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History and Current Events September 2026 |
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Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower by Andrew Bayliss In this landmark new history, renowned Sparta expert Andrew Bayliss delivers a strikingly clarifying, relentlessly complex portrait of a culture and people long shrouded in myth. He brings to life the excruciating training, rigid dietary habits, and extreme discipline that molded the warriors of history's most renowned military power. He also lays bare lesser-known aspects of Spartan society that complicate its egalitarian reputation, including complex gender dynamics, stark wealth inequality, and its brutal exploitation of slave labor and illuminates how the Spartans' ruthless might, unparalleled military ambition, and singular exclusivity fueled their seemingly unstoppable rise--and how those same factors became their undoing. Further reading: Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy.
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American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon by Mark A. JohnsonMark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on some familiar American narratives. More than a story of production, marketing, and consumption, Johnson argues, this cultural history connects bacon to race, class, and gender while also illuminating major historical forces, such as migration, warfare, urbanization and suburbanization, reform movements, cultural trends, and globalization. Further reading: The Founders of American Cuisine: Seven Cookbook Authors, With Historical Recipes by Harry Haff.
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Yakuza: A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld by Andrew RankinJapan's gangster groups, known collectively as the yakuza, are among the oldest underworld societies in the world. With military-style organization and a code of absolute obedience, they have run Japan's black markets for centuries. They have remained strikingly conspicuous in Japanese society and as a cultural force beyond Japan, with movies and video games celebrating their exploits globally. Andrew Rankin offers the first comprehensive history of the yakuza, from their emergence out of seventeenth-century samurai gang culture to the present day. Though their activities have always encompassed illegal gambling and sex trafficking, the yakuza have also aggressively maintained business interests in private security, the construction industry, the entertainment industry, and debt collection. Yakuza bosses acquired a degree of legitimacy by styling themselves as peacekeepers maintaining order at society's bottom end. Yet that legitimacy has come into doubt in recent years as Japan's contracting economy has pushed the yakuza into increasingly predatory criminal activities. Try this next: Mafia: A Global History by Ryan Gingeras.
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Contact your librarian for more great books! |
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Forsyth County Public Library
585 Dahlonega Street, Cumming, Georgia 30040
770-781-9840ForsythPL.org |
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