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History & Current Events June 2025 |
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Before Elvis
by Preston Lauterbach
This is a thought-provoking exploration of the Black musicians who inspired Elvis Presley’s music. In Before Elvis, Lauterbach examines the lives, music, legacies, and interactions of four innovative Black artists who created a style that would come to be known as Rock ’n’ Roll: Little Junior Parker, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and Calvin Newborn, whose portrayal will be a revelation to even the most seasoned Elvis Presley and rock devotees. Lauterbach makes a convincing case that will give readers a new perspective on the King of Rock 'n Roll who came to rule because of them.
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Children of Radium
by Joe Dunthorne
This extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. When Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather's memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed with this memoir, Dunthorne traveled to places where hundreds of bombs remain hidden to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family's past.
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Mother Sauce
by Lucinda Scala Quinn
When Italian families first arrived in the U.S. in the first part of the twentieth century, the women brought with them the skills and ingredient know-how to fashion a whole new foodway, in spite of living in poverty and their ostracization from their newly adopted country. These remarkable women gave birth to a cuisine that their fathers, husbands, and sons then monetized outside the home. Quinn shares the origins of the recipes and gives credit to the women who developed the dishes.
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Spell Freedom
by Elaine F. Weiss
In the summer of 1954, Esau Jenkins and Septima Clark travelled to Tennessee’s Highlander Center, a rural interracial training school for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white educator with roots in the labor movement. There, the three united behind a shared preparing Black southerners to pass the suppressive literacy tests required to vote in the era of Jim Crow. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Johnson, they launched the effort known as the Citizenship Schools project which grew into a subversive network of nine hundred schools and created a generation of activists.
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Tamed
by Alice Roberts
For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors were just one wild species among many, their survival dependent on the whims of nature. Then, gradually, they began to tame the plants and animals all around them. Combining genetics, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology, Tamed tells the story of the greatest revolution in human history, revealing the fascinating origins of crucial domesticated species and how they transformed humanity. As she uncovers the astounding global implications of domestication, Alice Roberts urges readers to look again at their relationship with and influence upon the natural world.
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The Age of Melt
by Lisa Baril
Glaciers figure prominently in both ancient and contemporary narratives around the world. They inspire art and literature. They spark both fear and awe. And they give and take life. In The Age of Melt, environmental journalist Lisa Baril explores the deep-rooted cultural connection between humans and ice through time. Thousands of organic artifacts are emerging from patches of melting ice in mountain ranges around the world. Archaeologists are in a race against time to find them before they disappear forever. In entertaining and enlightening prose, Baril travels to investigate what these artifacts teach about climate and culture today.
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The Banks We Deserve
by Oscar Perry Abello
The number of community banks in the United States has been steadily declining for decades, giving way to big banks that have little connection to the communities they claim to serve. In The Banks We Deserve, Abello argues that community banking has a crucial role to play in addressing urgent social challenges, from creating a more racially just economy, to preparing for a changing climate. Abello tells the stories of new community banks in hopes that these stories inspire others to take some of the same steps they have. He names advocates, organizers, and innovators who show it can be done and that it is being done.
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Ghosts of Iron Mountain
by Phil Tinline
In 1966, amid unrest over the Vietnam War and the alarming growth of the military-industrial complex, Lewin was approached by a group of ingenious satirists to concoct a document that would pretend to ratify everyone’s fears that the government was deceiving the public. He did not realize it at the time, but he had created a narrative that fed the interests of both ends of the political spectrum, one which continued to propagate and live. In this riveting tale of a deception, there is an unsettling warning about how, in contemporary times, a hoax may no longer be a hoax if it can be used to recruit followers to a cause.
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Lost at Sea
by Joe Kloc
Examining the policies that have exacerbated the contemporary housing crisis, Lost at Sea weaves together tales of comradery and survival on the anchorage with the rich history of the region, from the creation of unspeakable wealth during the Gold Rush era, to the aftermath of the earthquake and fire of 1906. Along the way, Kloc discovers the quiet beauty of these survivors' world: how they care for each other, band together to fend off developers, and fight for their way of life. In the process, he explores the world of poverty and homelessness that exists in the wealthiest enclaves of America.
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Poisoning the Well
by Sharon Udasin
This is the shocking true-life story of how some chemicals poisoned the entire country. Based on original reporting, Poisoning the Well traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. Readers learn that chemicals found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans, and they see the failure of the government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, this book offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature.
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