Publisher: Penguin Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/18/2013
ISBN-13: 9781594204326
ISBN-10: 1594204322

The Third Coast is a "robust, zestfully knowledgeable, and seductively told" (Booklist) narrative of Chicago from the Great Depression through the 1960s. Historian (and Chicago local) Tom Dyja describes how three institutions -- the Mob, the Catholic church, and Democratic politicos in control of Cook county -- together brought Chicago both fame (as a cultural and industrial innovator) and notoriety (for explosive violence, bigotry, and entrenched political corruption). Dyja captures the tensions of a vibrant city in thrall to destructive influences that -- he maintains -- ultimately kept it from becoming "the city it could have been, the city it should have been." For more Chicago history, try William Cronon's Nature Metropolis too.

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/19/2013
ISBN-13: 9780553806533
ISBN-10: 055380653X

For decades, a chemical plant near the tiny town of Toms River, New Jersey, secretly dumped industrial waste into local waterways and dodged safety modifications to save their bottom line. During the1980s, skyrocketing incidents of childhood cancer among the town's residents slowly revealed the extent of its contaminated waterways, soil, and air. Award-winning science writer and investigative journalist Dan Fagin skillfully interweaves stories of individual tragedy with insights into epidemiology and environmental science; the result is "a gripping environmental thriller" (Kirkus Reviews) that fans of Fire on the Horizon by John Konrad and Tom Shroder won't want to miss.

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Publisher: Doubleday
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/02/2013
ISBN-13: 9780385532747
ISBN-10: 0385532741

Author Barbara Garson delivers sharp-eyed, sensitive reportage from the trenches of America's post-recession front-lines in Down the Up Escalator. Pundits proclaimed the Great Recession at an end in 2009: in reality, thousands of everyday Americans still cling tenuously to their homes, jobs, and savings. Employers guard their slim profit margins by opening only part-time and contract jobs. Former full-time professionals remain woefully underemployed and without savings, while still others remain among the long-term unemployed. Drawn from hundreds of personal interviews, Garson crafts a "quietly harrowing mosaic" (Publishers Weekly) of economic realities defined by resilience and surprising flashes of optimism.

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/12/2013
ISBN-13: 9780385534222
ISBN-10: 0385534221

After three years in the equatorial wilderness of West Africa, mid-19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu returned to London with the first known specimens of the African gorilla ever seen there. His discovery was quickly swept into the scientific community's heated debate over Darwin's recently revealed theory of evolution. The public was fascinated and horrified in turn by the strangely human remains -- and Chaillu's mysterious personal past fueled intensive speculation. Author Monte Reel vividly brings to life the terrors of jungle exploration and snarky Victorian academic society with equal verve in this fascinating, "robust intellectual history" (Publishers Weekly).

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Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/08/2011
ISBN-13: 9780307593863
ISBN-10: 030759386X

In this "brilliant feat of retroactive journalism" (Publishers Weekly), accomplished historian Peter Englund presents a uniquely humanized history of World War I by drawing primarily upon the letters, diaries, and public memoirs of twenty individuals who experienced the war firsthand. His eyewitnesses include an Australian woman who drove ambulances for the Serbian army, a 12-year-old German schoolgirl who poetically describes war as "a ghost in gray rags," a Polish aristocrat's American wife whose home was claimed as a typhus ward for German soldiers -- and still others. Their dramatically arranged stories convey a vivid sense of the war's action and its nearly overwhelming costs.

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Publisher: Pegasus Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 01/04/2009
ISBN-13: 9781605980164
ISBN-10: 1605980161

World War I's devastating Battle of the Somme claimed more than 300,000 lives over a five-month period. The 15-mile corridor along France's Somme River marked a turning point in the war -- and in military history -- as the first time that tanks were widely used in battle. The concurrent air war was also a decisive factor. In The Somme, eminent historian Peter Hart uses journal entries, photographs, letters home, planning documents, and other original resources to bring the experiences of foot soldiers on both sides to life.

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Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 05/03/2011
ISBN-13: 9780618758289
ISBN-10: 0618758283

Histories often portray WWI-era Britain as fully unified in its eagerness to fight Germany. To End All Wars is a fascinating "minority report" that instead highlights the very real persistence of British anti-war sentiments from 1914-1918. Award-winning historian and author Adam Hochschild examines prominent British supporters and detractors of Britain's role in the war. Growing labor unrest, Irish demand for home rule, and the ever-climbing death count of trench warfare are only some of the factors that made dissenters feel the war was futile. WWI and British history fans will find this very insightful, and readers interested in the history of dissent and/or peace studies will also be enthralled.

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/01/2003
ISBN-13: 9780375760525
ISBN-10: 0375760520

Paris 1919 brings to life the council of world leaders convened in Paris at the end of World War I to negotiate "a just and lasting peace." The loftier ideals of the "Big Three" attendees -- U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau -- were regrettably derailed as the meeting devolved into hastily negotiated territory grabs among other council members. Fans of David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace (on the post-WWI birth of the modern Middle East) will especially appreciate this impeccably researched, colorful account of the personal agendas and nationalist passions that shaped the Paris treaty.

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