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History and Current Events March 2026 |
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American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology
by Jon Meacham
In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes.
Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
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The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy
by Susan Wise Bauer
Anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-reason beliefs seem to be triumphing over common sense today. How did we get here? The Great Shadow brings a huge missing piece to this puzzle―the experience of actually being ill. What did it feel like to be a woman or man struggling with illness in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, in the seventeenth century, or in 1920? And how did that shape our thoughts and convictions? The Great Shadow uses extensive historical research and first-person accounts to tell a vivid story about sickness and our responses to it, from very ancient times until the last decade. In the process of writing, historian Susan Wise Bauer reveals just how many of our current fads and causes are rooted in the moment-by-moment experience of sickness.
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Don't Tell the President: The Best, Worst, and Mostly Untold Stories from Presidential Advance
by Jean Becker
Dukakis is in the tank... The Queen looks like a talking purple hat... We didn't leave Chelsea Clinton in Moscow, right? The most harrowing and hilarious stories behind presidential events over the past sixty years--from the Rose Garden to Air Force One, foreign trips to the campaign trail--detailing the art of preparation that goes into these delicate, high stress operations and revealing how they have often been one step away from disaster. Don't Tell the President is a collection of the greatest tales of triumph and near-crisis in presidential advance.
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The Navigator's Letter: The True Story of Two WWII Airmen, a Doomed Mission, and the Woman Who Bound Them Together
by Jan Cress Dondi
The Navigator's Letter brings to light one of the best untold and dangerous stories of World War II, chronicling a moving and heroic story of patriotic duty, familial bonds, brotherhood, and love. One of the riskiest air raids of World War II occurred on August 1, 1943, over the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania--Nazi Germany's primary fuel source. The Allies believed that the destruction of Hitler's oil refineries would shorten the war. Using an untested strategy, it was worth the gamble, but the mission did not go according to plan--with 53 aircraft and 532 crewmen lost, it was the costliest US air raid of the war. A true story, The Navigator's Letter is a tale of uncanny coincidences: two friends from the same small Illinois town; both joined the Air Corps; both became navigators; both were assigned to B-24 Liberators; both flew missions over Europe; both of their planes were forced down over Ploesti; and both went missing-in-action. Intertwined with events of WWII, the story follows the two B-24 navigators coursing through wartime.
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| Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. MannThe brutal murder of Elizabeth Short--better known as the Black Dahlia--in 1947 has been in the public consciousness for nearly eighty years, yet no serious study of the crime has ever been published. Short has been mischaracterized as a wayward sex worker or vagabond, and--like the seductive femme fatales of film noir--responsible for and perhaps deserving of her fate. William J. Mann, however, is interested in the truth. His extensive research reveals her as a young woman with curiosity and drive, who leveraged what little agency postwar society gave her to explore the world, defying draconian postwar gender expectations to settle down, marry, and have children. It's time to re-examine the woman who became known as the Black Dahlia. Using a 21st-century lens, Mann connects Short's story to the anxious era after World War II, when the nation was grappling with new ideas, new demographics, new technologies, and old fears dressed up as new ones. Only by situating the Black Dahlia case within this changing world can we understand the tragedy of this young woman, whose life and death offer surprising mirrors on today |
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Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution
by Jonathan Turley
On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, law professor, legal analyst, and bestselling author of The Indispensable Right Jonathan Turley explores how the unique origins of American democracy set it apart from other revolutions, whether it can survive and thrive in the 21st century, and how the unfinished story of the revolution will play out in a rapidly changing world. Turley offers a hopeful account of how the lessons of the past can guide us through today's crisis of faith in democracy and see us into the future. He notes: From redcoats to robots, our challenges have changed. Yet, we have remained. Our greatest danger is not forgetting the history detailed in this book, but forgetting who we were in that history.
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Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
by Padraic X. Scanlan
In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight's devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers the definitive account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland's place in the United Kingdom and the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation. Ireland's overreliance on the potato was a desperate adaptation to an unstable and unequal marketplace created by British colonialism. The empire's laissez-faire economic policies saw Ireland exporting livestock and grain even as its people starved. When famine struck, relief efforts were premised on the idea that only free markets and wage labor could save the Irish. Ireland's wretchedness, before and during the Great Famine, was often blamed on Irish backwardness, but in fact, it resulted from the British Empire's embrace of modern capitalism. Uncovering the disaster's roots in Britain's deep imperial faith in markets, commerce, and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Great Famine and its tragic legacy.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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