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History and Current Events December 2019
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| A Castle in Wartime: One Family, Their Missing Sons, and the Fight to Defeat the Nazis by Catherine BaileyWhat it's about: an aristocratic German Italian family living in northern Italy who resisted the Nazi regime and were later targeted for their connections to a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.
Read it for: a pulse-pounding story of courage and survival.
For fans of: Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. |
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| Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H.W. BrandsWhat it is: a sweeping yet concise three-century survey of the American West.
What sets it apart: Historian H.W. Brands' demythologizing study argues that it was violent federal intervention, not rugged individualism, that facilitated westward expansion.
Don't miss: profiles of little-known figures who shaped the region, including the Chinese laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad. |
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| Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War by S.C. GwynneWhat it is: a vivid chronicle of the Civil War's decisive battles.
Is it for you? This unsparing account doesn't shy away from the battlefield devastation, the conditions of the POW camps, and the mistreatment of black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
About the author: Journalist and historian S.C. Gwynne was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for 2010's Empire of the Summer Moon. |
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Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House
by Joshua Zeitz
What it is: a highly detailed examination of U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s vision for a “Great Society,” which included programs like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, and Head Start. Historian Joshua Zeitz pays close attention to how LBJ’s inner circle -- including Jack Valenti, Bill Moyers, and Joe Califano -- helped to bring about these reforms.
You might also like: Robert Caro’s multivolume biography of LBJ, especially The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
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| One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Gene WeingartenHow it began: After enlisting the help of strangers to pick a random date out of a hat, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten spent years researching the events of December 28, 1986.
What's inside: murders, medical discoveries, freak accidents, and more; updated interviews with people involved in the headlines of the day.
Reviewers say: "a trove of compelling human-interest pieces with long reverberations" (Publishers Weekly). |
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London under : the secret history beneath the streets
by Peter Ackroyd
What it is: presents a chronicle of London's underground network of rivers, labyrinths and chambers and how they have been used in various time periods, from sewers and amphitheaters to crypts and tube stations.
Read it for: vivid descriptions of the Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, the Anglo Saxon graves under St. Pauls, the monastery of Whitefriars beneath Fleet Street--and more.
About the author: Ackroyd is an English biographer, novelist, and critic with a particular interest the in history and culture of London.
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| The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal by Howard BlumStarring: charismatic American Betty Pack, the "blonde Bond" whose efforts as an MI6 operative were crucial to an Allied victory.
Read it for: white-knuckle tales of Pack's derring-do, including securing documents that helped Alan Turing decrypt the Enigma Machine and cracking safes at the Vichy French Embassy to obtain naval codes.
Don't miss: newly declassified files. |
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St. Petersburg : madness, murder and art on the banks of the Neva
by Jonathan Miles
What it is: a fascinating history of the Russian city of St. Petersburg founded by Peter the Great in 1703, its successive transformations into Petrograd and Leningrad, and its role as a hub of both international culture and revolution.
Read it for: the incredible drama of the city's 300 years --its role as a hotbed of war and revolution and a place of siege and starvation.
About the author: Miles also wrote the critically acclaimed The Wreck of the Medusa.
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Ice at the end of the world : an epic journey into Greenland's buried past and our perilous future
by Jon Gertner
What it is: an urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland and what it reveals about climate change.
Read it for: Incredible descriptions: the ice sheet covering Greenland is 700 miles wide and 1500 miles long and composed of three quadrillion tons of ice..
About the author: Jon Gertner also wrote The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Invention.
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| Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas ReynoldsWhat it is: the intriguing, meticulously researched story of author Ernest Hemingway's affiliation with the OSS, a precursor to the CIA, and Russia's NKVD, a forerunner to the KGB.
Why you might like it: This globe-trotting adventure offers a revealing glimpse into the Pulitzer Prize winner's extracurricular exploits.
Further reading: Terry Mort's The Hemingway Patrols chronicles Hemingway's efforts to track German submarines during World War II. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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