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History and Current Events July 2018
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| Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall by Steven BrillWhat it is: a searing and insightful treatise on how well-intentioned structural changes in politics and the economy have led to what the author sees as a deteriorating American democracy.
What's inside: inspiring profiles of individuals (such as Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service) whose efforts and influence may help cure America of its current ills. |
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| West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express by Jim DeFeliceWhat it's about: the oft-mythologized mail delivery enterprise that lasted less than two years before its operation was shuttered with the 1861 arrival of the transcontinental telegraph.
Why you might like it: Breezy and accessible, West Like Lightning brings to vivid life the major players of the Pony Express, including famous riders Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.
Reviewers say: "Fans of the Old West will find many delightful nuggets in this fast-moving story" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, & Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy HornWhat it is: a somber study of New York City's Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island), purchased in 1828 for utopian aims but quickly overrun by corrupt officials. Poorly maintained hospitals, prisons, and an insane asylum housed residents who were punished and mistreated.
Did you know? Several authors visited the island -- Charles Dickens referred to it as "a lounging, listless madhouse;" journalist Nellie Bly's 1887 exposé Ten Days in a Mad-House recounts her undercover stint at the Women's Lunatic Asylum. |
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| Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood by Al RokerWhat it's about: On May 31, 1889, the poorly engineered South Fork Dam -- built for a lake resort frequented by wealthy guests (including Andrew Carnegie) -- burst after a heavy rainfall, engulfing Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 20 million tons of water. The disaster killed over two thousand people and remains the deadliest flood in U.S. history.
What sets it apart: Al Roker combines a page-turning disaster epic with an informative morality tale, exploring how class and privilege played a part in facilitating the tragedy. |
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| Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith ShefferWhat it's about: Psychiatrist Hans Asperger's early benevolent work with autistic children turned sinister as he fell in line with the Nazi regime, experimenting on -- and eventually killing -- children deemed "inferior."
About the author: Historian Edith Sheffer is the parent of a child with autism and the author of Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain.
Is it for you? Readers who enjoy surveys of medical ethics like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks will appreciate this thought-provoking cautionary tale. |
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Inventing the immigration problem : the Dillingham Commission and its legacy
by Katherine Benton-Cohen
In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts--women and men trained in the new field of social science--fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation's place in the world. Katherine Benton-Cohen argues that the Dillingham Commission's legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later. Within a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission's recommendations--including a literacy test, a quota system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy--were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics. The Dillingham Commission--which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States--reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America's immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Culpeper County Library 271 Southgate Shopping Center Culpeper, Virginia 22701 540-825-8691
www.cclva.org
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