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History and Current Events May 2019
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Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow
by Henry Louis Gates
"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain onthe American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of freedom' in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in ahistory that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the 'nadir' of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the manyfaces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The book will be accompanied by a new PBS documentary series on the same topic, with full promotional support from PBS"
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| Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens's London by Claire HarmanLondon, 1840: Penny dreadfuls are surging in popularity and are believed to be a corrupting influence on the city’s lower-class residents. When aristocrat Lord William Russell is brutally murdered in his home, is a book to blame?
Starring: prime suspect François Corvoisier, a valet of Russell's who claimed in court that William Harrison Ainsworth's crime novel Jack Sheppard drove him to the violent deed. |
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| The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government... by Heath Hardage LeeWhat it is: the forgotten story of the military wives who mobilized to bring their POW husbands home from Vietnam.
How they did it: After forming the National League of Families, the women organized media campaigns, lobbied politicians, learned encryption to send and receive coded messages (earning the nickname "Jane Bonds"), and even negotiated directly with the North Vietnamese.
Reviewers say: Book clubs will flock to this "unputdownable" tale (Library Journal) that "begs for discussion" (Booklist). |
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| The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story by Cara RobertsonWhat it is: a fast-paced account of the notorious 1893 Lizzie Borden murder trial that utilizes court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and recently discovered letters written by Borden herself to argue that the jury who acquitted her got it wrong.
About the author: Debut author Cara Robertson is a lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk who spent 20 years researching the Borden case.
Who it's for: true crime aficionados and amateur sleuths. |
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The Club : Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age
by Leopold Damrosch
Brings to life a brilliant and eccentric cast of characters known simply as “the Club,” a group of extraordinary writers, artists and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern, whose friendship with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell stand at the heart of the narrative, conjuring the exciting, often brutal world of late 18th-century Britain.
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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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