History and Current Events
May 2025
Recent Releases
Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust
by Lucy Adlington

Bestselling author and clothes historian Lucy Adlington's well-researched follow-up to The Dressmakers of Auschwitz focuses on four Jewish girls whose experiences during the Holocaust unexpectedly intertwined thanks to their treasured red sweaters. Try this next: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family's Keepsake by Tiya Miles.
Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections
by Ken Block

If you value the integrity of our elections-or want a behind-the-scenes look at an attempt at overturning one-Disproven by Ken Block takes you out of the voting booth and into the chaos that was the attempt to challenge the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In November 2020, data specialist Ken Block received a phone call from the Trump Campaign. They wanted to hire him to find evidence of election fraud. What followed were late night and early morning requests to assess fraud claims at a blistering pace and ultimately find definitive evidence about the role voter fraud played in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Multiple subpoenas later, Block reveals the truth about being one of the few professionals hired to prove the Trump Campaign's allegation that voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 presidential election. He explains what the voter data tells us and exposes the sobering truth that our federal elections are operating on hundreds, if not thousands, of disparate voting systems prone to error--a threat to national election integrity. Disproven is an insider's look at the results of an inflammatory claim, a flawed system, and the changes drastically needed before the results of another election are threatened or contested.
The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to...
by Joshua Hammer

Journalist Joshua Hammer's (The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu) fast-paced latest chronicles the mid-19th century race among archaeologists and scholars to decode cuneiform script. This evocative adventure tale will appeal to fans of Margalit Fox's The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. 
Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement
by Elaine F. Weiss

The acclaimed author of The Woman's Hour returns with the story of four activists—Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, Myles Horton, and Bernice Robinson—whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.
Focus on: Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
Asian American Histories of the United States
by Catherine Ceniza Choy

Exploring themes of violence and resistance, Catherine Ceniza Choy's insightful and well-researched work offers illuminating perspectives on the erasure of Asian Americans from United States histories. Further reading: My Life: Growing Up Asian in America edited by the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE).
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects
by Theodore S. Gonzalves

A rich and compelling introduction to the history of Asian Pacific American communities as told through 101 objects from the Smithsonian collections.
My Life: Growing Up Asian in America
by Teresa Hsiao

Through a series of essays, poems and comics, 30 creators—including Melissa de la Cruz, Edmund Lee, Nathan Ramos-Park and Ellen K. Pao—give voice to moments that defined them and shed light on the immense diversity and complexity of the Asian American identity.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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