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History and Current Events May 2025 |
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| The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America*by Kostya KennedyWhat it is: a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more. Journalist Kostya Kennedy offers a novel, accessible history chronicles Paul Revere's fateful midnight ride to warn American minutemen of the British army's impending arrival. Praise: "A richly detailed, congenial, and dryly humorous account... The perfect read to mark the 250th anniversary of this foundational act." (Booklist) |
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Praise: "Theoharis depicts a complex, radical King whose fight against Northern racism alternately inspires and infuriates... A powerful must-read that sheds new light on King and the Civil Rights Movement." (Kirkus) |
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| Praise: "Novelistic and wrenching, this serves as a poignant testament to the unconquerability of the human spirit." (Publishers Weekly) |
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What's inside: Belfast journalist Martin Dillon returns to the Troubles to spotlight the role of women during and after the turbulent time in Northern Irish history. Among the voices brought to light are former IRA volunteers, the wife of a notorious UDA commander, a survivor of the 1974 Dublin bombings, and the daughter of a murdered judge. Dillon also reveals the shadowy dealings of British intelligence and the impact of collusion on unsolved murders and widespread deception. |
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| Praise: "Rooks deftly sketches this lamentable, sobering history." (The Atlantic)Further reading: Bettina L. Love's Punished for Dreaming. |
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What's inside: Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember gives a sweeping and trenchant examination of 19th and 20th century Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by these systemic attempts to eliminate Native culture. Praise: "Elegantly weaving together her mother’s stories, those of other boarding school students, and concise accounts of federal assimilationist policies and common institutional practices, [Pember] provides an informed and unsettling perspective on the schools’ individual and collective impact... A gripping, often harrowing account of the personal and communal toll of cultural genocide. (Kirkus) |
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Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek ThompsonWhat's inside: In this groundbreaking, buzzworthy new book by Ezra Klein of The New York Times and Derek Thompson of The Atlantic, the authors explore how systemic scarcity and unaffordability in areas like housing, healthcare and climate action stem from outdated solutions, emphasizing the need for a mindset shift toward abundance and proactive systems to drive transformative progress. Who it's for: On the book's partisanship, the Washington Post writes notes that Abundance "deftly diagnoses America’s sclerotic inability to build, well, much of anything across multiple domains in the physical world...Trump supporters in Silicon Valley love saying ‘it’s time to build,’ and here are some influential liberals who wholeheartedly agree... The modern right might not like everything Abundance has to offer, but it sure beats a bipartisan program of artificial scarcity." |
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| There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian GoldstoneWhat's inside: In a sobering and richly detailed expansion of his viral 2019 article "The New American Homeless," journalist Brian Goldstone follows five Atlanta families experiencing homelessness despite having full-time jobs. Praise: "An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted*." (The New York Times Book Review) |
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The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story*by Pagan KennedyWhat's inside: Seasoned columnist Pagan Kennedy investigates the overlooked contributions of Martha “Marty” Goddard, who pioneered the rape kit and advocated for the rights of sexual assault survivors in the 1970s. Kennedy interweaves Goddard's story with her own experiences and the troubling history of American forensics. Praise: "This narrative of gendered injustice and the redemptive power of feminist history has an almost mythical force." (The New Yorker) |
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Praise: "This top-shelf blend of history and entertainment is as edifying as it is exciting." (Publishers Weekly) |
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Praise: "An engaging and agreeably ornate history of earlier mountaineering ... paints a vivid picture of this seemingly innate need and those who first heeded its call." (New York Times Book Review) |
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Praise: "Synnott delivers a thrilling account of his 2022 journey through Canada’s inhospitable Artic islands in search of the truth about what happened to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845... a page-turner." (Publishers Weekly) |
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Praise: "At once narrative history, family chronicle and personal memoir… [a] luminous work of investigation and introspection." (The Wall Street Journal) |
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Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America*by Will BardenwerperWhat's inside: In this poignant memoir, journalist and veteran Will Bardenwerper tells the story of saving a minor league baseball team in his Rust Belt hometown, exploring the modern social, economic, and cultural underpinnings of small town America along the way. Praise: "A fast-paced narrative that alternates between snappy game coverage, heartwarming small-town traditions, and grim analysis of deindustrialization's impact on American communities." (Shelf Awareness) |
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| The Making of Asian America: A History*by Erika LeeWhat's inside: Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Adult Nonfiction in 2016, Erika Lee's sweeping survey of Asian immigration in the United States eschews monolithic conceptions of Asian identity by detailing the specific experiences of people from various ethnic groups. Praise: Sweeping... Lee's comprehensive history traces the experiences of myriad Asian-American communities, from Chinese laborers in 1850s California to Hmong refugees in 1980s Minnesota... a useful and important upgrade..." (The New York Times Book Review) |
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To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other by Viet Thanh NguyenWhat's inside: Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a deeply personal reflection on the role of the "outsider" in U.S. literature and society. Across six essays, first delivered as the Norton Lectures, Nguyen offers insightful readings of authors who shaped his craft, culminating in a poignant and vigorous call for solidarity. Praise: "Profound…Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through literary, historical, political, and familial lenses…while addressing concerns about the writer’s responsibility in a time of violence and the burdens and pleasures of the 'minor' writer in society." (Poets & Writers) |
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Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael LuoWhat's inside: New Yorker executive editor and second-generation Taiwanese American Michael Luo follows the multi-century trajectory of Chinese people in America, from the middle of the 19th century, when immigrants persisted amidst suspicion, through the Exclusion Act and growing native born population, and finally through the post-1965 immigration wave. Praise: "Readers interested in American history, not only Chinese American history, will savor these pages. An estimable and vital work of history that honors the Chinese American experience." (Kirkus) |
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Praise: "In her powerful manifesto, Bianca Mabute-Louie unapologetically rejects assimilation and forges an Asian American identity on her own terms…. Mabute-Louie shows how being unassimilable provides opportunity for wholeness, mission and communy." (Book Riot) |
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A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos TheoryWhat's inside: an inspiring and hopeful memoir from a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, which details his journey from growing up in rural India to revolutionizing global weather prediction, improving food security, and advancing climate science. About the author: Meteorologist and climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is a Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University in the United States. His work with the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earned his team a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Praise: "Shukla is a captivating storyteller, modest, funny, and warm. Readers will be thrilled to discover a new hero, a globally impactful scientist, educator, and humanitarian." (Booklist) |
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What it is: French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022.The Years, one of her most beloved, works, is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory. Ernaux compares over a half a century of photos, books, songs, radio, television, and advertising with her own intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries.The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges and time and culture itself, inexorable, narrates its own course. Praise: "The Years is an earnest, fearless book, a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism, for our period of absolute commodity fetishism." (The New York Times Book Review); "Ernaux transforms her life into history and her memories into the collective memory of a generation." (Los Angeles Review of Books) |
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Contact your librarian for more great books! |
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