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History and Current Events August 2026 |
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Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family -- And the World
by Gabriel Sherman
The real succession story of the Murdoch empire is more shocking than the fictional TV series. When Rupert Murdoch made a fateful decision about who should inherit his media colossus, he believed that pitting his children against each other would produce the most capable heir. Twenty-five years later, that gamble would tear apart one of the world's most powerful families and trigger a multi-billion dollar reckoning in a succession battle featuring betrayals, lawsuits, and revenge plots. In Bonfire of the Murdochs, bestselling author Gabriel Sherman tells the inside story of this epic family war, one whose seeds were planted a half-century ago in Australia when the complicated patriarch left his homeland to conquer the world and please the ghost of his judgmental father. That quest culminated in a media empire that controlled Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and tabloids on three continents, which wielded more political and cultural power than any single company in modern times. But Rupert's plan to rip up the secret trust controlling his empire and anoint his conservative firstborn son Lachlan as successor set him on a collision course with his three more liberal children What price would Rupert pay to secure his legacy? For the aging patriarch, this would be his final and most personal deal. Based on interviews with more than 150 sources, Bonfire of the Murdochs is a richly textured narrative where each child plays their predestined role in a blood feud that explodes in a courtroom showdown. There, Murdoch's children weaponize his own secrets against him. It is a tragedy Shakespeare would have appreciated, where getting everything you want costs everything you love.
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Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery
by Gavin Newsom
From California Governor Gavin Newsom comes an intimate and poignant account of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics Go slow, his political elders advised him, but Gavin Newsom has never known such a speed. For Newsom, the California Dream is what lured his father's family from County Cork, Ireland, six generations ago. His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later, Newsom would be elected as mayor, running on the values instilled in him by his family history: that California's open arms must continue to extend to each new generation.Newsom has never lived anywhere but California. Born in San Francisco, his parents divorced at a young age, and his childhood was spent being tugged between two worlds: his mother worked three jobs in order to care for her children while his father, a close friend of the Getty family, brought Newsom into San Francisco society, a world of wealth and connections. The dissonance was frustrating, and made all the more difficult because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but the vantage point was valuable: he inherited his mother's perseverance and his father's reverence of California, not only its wildness, but its opportunity.In Young Man in a Hurry, Newsom traces the forces that have defined his ambitions as a politician and have pushed him to outpace the nation on myriad cutting-edge social issues that have since entered the mainstream. As mayor of San Francisco, he made waves when he violated state law in order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, more than ten years before the Supreme Court made such unions legal. He launched bold efforts to counter climate change, improve mental health care, and enhance gun safety, and worked to preserve the California Dream for his constituents. Elected as governor on the eve of unprecedented wildfires and entering office into immediate hyper-partisan headwinds from Washington, DC, Newsom has constantly and consistently stuck his neck out. Here for the first time, he reflects on the long personal journey that ultimately shaped him into one of the most recognizable and accomplished elected officials in America. Filled with intimate family history and written with candor and remarkable personal insight, here is a deeply resilient California story of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics.
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| Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela ColloffJournalist Pamela Colloff's disturbing debut chronicles the exploits of con man Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant in 1980s Florida whose unreliable testimonies led to multiple wrongful convictions for his fellow inmates, including four men who wound up on death row. Try this next: Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King. |
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Oblivious: Residential Schools, Segregated Hospitals, and the Use of Indigenous Peoples as Slaves of Race Science
by Elaine Dewar
An investigative journalist reckons with the cost of her own--and the culture-at-large's--obliviousness.Over the last thirty years, Canadians have been forced to face their country's genocidal attempt to destroy its Indigenous populations through segregation, poverty, coerced labour, and infectious diseases. Few have read the statements of claim, academic literature, or multi-volume commission reports setting out exactly what we stole and who we hurt (and how); and the policies and decisions which harmed generations of Indigenous people are still not broadly known.In Oblivious, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar exposes the governmental and psychological machinery that allowed this to continue for so long. The granddaughter of settlers saved during their first Prairie winter by the generosity of Indigenous neighbours, Dewar explores how even well-meaning Canadians who glimpsed what was being done did nothing to stop it. In the process, she uncovers further evidence of crimes against Indigenous people, including unethical and cruel scientific experiments, a segregated and woefully inadequate health care system, and a callous indifference to Indigenous well-being that has almost entirely eroded the sense of trust true reconciliation must be based on.Part memoir, part investigation, Oblivious tells the story of a Jewish girl from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who grew up in a society so segregated--its Indigenous people consigned to an alternate universe--that she, like so many of us, failed to notice their plight for decades.
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| Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane RogoyskaLonglisted for the Women's Prize for Nonfiction, historian Jane Rogoyska's evocative account surveys the evolution of Hotel Lutetia in Paris' Left Bank, which served various roles during and after World War II, including a gathering spot for anti-fascists, the headquarters of the Nazi intelligence service, and a refuge for Holocaust survivors. Try this next: The Red Hotel, Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin's Propaganda War by Alan Philips. |
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The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel: Romanovs, Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World
by Douglas Brunt
From the author of the New York Times bestselling The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel comes the enthralling hidden history of one of the world's most successful business titans, a rival to the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, whose legacy was erased in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. With the exception of the tsar, Emanuel Nobel was likely the wealthiest man in early twentieth-century Russia, and one of the wealthiest in the world. Over three generations, he and his family grew the Russian petroleum industry into a behemoth that surpassed even John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The Nobels imported the best practices from America and improved on them, transforming every aspect of the industry. Though Emanuel's uncle Alfred would become world famous thanks to his creation of the Nobel Prize, the even more successful Nobels in Russia have been largely forgotten. The reason why is one of history's most gripping untold stories. Working in the oil fields of southern Russia at the same time as Emanuel was a troubled young man from a peasant family in Georgia. Though educated to be a priest, he took a different path when he discovered the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx. In and out of prison in Siberia, charismatic and committed, always at the center of a fight, this young man would become known to the world as Joseph Stalin, a leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and eventually one of the most brutal dictators in history. Directly in Stalin's crosshairs was Emanuel Nobel, who represented everything Stalin despised about capitalism. As the world turned upside down, Emanuel began to plan a life-or-death escape from Russia. But would he make it out in time? And what would be the fate of the immense empire he and his family had built? Sweeping across more than a hundred years of history, from the dawn of the Victorian Age to World War I to the Russian Revolution and beyond, this captivating book chronicles one of the most influential men in history, a man whose name has been stricken from memory, and returns him thrillingly to life.
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| I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah WilsonIn her bracing follow-up to This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World, bestselling author Sarah Wilson draws upon conversations with philosophers, poets, futurists, scientists, and more, offering insights on how to find joy amid humanity's uncertain future. Try this next: Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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