History and Current Events
July 2025
Recent Releases
The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild
by Bryan Burrough

Forget the Alamo coauthor Bryan Burrough's rollicking and richly detailed history examines American gunfighter culture's origins in post-Civil War Texas. Further reading: Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them by John Bainbridge, Jr.
Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom
by Rebecca Grant

A journey into the underground activist networks that have been working to protect women's autonomy over their bodies amidst legal, political, religious, and cultural oppression over the past sixty years. Further reading: The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias. 
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
by Caroline Fraser

In her disturbing and well-researched true crime account, Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser (Prairie Fires) examines the history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest from the 1940s to the 1980s. For fans of: The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI's Original Mindhunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
by Kelly Ramsey

An adventure-filled memoir of one woman's struggle to succeed as a wildland firefighter on an elite, male-dominated crew as they battle some of the fiercest wildfires in the West. Also recently released: When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas. 
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
by Eleanor Barraclough

A history of the Viking Age, from mighty leaders to rebellious teenagers, told through their runes and ruins, games and combs, trash and treasure. Further reading: American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed Into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock.
The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp
by Lynne Olson

Historian Lynne Olson's (Empress of the Nile) disturbing yet inspiring latest focuses on four women French Resistance fighters who were captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, detailing how they worked together to survive World War II, help their fellow prisoners, and, post-war, seek justice for the atrocities they experienced. Further reading: The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss. 
The World After Gaza: A History
by Pankaj Mishra

The World After Gaza takes the current war, and the polarized reaction to it, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the Global North's triumphant account of victory over totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the Global South's hopeful vision of racial equality and freedom from colonial rule. Pankaj Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis - about whether some lives matter more than others, how identity is constructed, and what the role of the nation-state ought to be. 
The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda
by Nathalia Holt

During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology. Along the way, the Roosevelt expedition faced an incredible series of hardships as they disappeared in a blizzard, were attacked by robbers, overcome by sickness and disease, and lost their food supply in the mountains. For fans of: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. 
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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