History and Current Events
July 2022
Recent Releases
The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats -- and Our Response -- Will Change the World
by Ian Bremmer

The premise: "We need crises scary enough to make us forge a new international system that promotes effective cooperation on a few crucial questions."

The crises:
COVID-19 and other pandemics, climate change, and the rise of digital technology.

Why you might like it: Political scientist Ian Bremmer's pragmatic yet hopeful latest offers clear-eyed solutions to tackle these three threats.  
African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Freedom
by David Hackett Fischer

What it's about: how enslaved Africans and their cultural practices shaped colonial America.

Author alert: Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Washington's Crossing.

Reviewers say: "a comprehensive demographic history with a powerful and important corrective thesis" (Booklist).
We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power
by Caleb Gayle

What it is: a compelling history exploring the enduring repercussions of the Creek Nation both enslaving Black Americans and accepting them as full tribal members.

Why it matters: Journalist Caleb Gayle's thought-provoking chronicle illuminates the complex (and often overlooked) relationship between Black and Indigenous Americans.

Further reading: An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays.
Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
by James Kirchick

What it's about: how LGBTQIA government employees in 20th-century Washington, D.C. were forced to remain closeted or risk their livelihood.

Read it for: an inspiring and fast-paced chronicle of perseverance in the face of oppression.

Featuring: recently declassified documents; interviews with more than 100 people; a cast of characters grouped by presidential administration; a historical map featuring important LGBTQIA landmarks in D.C. 
Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War
by Phil Klay

What it is: an incisive account of the war on terrorism's toll on soldiers and civilians alike, written by National Book Award-winning author and Iraq War veteran Phil Klay (Redeployment). 

What's inside: essays written over the past decade exploring themes of trauma, grief, futility, and faith. 

Try this next: Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning of Our Longest War by Erik Edstrom. 
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation
by Linda Villarosa

What it's about: how racial disparities in healthcare adversely affect Black Americans. 

Author alert: Journalist Linda Villarosa expands her 2018 New York Times Magazine article on Black maternal and infant mortality rates in this sobering study.

Reviewers say: "an urgent and utterly convincing must-read" (Publishers Weekly).
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