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History and Current Events May 2026 |
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| Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to '90s Sitcoms by Geoff BennettPeabody Award-winning PBS NewsHour co-anchor Geoff Bennett's sweeping and incisive debut explores the origins and evolution of Black comedy in the United States, spotlighting individual performers like minstrel Billy Kersands, vaudevillian Stepin Fetchit, actress/comedian Hattie McDaniel, and more. Further reading: Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond by Bethonie Butler; Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers by Donald Bogle. |
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| This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History by Beverly GagePulitzer Prize-winning historian Beverly Gage's engaging travelogue surveys 250 years of American history via visits to 13 places that have shaped the country, from Independence Hall to Disneyland and everything in between. Try this next: American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed by Isaac Fitzgerald. |
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| London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden KeefeIn his richly detailed latest, award-winning journalist Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing) chronicles the shocking death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler in 2019 London, revealing how Brettler's secret life posing as the son of a Russian oligarch led to his involvement in the city's seedy underworld. For fans of: Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn. |
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| Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age by Ibram X. KendiNational Book Award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi's (Stamped from the Beginning) thought-provoking latest details the origins and evolution of the great replacement theory -- the far-right conspiracy that claims white European people are deliberately being replaced by non-white immigrants -- and examines how leading politicians around the globe openly propagate these views. Further reading: The Great White Hoax: Two Centuries of Selling Racism in America by Philip Kadish. |
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| The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control by Jacob SiegelManifesto! podcast host and former United States Army intelligence officer Jacob Siegel's wide-ranging debut examines how America's post-9/11 surveillance state has spurred the rise of disinformation and misinformation. Further reading: Lies that Kill: A Citizen's Guide to Disinformation by Elaine C. Kamarck and Darrell M. West. |
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| True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color -- from Azure to Zinc Pink by Kory StamperIn her irreverent latest based on a decade of research, lexicographer Kory Stamper (Word by Word: The Secret Language of Dictionaries) traces Merriam-Webster staffers' surprisingly contentious efforts to define colors, which began with the 1931 establishment of the Inter-Society Color Council. Further reading: The World According to Color: A Cultural History by James Fox. |
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Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World
by Jane Ziegelman
A powerful exploration of the books created by Jewish Holocaust survivors to honor their lost world An animated tapestry. --Wall Street JournalBy the close of World War II, six million Jews had been erased from the face of the earth. Those who eluded death had lost their homes, families, and entire way of life. Their response was quintessentially Jewish. From a people with a long-history of self-narration, survivors gathered in groups and wrote books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Jane Ziegelman's Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts. Once There Was a Town resounds with the voices of rich and poor, shopkeepers and tradespeople, scholars and peddlers, Zionists and Communists, men and women telling stories of the towns that were their homes. Stops are made in the bustling market squares where Jewish merchants catered to local farmers; study houses where men recited Torah; kitchens where homemakers baked 20-pound loaves of bread; cemeteries where mourners conversed with departed loved ones and wooded groves where young couples met for the occasional moonlit tryst. Of the many towns on Ziegelman's itinerary, she always circles back to Luboml, her family's ancestral shtetl and the point of departure for her own journey of discovery. In conversation with classics by IB Singer and Roman Vishniac, Once There Was a Town is a landmark of rediscovery, and a love song to a vanished world.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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