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History and Current Events August 2018
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| Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America by Alissa QuartWhat it is: an in-depth and ambitious look at the systemic hardships faced by the American middle class, offering policy-based solutions.
About the author: Alissa Quart is the executive editor of the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Book buzz: Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich calls Squeezed "a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today." |
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Fly Girls : How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
by Keith O'Brien
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
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| Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History... by Lynn Vincent and Sara VladicWhat it's about: On July 30, 1945, a Japanese submarine torpedoed and sank the USS Indianapolis, with all but 317 of the 1,196 crew perishing after the initial attack and in the four days before help arrived.
Did you know? The Indianapolis was torpedoed mere days after the completion of its highly classified mission to deliver the atomic bomb "Little Boy" to the Pacific Islands. Little Boy, the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare, was dropped on Hiroshima one week after the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. |
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The Husband Hunters : American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
by Anne De Courcy
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married into the impoverished British aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century – The real women who inspired Downton Abbey
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.
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| Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom KizziaWhat it's about: In 2002, the fundamentalist Pilgrim family squared off against the National Park Service after their 420-acre homestead infringed on land owned by Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The initial skirmish kicked off an investigation that uncovered the Pilgrim family's chilling history -- and the fact that its patriarch was not what he seemed.
About the author: A longtime Alaska journalist (and Pilgrim family neighbor), Tom Kizzia had unparalleled access to the secretive family throughout the course of his reportage. |
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| 17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis, and the Biggest Cover-Up in History by Andrew MortonWhat it is: a revelatory chronicle of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's close ties to Adolf Hitler, who planned to install the pair as puppet monarchs after his invasion of Britain.
Chapters include: "Sex, Drugs, and Royal Blackmail;" "A Shady Royal in a Sunny Place;" "The Hunt for Pirate Gold."
Reviewers say: "reads like a good spy thriller" (Booklist); "hard to put down" (Library Journal). |
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| American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey ToobinWhat it is: a propulsive account of Patty Hearst's 1974 kidnapping by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an organization she later claimed to have joined in earnest, famously robbing a bank with them.
What sets it apart: Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin offers a balanced view of Hearst's subsequent federal trial, demonstrating both sides' incompetence and opportunism.
Why you might like it: Though Toobin never states whether he believes Hearst acted of her own accord, he provides plenty of detailed research for readers to draw their own conclusions. |
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