History and Current Events
July 2025
Recent Releases
The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild
by Bryan Burrough

Forget the Alamo coauthor Bryan Burrough's rollicking and richly detailed history examines American gunfighter culture's origins in post-Civil War Texas. Further reading: Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them by John Bainbridge, Jr.
Taking Midway: Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of...
by Martin Dugard

Bestseller Martin Dugard's (coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series) cinematic follow-up to Taking London chronicles the events leading to the June 1942 naval Battle of Midway, which proved a turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II. For fans of: The Silver Waterfall: How America Won the War in the Pacific at Midway by Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor.
Shifting sands : a human history of the Sahara
by Judith Scheele

"A top scholar's new history of the Sahara, debunking myths of a timeless, unchanging wasteland and revealing a world of porous borders, constant change, and adaptation in the face of extremes"
The library of ancient wisdom : Mesopotamia and the making of the modern world
by Laura Selena Wisnom

"The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria's last great king, held an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, lay buried for thousands of years until a team of Victorian archaeologists discovered the remnants in modern-day Iraq. The clay had baked and hardened; the very fire that consumed the library had helped its texts to survive for millennia. In The Library of Ancient Wisdom, scholar Selena Wisnom, one of only a few hundred experts able to read cuneiform script today, guides us inside this important collection and, through its contents, brings ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life."
Kuleana : A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i
by Sara Kehaulani Goo

An award-winning journalist's breathtaking story of unexpected homecomings, familial hardship, and fierce devotion to ancestry creates a refreshingly new narrative about Hawaii, its native people, and their struggle to hold on to their land and culture today. Illustrations.
The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the...
by Lynne Olson

Historian Lynne Olson's (Empress of the Nile) disturbing yet inspiring latest focuses on four women French Resistance fighters who were captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, detailing how they worked together to survive World War II, help their fellow prisoners, and, post-war, seek justice for the atrocities they experienced. Further reading: The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss. 
Freedom season : how 1963 transformed America's civil rights revolution
by Peniel E. Joseph

"In Freedom Season, acclaimed historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a stirring narrative history of 1963, marking it as the defining year of the Black freedom struggle--a year when America faced a deluge of political strife and violence and emerged transformed. Nineteen sixty-three opened with the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation and ended with America in a state of mourning. Freedom Season shows how the upheavals of 1963 planted the seeds for watershed civil rights legislation and renewed hope in the promise and possibility of freedom"
The last great dream : how bohemians became hippies and created the sixties
by Dennis McNally

"Few cities represent the countercultural movement of the 1960s more than San Francisco. By that decade, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was home to self-branded 'freaks' (dubbed 'hippies' by the media) who created the world's first psychedelic neighborhood--an alchemical chamber for social transformation. They rejected a large part of the traditional American identity, passing over American exceptionalism, consumerism, misogyny, and militarism in favor of creativity, mind-body connection, peace, and love of all things. The Last Great Dream is a history of everything that led to the 1960s counterculture, when long-simmering resistance to American mainstream values birthed the hippie."
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Hoover Public Library
200 Municipal Dr., Hoover, Alabama 35216
205-444-7800

https://www.hooverlibrary.org