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History and Current Events September 2020 |
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Up all night : Ted Turner, CNN, and the birth of 24-hour news
by Lisa Napoli
The journalist author of Radio Shangri-La blends media and history in an account of the founding of CNN by Ted Turner and a motley assortment of cable-television visionaries, big-league rejects and non-union newcomers, whose collective successes exceeded their wildest ambitions.
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The world : a brief introduction
by Richard Haass
The president of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations explains each region of the modern world, discusses the challenges of globalization and explores which are the most influential countries, events and ideas to help readers become more globally literate. Illustrations.
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Team of Five : The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump
by Kate Andersen Brower
The best-selling author of The Residence and First Women goes beyond the White House to uncover what, exactly, comes after the presidency, offering a glimpse into the complex relationships of five former presidents and taking us inside the exclusive world of these powerful men and their families.
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The S.S. officer's armchair : uncovering the hidden life of a Nazi
by Daniel Lee
One night at a dinner party in Florence, historian Daniel Lee was told about a remarkable discovery. An upholsterer in Amsterdam had found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the cushion of an armchair he was repairing. They belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich's Ministry of Economics and Labor in Nazi-occupied Prague during the war. An expert in the history of the Holocaust, Lee was fascinated to know more about this man--and how his most precious documents ended up hidden inside a chair, hundreds of miles from Prague and Stuttgart. In The S.S. Officer's Armchair, Lee weaves detection with biography to tell an astonishing narrative of ambition and intimacy in the Third Reich. He uncovers Griesinger's American back-story--his father was born in New Orleans and the family had ties to the plantations and music halls of nineteenth century Louisiana. As Lee follows the footsteps of a rank and file Nazi official seventy years later, and chronicles what became of him and his family at the war's end, Griesinger's role in Nazi crimes comes into focus. When Lee stumbles on an unforeseen connection between Griesinger and the murder of his own relatives in the Holocaust, he must grapple with potent questions about blame, manipulation, and responsibility. The S.S. Officer's Armchair is an enthralling detective story and a reconsideration of daily life in the Third Reich. It provides a window into the lives of Hitler's millions of nameless followers and into the mechanisms through which ordinary people enacted history's most extraordinary atrocity.
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Humankind : a hopeful history
by Rutger Bregman
It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis going right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think--and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature.
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The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times
by Anthony DePalma
What it is: an immersive portrait of everyday life for contemporary Cubans grappling with their country's "bizarre mash-up of an economy."
Read it for: the eye-opening interviews.
Author alert: A former Latin America correspondent for the New York Times, Anthony DePalma is the author of The Man Who Invented Fidel.
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Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward...
by Robert M. Gates
What it is: an incisive exploration of the uses and misuses of American power, written by former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.
Topics include: the 2003 invasion of Iraq; China's rise as a global superpower; North Korea's nuclear capabilities; Russia's destabilizing influence.
Reviewers say: "a judicious yet bracingly contrarian take on military and foreign policy from the ultimate insider" (Publishers Weekly).
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Recently Donated by the DAR
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Jefferson and the Virginians : democracy, constitutions, and empire
by Peter S Onuf
Examines the ways in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians—George Washington, James Madison and Patrick Henry—conceptualized their home state from a political and cultural perspective, offering glimpses into the struggle to define Virginia—and America—within the context of the Revolutionary War and beyond.
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The martyr and the traitor : Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution
by Virginia DeJohn Anderson
In The Martyr and the Traitor, Virginia DeJohn Anderson offers an intertwined narrative of men from very similar backgrounds and reveals how their relationships within their families and communities became politicized as the imperial crisis with Britain erupted. She explores how these men forged their loyalties in perilous times and believed the causes for which they died to be honorable. Through their experiences, The Martyr and the Traitor illuminates the impact of the Revolution on ordinary lives and how the stories of patriots and loyalists were remembered and forgotten after independence.
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George Washington's Barbados diary, 1751-52
by George Washington
In the autumn of 1751, at the age of nineteen, George Washington sailed with his older half-brother Lawrence from Virginia to the Caribbean island of Barbados―the one and only time that the future Revolutionary War hero and president would leave the shores of continental North America. Lawrence had long been in poor health and hoped, in vain, that the island climate would prove restorative. The Washingtons landed in early November, and George spent seven weeks on Barbados, recording his impressions of everything from the exotic landscapes and local culture, to the cultivation of sugarcane and the particulars of plantation slavery, before bidding his brother adieu and embarking on the return sail to Virginia. The two sea voyages provided plenty of adventure, at times harrowing, and framed an island interlude that exposed young George to new cultures and new experiences―and also to smallpox. His exposure to the dread disease, and his resulting immunity, would prove fateful a quarter century later when the commander in chief of the ragtag American revolutionary forces blunted a threat more grave than British cannon by directing the immunization of his troops. Technological advances and fresh scholarship make this the most comprehensive and authoritative edition that has ever been--or likely will ever be--published.
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Exploration and Exploitation
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| Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood... by William CarlsenWhat it's about: In 1839, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British architect Frederick Catherwood explored the jungles of Yucatán, where they encountered 1,500-year-old Mayan ruins.
Why it matters: Stephens and Catherwood's findings challenged their contemporaries' notions of Indigenous cultural inferiority.
Read it for: a lively and evocative tale of friendship, adventure, and rediscovery. |
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| The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure by Carl HoffmanWhat it's about: two enigmatic Westerners -- one a "buccaneer," the other a "do-gooder" -- who called Borneo home in the 1970s and '80s.
Starring: American art dealer Michael Palmieri, who made a fortune acquiring native relics for museums; and Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser, who lived among the Penan tribe, fought logging efforts in the region, and mysteriously disappeared in 2000.
Awards buzz: This haunting cautionary tale from travel writer Carl Hoffman was a 2019 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime and a Banff Mountain Book Awards Finalist. |
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| To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age... by Edward J. LarsonWhat it is: a breathless account of a pivotal year for exploration, which saw concurrent expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Peary, and Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi.
Where they went: Shackleton headed to Antarctica, where he set a new Farthest South record; Peary embarked on his eighth North Pole expedition; the Duke of the Abruzzi led a summit of K2 in Asia.
Read it for: an evocative narrative that's "so well-related as to make you feel the chill" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World by Peter MooreWhat it is: a comprehensive history of the HMS Endeavour, the British ship that circumnavigated the globe from 1768-1771.
Why you might like it: This accessible page-turner details Endeavour's complicated legacy as a symbol of remarkable discovery and destructive imperialism.
Reviewers say: "History at its most exciting and revealing" (Kirkus Reviews); "Maritime history that opens onto much more" (Booklist). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Iredell County Public Library
201 North Tradd Street
Statesville, North Carolina 28677
704-878-3090www.iredell.lib.nc.us/ |
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