Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/10/2013
ISBN-13: 9780307718969
ISBN-10: 0307718964

In late August of 2005, floodwaters resulting from Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and made evacuation and rescue nearly impossible. At Memorial Hospital (like others around the city), there was no electricity to run life-sustaining equipment or power the air conditioning. Doctors and nurses faced critical decisions in horrendous circumstances. Subsequently, the coroner charged some hospital staff members with homicide in several patient deaths at Memorial. Physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink's riveting and haunting Five Days at Memorial describes the city-wide situation in detail and carefully reviews the evidence in each of the Memorial Hospital homicide cases. Booklist says this book is indispensable for "understanding how people behave in times of crisis."

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Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/01/2013
ISBN-13: 9780374180669
ISBN-10: 0374180660

Journalist David Finkel spent several months in 2007 embedded with Army Infantry Battalion 2-16 during their deployment in Iraq; his 2009 book The Good Soldiers reports on how the troops of the 2-16 experienced the war. After their return to the U.S., Finkel reconnected with the men to learn about their post-war life. Thank You for Your Service offers compelling testimony about challenges the men face: severe mental illness, families and employers who can't understand (or don't want to), and a Veterans Administration health system that is inadequate to meet vets' needs. These powerful, moving accounts give ironic significance to the everyday expression, "Thank you."

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/24/2013
ISBN-13: 9780307597052
ISBN-10: 0307597059

In August, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, and in response Austria mobilized its troops to attack Serbia. World War I ensued as most of Europe took sides and joined the fight, which caused an incredible slaughter that continued for over four years. Award-winning military historian Max Hastings analyzes the failures in leadership after the assassination, including moments when Russia, Britain, or Germany could have applied the brakes. He provides riveting descriptions of the first months of fighting and offers his own keen, even daring, conclusions about how the catastrophe developed. Though there is a multitude of books on the start of World War I, Kirkus Reviews calls Catastrophe 1914 "one of the best."

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/17/2013
ISBN-13: 9780385350884
ISBN-10: 0385350880

The topic of education in American public schools produces contentious debate at every level, from local board rooms to the White House. In Reign of Error, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch takes on a wide range of participants in the debate, arguing that public school students are not failing to the extent some people claim, charter schools are not a good idea, and poverty is the primary contributing factor when students fail. Privatizing education, she maintains, is not the solution, but rather, the U.S. should provide resources to overcome class differences and poverty. Proposing a comprehensive, wide-ranging set of solutions, backed up by facts and figures, Ravitch injects a pro-education (rather than pro-business) voice into the debate.

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Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/09/2012
ISBN-13: 9780618969029
ISBN-10: 0618969020

In 1900, Edward Curtis shifted his career away from lucrative society portraiture and began to photograph Native Americans in their home settings, documenting their cultures in his 20-volume publication, The North American Indian. Author Timothy Egan carefully traces Curtis' efforts, describing his work (along with that of his team), the financial challenges of this enormous project, and the risks he took as he traveled to spend time with his subjects and record their images. Egan also describes the tribes and their struggles to maintain their ways of life against modernization and pressures to assimilate into white culture. George Catlin's earlier efforts to preserve Indian culture in his paintings provide more Wild West reading in Benita Eisler's The Red Man's Bones.

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Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/18/2011
ISBN-13: 9781565126268
ISBN-10: 1565126262

Through compact biographies of ten U.S. leaders, historian and novelist Robert Morgan develops an absorbing picture of How the West Was Won. From Thomas Jefferson to Winfield Scott, Lions of the West illuminates the vision and leadership that promoted American dominance, beginning with the War of 1812, and accomplished Manifest Destiny as the Southwestern territories came under U.S. control. Viewing history through the lives of particular people adds intimacy to what otherwise might be mere factual recitations, bringing both issues and personalities to life. Readers devoted to 19th-century history or interested in the Old West will want to add Morgan's work to their bookshelves.

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/13/2007
ISBN-13: 9780470128220
ISBN-10: 0470128224

John Henry "Doc" Holliday appears larger than life in legends of the Old West, partly due to his participation in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. However, there are few details of Holliday's life that can be documented with certainty. Historian Gary Roberts, whose specialty is the American West, sifts through available information to construct an engaging and faithful portrait of Holliday, while also reporting on the lives of his associates and giving a blow-by-blow account of exactly what happened at the fateful corral. Whether you're hungry for facts or just enjoy the thrills of Wild West adventures, you'll find Doc Holliday a riveting tale.

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Publisher: Mariner Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/01/2009
ISBN-13: 9780547237916
ISBN-10: 054723791X

Horses were essential to settling the American West, beginning in the 16th century with the Spanish conquest. Journalist and author Deanne Stillman presents a sweeping history of the horse, delving into the animal's evolution, then describing how modern horses arrived in North America with the Conquistadors and multiplied in the wild. Profiles of several famous horses and riders highlight the account, which takes a darker turn in the later 20th century when overpopulation prompted bureaucrats to organize the roundup and slaughter of thousands of the animals. Informative, inspiring, and sobering, Mustang provides an important piece of the Western historical puzzle.

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Publisher: Scribner
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/21/2011
ISBN-13: 9781439176580
ISBN-10: 1439176582

In 1916, two privileged Smith College graduates, Dorothy Woodruff (author Dorothy Wickenden's grandmother) and Rosamond Underwood, tiring of tea parties for women's suffrage activists in Auburn, New York, decided to try something new: they responded to an ad for school teachers in remote Elkhead, Colorado. Once there, they were at first shocked at how basic and physically demanding the frontier life was, but they soon learned the necessary skills to thrive in this unfamiliar environment. Bringing to life the roles of women in Westward expansion, Wickenden's well-researched narration vividly portrays the daily lives of miners, homesteaders, and farmers' wives. Kirkus Reviews predicts that readers of Nothing Daunted will "find their hearts lost to the West."

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