accounts available for study, historian Gordon H. Chang utilized census data, payroll information, newspaper articles, photographs, and archaeological findings to craft this impassioned own voices history.
Award: Asian/Pacific American Award for Adult Nonfiction, 2020 |
|
|
What sets it apart: Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, Liberty's Exiles is a book that explores an unknown dimension of America's founding to illuminate the meanings of liberty itself. Award: National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, 2011
|
|
|
The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 by Lawrence WrightWhat it is: Explores both the American and Arab sides of the September 11th terrorist attacks in an account of the people, ideas, events, and intelligence failures that led to the attacks. Page to Screen: the basis for the original Hulu series starring Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Jeff Daniels, and Tahar Rahim. Award: Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 2007
|
|
|
Evicted : poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew DesmondWhat it is: A Harvard sociologist examines the challenge of eviction as a cause of poverty in America, revealing how people are forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by legal systems. Awards: The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • The PEN/New England Award • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize• Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 2017
|
|
|
What sets it apart: a beautifully written book that, once begun, is impossible to put down. It is an unforgettable combination of tragedy and inspiration, and gripping subject matter and characters in a writing style that grabs the reader on Page 1 Award: National Book Critics Circle Award, 2011
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|