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History and Current Events March 2026 |
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| Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America by Howard BryantSports journalist Howard Bryant's affecting history details how trailblazing Black actor Paul Robeson and Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson's differing political ideologies often put them at odds with each other, culminating in Robinson's 1949 appearance at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he testified against Robeson. For fans of: The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. by Peniel E. Joseph. |
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Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
by Keith O'Brien
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A captivating chronicle of the incredible story of one of America's most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures--baseball immortal Pete Rose--and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century - Comprehensive, compulsively readable and wholly terrific.--The Wall Street Journal A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - WINNER OF THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY Baseball biography at its best. With Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose finally gets the book he deserves, and baseball fans get the book we've been craving, a hard-hitting, beautifully-written tale that will stand for years to come as the definitive account of one of the most fascinating figures in American sports history.--Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of King: A Life Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn't. In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game. Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America's most epic tragedies--the rise and fall of Pete Rose. Drawing on firsthand interviews with Rose himself and with his associates, as well as on investigators' reports, FBI and court records, archives, a mountain of press coverage, Keith O'Brien chronicles how Rose fell so far from being America's great white hope. It is Pete Rose as we've never seen him before. This is no ordinary sport biography, but cultural history at its finest. What O'Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn't change, America and baseball did. This is the story of that change.
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| Football by Chuck KlostermanJournalist Chuck Klosterman (The Nineties) ruminates on his lifelong love of football in this funny and wide-ranging cultural history that's "a transcendent appraisal of America's favorite sport" (Publishers Weekly). For fans of: Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano. |
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| Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. MannBiographer William J. Mann's (Bogie & Bacall) well-researched true crime account offers fresh insights on the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, who posthumously came to be known by the moniker "Black Dahlia." Further reading: Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel. |
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| Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish... by Julian SanctonHistorian Julian Sancton's sweeping maritime saga chronicles how the 2015 discovery of the San José, a Spanish galleon that sank off the coast of Colombia in 1708, was mired by accusations that Roger Dooley, the archaeologist who found the wreckage, was a con artist and grave robber. Featuring interviews with Dooley, this compelling adventure tale will appeal to fans of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. |
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Focus on: Women's History Month
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| The Six: The Extraordinary Story of the Grit and Daring of America's First Women Astronauts by Loren GrushBloomberg News reporter Loren Grush's inspiring history spotlights the first six American women astronauts: Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judy Resnik, Sally Ride, Rhea Seddon, and Kathy Sullivan. Grush's accessible reportage blends biographical sketches with engrossing accounts of the women's triumphs and trials. Try this next: The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel by Meredith Bagby. |
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| Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women by Sandra Guzmán (editor)This thought-provoking collection of works from 140 Latine women writers, scholars, and activists from around the world includes contributions from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Further reading: Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology edited by Alex Hernandez, Matthew David Goodwin, and Sarah Rafael García. |
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Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives
by Amelia Possanza
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world's largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life. Centered around seven love stories for the ages, this is Possanza's journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on.
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| Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation by Tiya MilesAward-winning historian Tiya Miles (All That She Carried) thoughtfully explores how 19th-century Black and Indigenous women were shaped by their relationship to the natural world, which freed them from the oppressive confines of domestic spaces. Try this next: Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy. |
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| The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria SmiliosHidden Figures fans will enjoy this evocative debut history from essayist Maria Smilios that chronicles the work of the early 20th-century Black women nurses at Staten Island's Sea View Hospital, who worked tirelessly to eradicate tuberculosis despite systemic racism, poor working conditions, and understaffing. Further reading: Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century by Jasmine Brown. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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