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History and Current Events April 2024
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Smoke and ashes : opium's hidden histories
by Amitav Ghosh
Part travelogue, part memoir, part essay in history, the author, drawing on decades of archival research, charts the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India and China—and on contemporary globalism itself, revealing the role one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
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Madness : race and insanity in a Jim Crow asylum
by Antonia Hylton
Tracing the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current healthcare system, a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation's last segregated asylums.
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| A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging by Lauren MarkhamJournalist Lauren Markham's "remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis" (Kirkus Reviews) chronicles the aftermath of the 2020 burning of a large refugee camp in Greece, in which young Afghan migrants were falsely accused of arson. Try this next: The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri. |
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Women behind the wheel : an unexpected and personal history of the car
by Nancy A. Nichols
"Since their inception cars have defined American culture, but until quite recently car histories were largely written by and about men-with little attention given to the fascinating story of women and cars. In this engaging non-fiction narrative, Nancy A. Nichols, the daughter of a used car salesman, uses the cars her father sold and the ones her family drove to tell a larger story about how the car helped to define modern womanhood. From her sister's classic Mustang to her mother's Chevy Convertible toher own Honda minivan, Nichols tells a personal story in order to shed light on a universal one. Cars helped women secure the right to vote, changed the nature of romance, and influenced both fashion and child rearing customs. In the just over 100 years since their inception, cars have created possibilities for commerce and romance even as they exposed women to new kinds of danger. Women Behind the Wheel explores the uniquely gendered landscape of the automobile, detailing the many reasons why cars are both more expensive and more dangerous for women drivers. The automobile is on the cusp of momentous change. As we advance into the era of electric, connected, and autonomous vehicles, Nichols shows us why we should hit the brakes and look back in the rear-view mirror at this long and fascinating history. What is the role of the car in our lives? Should we be more skeptical of technology in our society? In Women Behind the Wheel, Nichols argues convincingly that only by understanding the many ways the car has changed us, can we hope to prepare ourselves for this brave new era"
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| The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in... by James L. SwansonHistorian James L. Swanson's fast-paced latest chronicles "one of the most dramatic episodes in colonial American history" -- the 1704 attack on the Deerfield settlement in Massachusetts conducted by a party of 204 Native and French raiders. Try this next: Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace. |
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A day in the life of Abed Salama : anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy
by Nathan Thrall
"Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos-the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad's fate. It is every parent's worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed's quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy. Immersive and gripping, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is an indelibly human portrait of the Jewish-Palestinian struggle that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth"
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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