History and Current Events
May 2025
Recent Releases
Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust
by Lucy Adlington

Bestselling author and clothes historian Lucy Adlington's well-researched follow-up to The Dressmakers of Auschwitz focuses on four Jewish girls whose experiences during the Holocaust unexpectedly intertwined thanks to their treasured red sweaters. Try this next: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family's Keepsake by Tiya Miles.
The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to...
by Joshua Hammer

Journalist Joshua Hammer's (The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu) fast-paced latest chronicles the mid-19th century race among archaeologists and scholars to decode cuneiform script. This evocative adventure tale will appeal to fans of Margalit Fox's The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. 
The birth of the Anglo-Saxons : three kings and a history of Britain at the dawn of the Viking age
by Max Adams

Explores eighth-century Britain, focusing on Mercian dominance under Kings Æthelbald and Offa; their political, economic and cultural innovations; and their lasting influence on medieval England's geography, kingship and church relations. Illustrations.
Chokepoints : American power in the age of economic warfare
by Edward Fishman

A gripping account of America's shift to economic warfare details how U.S. leaders harnessed financial and technological power to confront authoritarian regimes, reshape globalization and create an economic arms race that redefines global alliances and tensions.
Focus on: Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
Minor feelings : an Asian American reckoning
by Cathy Park Hong

"Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition--if such a thing exists? Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively confronts this thorny subject, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. Binding these essays togetheris Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth"
The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in...
by Bradford Pearson

Journalist Bradford Pearson's well-researched history spotlights the little-known story of the Eagles, a high school football team of Japanese American boys interned at Wyoming's Heart Mountain Relocation Center during World War II. Try this next: Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown.
Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now
by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang

This engaging collection of essays, interviews, playlists, illustrations, and memes explores how Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have impacted politics and popular culture in the last 30 years. Further reading: Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture edited by Eric Nakamura.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Auburn Public Library
49 Spring St.
Auburn, Maine 04210
207-333-6640

www.auburnpubliclibrary.org/