History and Current Events
August 2025
Recent Releases
Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets
by Dorothy Armstrong

Material culture historian Dorothy Armstrong's sweeping and well-researched world history details the practical and symbolic roles carpets have played in shaping human civilization by spotlighting 12 individual carpets woven between 500 BCE and the present.
Scorched Earth : A Global History of World War II
by Paul Thomas Chamberlin

Dispatches the myth of World War II as a good war. Instead, the author depicts the conflict as it truly was: a massive battle beset by vicious racial atrocities, fought between rival empires across huge stretches of Asia and Europe. World War II was the culmination of centuries of colonial violence and ushered in a new era of imperial struggle.
Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the...
by Scott Ellsworth

Compelling and well-researched latest focuses on the final year of the American Civil War, revealing how John Wilkes Booth may have been part of a long-planned Confederate conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. 
The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature
by Charlie English

Chronicles the CIA's successful efforts to weaken Soviet censorship and control by distributing subversive and pro-democracy literature to Eastern Europe in the 1980s. 
Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream
by Megan Greenwell

Investigates the damaging impact private equity firms have on American workers and communities. 
The World at First Light : A New History of the Renaissance
by Bernd Roeck

A new and ambitious history of the Renaissance as a global event which was much more revolutionary and profoundly influential than we currently appreciate. Drawing on a multidisciplinary awareness of history, art, philology, literature, philosophy, science and medicine, and exploiting both traditional accounts and post-colonial approaches, the author seeks to explain how the Renaissance came about and how it was, for better or worse, both the dawn of the modern world and the dawning of modern worldliness. 
Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights...
by Sam Kean

A lively chronicle of how experimental archeologists utilize evidence found at dig sites to replicate ancient rituals and customs, including hunting with period-appropriate weaponry, playing an Aztec ballgame, brewing ancient Egyptian beer, and even mummifying corpses. 
The Art Spy : The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII resistance Hero Rose Valland
by Michelle Young

A saga set in Paris during World War II uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the world's most treasured masterpieces.
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