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History and Current Events December 2019
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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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Lost children archive
by Valeria Luiselli
The award-winning author of Tell Me How It Ends traces a profoundly human family summer road trip across America that is shaped by historical and modern displacement tragedies as well as a growing rift between the two parents
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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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| 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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| 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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Kingdom of lies : unnerving adventures in the world of cybercrime
by Kate Fazzini
A Georgetown University cybersecurity expert presents a sobering behind-the-scenes portrait of the interconnected cultures of hackers, security specialists and law enforcement that are deceiving everyday citizens with misrepresentations of their expertise.
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| Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer and the African Adventure That Took the... by Monte ReelWhat it's about: In the 1850s, explorer Paul Du Chaillu embarked on a harrowing expedition to West Africa, returning to Victorian London with gorilla specimens, a creature many Europeans believed to be myth.
Why it matters: Du Chaillu's discovery and his enigmatic background stoked much fascination and controversy in the scientific community, which was also in the midst of heated debates concerning Charles Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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