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History and Current Events July 2018
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Gibraltar : The Greatest Siege in British History
by Roy Adkins
Describes the four-year siege against the British on the small territory of Gibraltar by Spanish and French forces that put soldiers, civilians and families through bombardments, starvation and disease in a fortress on 2 square miles of rock.
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Patriot Number One : American dreams in Chinatown
by Lauren Hilgers
A deeply reported analysis of the Chinese immigrant community in the United States offers revisionist insights into how their experiences in China and America have reflected and transformed the American dream.
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Dress Like a Woman : Working Women and What They Wore
by Abrams Books
Showcasing 300 photographs that illustrate how women’s roles have changed over the last century, a visual exploration, accompanied by essays from renowned fashion writer Vanessa Friedman and feminist writer Roxane Gay, features women who inhabit a fascinating intersection of gender, fashion, politics, culture, class, nationality and race.
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Astral weeks : a secret history of 1968
by Ryan H. Walsh
The award-winning video director and member of the Hallelujah the Hills band documents the story of the creation of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" album against a backdrop of the political and cultural turmoil of 1968 Boston, examining how other famous or lesser-known period artists raised awareness about key historical events and issues.
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A perilous path : talking race, inequality, and the law
by Sherrilyn A Ifill
This blisteringly candid discussion of the American dilemma in the age of Trump brings together the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and death penalty lawyer, and a star professor for an honest conversation the country desperately needs to hear. Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these leading lights of the legal profession and the fight for racial justice talk about the importance of reclaiming the racial narrative and keeping our eyes on the horizon as we work for justice in an unjust time.
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How democracies die
by Steven Levitsky
A cautionary assessment of the demise of history's liberal democracies identifies such factors as the steady weakening of critical institutions, from the judiciary to the press, while sharing optimistic recommendations for how America's democratic system can be saved.
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The infernal library : on dictators, their books, and other catastrophes of literacy
by Daniel Kalder
Since the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the twentieth-century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre―Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them―produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day. How did the production of literature become central to the running of regimes? What do these books reveal about the dictatorial soul? And how can books and literacy, most often viewed as inherently positive, cause immense and lasting harm? Putting daunting research to revelatory use, Daniel Kalder asks and brilliantly answers these questions. Marshalled upon the beleaguered shelves of The Infernal Library are the books and commissioned works of the century’s most notorious figures. Their words led to the deaths of millions. Their conviction in the significance of their own thoughts brooked no argument. It is perhaps no wonder then, as Kalder argues, that many dictators began their careers as writers.
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The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
by Elaine Weiss
What it is: a page-turning and uplifting chronicle of the women's suffrage movement, culminating in the struggle to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Why you might like it: Elaine Weiss dramatically conveys hair-raising suspense in a story where the outcome is already well-known, while also noting how echoes of suffragettes' compromises on racial equality are still felt today.
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Pogrom : Kishinev and the tilt of history
by Steven J. Zipperstein
The Stanford professor of Jewish Culture and History and co-editor of Yale University Press' "Jewish Lives" series challenges popular misconceptions in a revised account of the Kishinev riot of 1903 and how it transformed the course of 20th-century Jewish history.
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No turning back : life, loss, and hope in wartime Syria
by Rania Abouzeid
An award-winning journalist chronicles the tragedy of the Syrian War through the dramatic stories of four young people, including a creator of online video protests, a father who hides his radical beliefs, an unlikely poet commander in a Free Syrian Army militia and a child who opened her family's door to a military raid that forced her father to flee.
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| Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure... by David DayenWhat it is: an absorbing and sympathetic portrait of three ordinary home buyers who, at great personal sacrifice, pooled their resources to fight back against illegal foreclosures and raise public consciousness about the corrupt financial industry.
Reviewers say: David Dayen "elevates a muckraking exposé of fraudulent foreclosures to Hitchcockian levels of suspense" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn GreenwaldWhat it's about: In this exciting analysis, journalist Glenn Greenwald recalls being the recipient of Edward Snowden's leaked National Security Agency (NSA) documents, triggering widespread debates over surveillance programs and rights to privacy -- and spurring personal and professional repercussions for Greenwald himself.
Is it for you? Accessible writing, paired with graphics and slides, makes the technical subject matter palatable to a wide readership; fans of Luke Harding's The Snowden Files will enjoy this similarly fast-paced work. |
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| War of the Whales: A True Story by Joshua HorwitzWhat it's about: In March 2000, the largest recorded whale stranding occurred in the Bahamas, prompting an epic battle between a devoted group of whistleblowing environmental activists and the U.S. Navy, whose covert use of sonar had led to the strandings.
Why it's significant: The case (Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council) ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, raising questions about the unchecked use of military power.
Book buzz: War of the Whales won the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature. |
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| The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by Betty MedsgerWhat it's about: In 1971, a small group of activists broke into the Pennsylvania offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and stole documents confirming that director J. Edgar Hoover was running his own shadow FBI, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
About the author: Betsy Medsger was a journalist at the Washington Post who received the leaked documents in 1971; here, her detailed reflections and contemporary contextualizing add credence to a riveting resistance caper and its resonant political implications. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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