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History and Current Events January 2021
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The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare, 1945-2020
by Tim Weiner
What it is: a fast-paced and well-researched 75-year history of the antagonistic political relationship between Russia and the United States.
Topics include: assassination attempts; disinformation campaigns; cyber warfare.
Why you might like it: Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning journalist Tim Weiner's compelling latest includes newly declassified materials.
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I will run wild : the Pacific war from Pearl Harbor to Midway
by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts and a new analysis, this history of the early stages of the Pacific War tells the story of Americans, British, Dutch, Australians and New Zealanders taken by surprise from Pearl Harbor to Singapore that first Sunday of December 1941.
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Our malady : lessons in liberty from a hospital diary
by Timothy Snyder
On December 29, 2019, historian Timothy Snyder fell gravely ill. Unable to stand, barely able to think, he waited for hours in an emergency room before being correctly diagnosed and rushed into surgery. Over the next few days, as he clung to life and the first light of a new year came through his window, he found himself reflecting on the fragility of health, not recognized in America as a human right, but without which all rights and freedoms have no meaning. And he had no idea how much worse things could get.
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Lives of the stoics : lessons on the art of living from Marcus Aurelius to Zeno
by Ryan Holiday
From the bestselling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience and virtue. Nearly 2,300 years after a ruined merchant named Zeno first established a school on the Stoa Poikile of Athens, Stoicism has found a new audience among those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. It's no wonder; the philosophy and its embrace of self-mastery, virtue, and indifference to that which we cannot control is as urgent today as it was in the chaos of the Roman Empire. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known--and not so well-known--Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it, dusting off powerful lessons to be learned from their struggles and successes. More than a mere history book, every example in these pages, from Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius--slaves to emperors--is designed to help the reader apply philosophy in their own lives. Holiday and Hanselman unveil the core values and ideas that unite figures from Seneca to Cato to Cicero across the centuries. Among them are the idea that self-rule is the greatest empire, that character is fate; how Stoics benefit from preparing not only for success, but failure; and learn to love, not merely accept, the hand they are dealt in life. A treasure of valuable insights and stories, this book can be visited again and again by any reader in search of inspiration from the past.
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Ten lessons for a post-pandemic world
by Fareed Zakaria
The CNN host and Washington Post columnist shares 10 lessons in subjects ranging from globalization and threat-preparedness to inequality and technological advancement to outline the likely political, social, technological and economic impact of the COVID-19 epidemic.
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Break It Up : Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union
by Richard Kreitner
The fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: the United States has never lived up to its name -- and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn't limited to the South or the nineteenth century. With a scholar's command and a journalist's curiosity, Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region. Each New England town after Plymouth was a secession from another; the thirteen colonies viewed their Union as a means to the end of securing independence, not an end in itself; George Washington feared separatism west of the Alleghenies; Aaron Burr schemed to set up a new empire; John Quincy Adams brought a Massachusetts town's petition for dissolving the United States to the floor of Congress; and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery pact with the devil. From the "cold civil war" that pits partisans against one another to the modern secession movements in California and Texas, the divisions that threaten to tear America apart today have centuries-old roots in the earliest days of our Republic.
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The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future
by Chris Whipple
What it is: an accessible history detailing the role that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directors play in American politics.
What's inside: revealing interviews with former directors, their family members, and colleagues.
Further reading: Tim Weiner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.
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Battlegrounds : the fight to defend the free world
by H. R. McMaster
The retired Lieutenant General and author of the best-selling Dereliction of Duty presents an urgent call to protect America from dangerous rivals by setting aside partisan divides and helping citizens better understand ongoing threats to national security.
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The tyranny of merit : what's become of the common good?
by - Sandel, Michael J.
The world-famous philosopher reveals the driving force behind the resurgence of populism, which is the tyranny of the meritocracy and the resentments it produces, as well as the broader moral dimensions of our current crisis.
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The deviant's war : the homosexual vs. the United States of America
by Eric Cervini
In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.
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Live free or die : America (and the world) on the brink
by Sean Hannity
The Fox News host and best-selling author of Conservative Victory argues that the leftist radicalism that he believes undermined American democracy in the 1960s must be purposefully fought again during the 2020 election to prevent progressive changes.
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Evil geniuses : the unmaking of America : a recent history
by Kurt Andersen
The best-selling author of Fantasyland presents a deeply researched history of America’s 20th-century transition toward government-sanctioned, normalized inequalities that favor big business and resist progressive change while rendering everyday workers increasingly powerless.
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Surviving autocracy
by Masha Gessen
An analysis of the destruction the Trump administration has waged on our institutions, the cultural norms we hoped would save us, and our very sense of identity.
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Who gets in and why : a year inside college admissions
by Jeffrey J. Selingo
An award-winning higher-education journalist draws on insider access to explain the nuts and bolts of college admissions today, outlining the unexpected agendas that reflect which and why prospective students receive admission into better schools.
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Made men : the story of Goodfellas
by Glenn Kenny
Celebrating 30 years since the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s signature film, this chronicle of the making and afterlife of the film that introduced America to the real modern gangster features interviews with the film’s major players. Illustrations.
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The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War
by David Nasaw
What it's about: the one million Holocaust survivors, political prisoners, and forced laborers who had no home to return to following World War II.
Why you might like it: This thought-provoking study explores the lingering repercussions of displacement that continue to resonate in contemporary global politics.
Reviewers say: "A searching, vigorously written history of an unsettled time too little known to American readers" (Kirkus Reviews).
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Blood and oil : Mohammed bin Salman's ruthless quest for global power
by Bradley Hope
From award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters Justin Scheck and Bradley Hope, a revelatory look at the inner workings of the world's most powerful ruling family, the royal family of Saudi Arabia, revealing how a rift within that family produced Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, a charismatic leader with a ruthless streak.
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Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream
by Mychal Denzel Smith
What it is: an incisive collection of essays exploring the limitations and contradictions of the American Dream, from the New York Times bestselling author of Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching.
Is it for you? Mychal Denzel Smith's impassioned treatise offers a clear-eyed perspective on how the Trump presidency has exacerbated long-standing inequities in American society.
The big question: "Is the potential for the American Dream worth enduring the brutality of American life?"
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Tecumseh and the prophet : the Shawnee brothers who defied a nation
by Peter Cozzens
The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than 20 years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States. Illustrations. Maps.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Iredell County Public Library 201 North Tradd Street Statesville, North Carolina 28677 704-878-3090www.iredell.lib.nc.us/ |
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