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Notable Non-fiction April 2020 |
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New and Recently Released
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Olympic Pride, American Prejudice : The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley DraperDiscover the astonishing, inspirational, and largely unknown true story of the eighteen African American athletes who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, defying the racism of both Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South. Set against the turbulent backdrop of a segregated United States, sixteen black men and two black women are torn between boycotting the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany or participating. If they go, they would represent a country that considered them second-class citizens and would compete amid a strong undercurrent of Aryan superiority that considered them inferior. Yet, if they stayed, would they ever have a chance to prove them wrong on a global stage? To be better than anyone ever expected? Olympic Pride, American Prejudice is full of emotion, grit, political upheaval, and the American dream. Capturing a powerful and untold chapter of history, the narrative is also a celebration of the courage, commitment, and accomplishments of these talented athletes and their impact on race, sports and inclusion around the world.
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The Splendid and the Vile : A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik LarsonIn The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Winston Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports, Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
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The Age of Entitlement : America Since the Sixties by Christopher CaldwellChristopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half century, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement is a brilliant and ambitious argument about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.
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American Oligarchs : The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power by Andrea BernsteinAward-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, that stretches from the Klondike Gold Rush, through Nazi-occupied Poland and across the American Century, to our new gilded age. In building and maintaining their dynastic wealth, these families came to embody the rising nationalism and inequality that has pushed the United States to the brink of oligarchy. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein shows how the Trumps and the Kushners repeatedly broke rules and then leveraged secrecy, intimidation, and prosecutorial and judicial power to avoid legal consequences. The result is a compelling narrative that details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and that reveals the historical turning points and decisions―on taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws―that have brought us to where we are today.
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Why We're Polarized by Ezra KleinNeither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis.
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Yellow Bird : Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane MurdochWhen Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and few people were actively looking for him. Yellow Bird is an exquisitely written, masterfully reported story about a search for justice and a remarkable portrait of a complex woman who is smart, funny, eloquent, compassionate, and—when it serves her cause—manipulative. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing.
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The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda BennettWhat is a book club but an excuse to talk to friends? The Toni Morrison Book Club brings that experience to life by telling the story of four friends who turn to Toni Morrison as they search for meaning in their lives. In this startling group memoir, the writers--black and white, gay and straight, immigrant and American born--allow Morrison's words, like music, to make them feel, confess, and discover. The result is a collection of deeply personal conversations about everything from first love to Soul Train to police brutality, all told with an ever present lens on race in America. Not shying away from controversies, this book offers a radically new way to envision book clubs as a healing force in our lives. So pull up a chair and pour yourself a much needed glass of wine, as you get ready to experience the messy differences, surprising revelations, and restorative power of The Toni Morrison Book Club.
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Tuesday, April 14 Great Decisions Online Discussion 7:00 p.m. Our Great Decisions Discussion is moving online! Participants should watch the video prior to the discussion which will begin at 7:00 p.m. using Zoom. Participants must register online to receive the link to join the Zoom meeting. April's topic is Red Sea Security. The accompanying video is "Red Sea Rivalries - A Conflict of Interests." |
Wednesday, April 15 Afternoon Library Book Discussion Group - Now Online! 1:30 p.m. April's book is "The Last Runaway" by Tracy Chevalier. Participants must register online and provide an email address. The link to the Zoom meeting will be sent by email 15 minutes prior to the discussion. Tuesday, April 28 Evening Library Book Discussion Group - Now Online! 7:00 p.m. April's book is "Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum by Michael McCreary." This book is available to download at eLibraryNJ. Participants must register online and provide an email address. The link to the Zoom meeting will be sent by email 15 minutes prior to the discussion. Funny, You Don't Look Autistic is a BIG LIBRARY READ selection. Big Library Read connects readers around the world with the same book at the same time without any wait lists or holds. Borrow Funny, You Don't Look Autistic to join the book club. Big Library Read is running March 23 - April 13. Check out the bonus materials. Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn't "look" autistic. But, as he's quick to point out in this memoir, autism "looks" different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). |
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