History and Current Events October 2025
Recent Releases
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
by Moudhy Al-Rashid

In her accessible and illuminating debut, historian Moudhy Al-Rashid utilizes eight artifacts, including cuneiform tablets and weapon fragments, to explore everyday life and culture in ancient Mesopotamia. Further reading: The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World by Selena Wisnom.
Dinner with King Tut : how rogue archaeologists are re-creating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations by Sam Kean
Dinner with King Tut : how rogue archaeologists are re-creating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations
by Sam Kean

An archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind—and through all five senses—from tropical Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes and everywhere in between.
The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America
by David Baron

Science journalist David Baron (American Eclipse) chronicles how early-20th century astronomers, writers, and intellectuals popularized a cultural fascination with Mars (and its potential lifeforms) that ushered in a new era of exploration, tabloid journalism, and conspiracy theories. Try this next: Dead Air: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America by William Elliott Hazelgrove.
Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West
by Peter Cozzens

Historian Peter Cozzens' rollicking revisionist history of Deadwood, South Dakota, the Black Hills Gold Rush settlement famously immortalized in the HBO series Deadwood, offers a nuanced portrait of the town's origins and its larger-than-life characters. For fans of: Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin.
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
by Cheryl McKissack Daniel with Nick Chiles

In her inspiring debut, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, president of America's oldest Black-owned construction firm McKissack & McKissack, details two centuries of her trailblazing family's influential yet overlooked contributions to American architecture, from their post-Emancipation projects to the present. Try this next: On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles. 
An Honest Living : A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries by Steven Salaita
An Honest Living : A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries
by Steven Salaita

In the summer of 2014, Steven Salaita was fired from a tenured position in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois for his unwavering stance on Palestinian human rights and other political controversies. A year later, he landed a job in Lebanon, but that, too, ended badly. With no other recourse, Salaita found himself trading his successful academic career for an hourly salaried job. Told primarily from behind the wheel of a school bus--a vantage point from which Salaita explores social anxiety, suburban architecture, political alienation, racial oppression, working-class solidarity, professional malfeasance, and the joy of chauffeuring children to and from school--An Honest Living describes the author's decade of turbulent post-professorial life and his recent return to the lectern.
How to Win a Grand Prix : From Pit Lane to Podium - the Inside Track by Bernie Collins
How to Win a Grand Prix : From Pit Lane to Podium - the Inside Track
by Bernie Collins

"Formula 1 drivers are the public face of Grand Prix racing but behind every driver is a team of several hundred people sharing the same passionate desire to win. On race day it's the Team Strategist who calls the shots, working under immense pressure to make split-second and crucial decisions. Welcome to Bernie Collins' world. Through her eyes and experience as a Chief Race Engineer and F1 Team Strategist, Bernie Collins takes the reader behind the scenes of a Formula 1 team - both in the factory and at the races - to uncover what it takes to put two Formula 1 cars on the grid and go racing."-- From publisher's description.
The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
by Seth Harp

Journalist and Iraq War veteran Seth Harp's disturbing debut chronicles the criminal exploits of United States Special Forces soldiers based at North Carolina's Fort Bragg military base, where a 2020 double murder exposed a drug trafficking operation. Try this next: Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six by Matthew Cole.
Second life : having a child in the digital age by Amanda Hess
Second life : having a child in the digital age
by Amanda Hess

 Second Life is a trenchant look at parenting in early 21st-century America, when humans stopped being raised by villages or even families but rather by a constant onslaught of information. It is a funny, heartbreaking, and surreal examination of fertility apps, the history of ultrasound technologies, prenatal genetic testing, rare disease Facebook groups, baby memes, cultural representations of parenting, gender reveal videos, trendy sleep gurus, "freebirth" influencers, mommy marketers, culminating in a polemic on how to conceive of a real life in the digital age. Page by page, Amanda reveals the unspoken ways that our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology, all through the exacting lens of her intensely personal story.
Hope : the autobiography by Francis
Hope : the autobiography
by Francis

Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis's Italian roots and his ancestors' courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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