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History and Current Events May 2020
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| Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara EhrenreichWhat it is: an incisive assemblage of previously published essays from journalist and bestselling Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich.
Topics include: the failings of the mental health care system; higher education's rising costs; the criminalization of poverty; sexual harassment and rape culture.
Read it for: the eerie prescience of Ehrenreich's older pieces, such as 1986's "Is the Middle Class Doomed?" |
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| Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered... by Eric EyreWhat it's about: how the opioid epidemic ravaged Kermit, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 400 that distributed 12 million opioid pills over a period of three years.
Author alert: Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre expands upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage for this sobering investigation.
What sets it apart: Though it shares the intimate tone of Beth Macy's Dopesick, Death in Mud Lick also focuses on the specific pharmaceutical distributors complicit in Kermit's decline. |
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| Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian... by Claudio SauntWhat it's about: the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which forcibly displaced 80,000 Native Americans from their land.
Why it matters: Historian Claudio Saunt's incisive account debunks the myth that removal was unavoidable and reveals the political machinations behind the state-sponsored "exterminatory warfare."
Reviewers say: "forces a new reckoning with American history" (Publishers Weekly). |
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Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
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| The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for... by Julie CheckowayWhat it's about: In 1937 Maui, teacher Soichi Sakamoto formed a "three-year swim club" for the impoverished Japanese American children of the area's sugar plantation workers. His goal? To produce Olympic-ready athletes in time for the 1940 Tokyo Games.
What happened next: Although the 1940 Games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II, the team competed in the 1948 Games and Sakamoto found success as a swim coach at the University of Hawaii.
For fans of: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. |
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| The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika LeeWhat it is: a sweeping survey of Asian immigration in the United States that won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Adult Nonfiction in 2016.
Why you might like it: Erika Lee's well-researched history eschews monolithic conceptions of Asian identity by detailing the specific experiences of people from various ethnic groups.
Don't miss: the overview of Asian immigration in Canada and Latin America. |
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| The Not-Quite States of America: Dispatches from the Territories and Other Far-Flung... by Doug MackWhat it is: a thought-provoking blend of history and travelogue that explores several United States territories including American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Read it for: island residents' insights on their relationship to the U.S.
Reviewers say: "An entertaining, informative guidebook to some cool places populated by people to whom attention should be paid" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Prince George's County Memorial Library System 9601 Capital Lane Largo, Maryland 20774 301-699-3500www.pgcmls.info/ |
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