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History and Current Events December 2020
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| We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky CooperHow it began: In 2009, Harvard University junior Becky Cooper learned about the gruesome unsolved murder of graduate student Jane Britton 40 years earlier and became gripped by the case.
What happened next: Cooper spent the next ten years investigating Britton's murder, finding new twists every step of the way.
What sets it apart: A nuanced and suspenseful exploration of the role institutional sexism played in burying the case. |
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| Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis by Jeffrey H. JacksonStarring: Gender-bending French artists (and longtime couple) Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who parlayed their creative talents into “artistic acts of psychological warfare” in Nazi-occupied Jersey.
How they did it: Schwob and Malherbe secretly distributed subversive notes, photos, and news in an effort to demoralize German soldiers. |
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| A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology by Toby WilkinsonWhat it's about: The century-long Egyptology craze that captivated Western archeologists, from the decoding of the Rosetta Stone in 1822 to the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.
Read it for: an accessible and richly detailed exploration of the imperialistic "orgy of destruction" undertaken by British, German, and French expeditions in search of the biggest treasures. |
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| The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and... by John U. BaconDecember 6, 1917: En route to Europe to deliver supplies for the war effort, French munitions vessel SS Mont-Blanc collided with Norwegian relief ship SS Imo in Halifax Harbor, triggering the largest explosion in history until the deployment of the atomic bomb three decades later.
The aftermath: Nearly 2,000 Haligonians were killed instantly and an estimated 9,000 more were injured; physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer later studied the incident while developing the atomic bomb. |
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| Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey KlugerWhat it is: An exciting account of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission that blends technical details of the mission with profiles of its participants.
Why you might like it: Science writer Jeffrey Kluger draws on interviews with crew members Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, as well as materials from the NASA Oral History Project, to recreate the mission. |
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| 1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth NortonWhat it's about: "The long 1774," which kicked off with the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 and ended with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
Read it for: A nuanced and persuasive account, supplemented with documents of the era, arguing that 1774 was just as crucial a year to American independence as 1776.
Author alert: A former president of the American Historical Association, Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emerita of American History at Cornell University. |
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| One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Gene WeingartenHow it began: After enlisting the help of strangers to pick a random date out of a hat, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten spent years researching the events of December 28, 1986.
What's inside: Murders, medical discoveries, freak accidents, and more; updated interviews with people involved in the headlines of the day.
Reviewers say: "A trove of compelling human-interest pieces with long reverberations" (Publishers Weekly). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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