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History and Current Events August 2026 |
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1942: Crux of War
by Jonathan Parshall
Engrossing and comprehensive, one of the country's most admired military historians offers an encyclopedic saga of the year in which the outcome of World War Two hung in the balance.
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Where the Earth Meets the Sky: A Story of Penguins, People, and Place in Antarctica
by Louise K. Blight
Set in the coldest, most inaccessible landscape on the planet, this is the story of a female scientist navigating Antarctica's extreme wilderness, revealing how nature can heal the human soul. Where the Earth Meets the Sky is a chronicle of Louise's time working in the most isolated place in the world. With just one other human being and two thousand penguins for company, this remote Antarctic laboratory allowed her not only to advance the study of seabirds, but also to discover important truths about grief, loss, and the capacity of the natural world to help us heal. Antarctica is a land of extremes. The coldest, windiest, and most inaccessible part of our planet, science and exploration there have long captured the public imagination. But while its hurricane force winds, tooth-breaking cold, and resident penguins have long been iconic, the perspective of a practicing female scientist is all but absent from modern day Antarctic accounts. Where the Earth Meets the Sky fills that gap. At their base in a remote two-person research camp, Louise and her campmate David Ainley--one of the greatest Antarctic scientists on the planet--live in a world defined by hostile weather, breathtaking beauty, a continuous parade of avian visitors, and an occasional human visitor from a nearby research station. There she explores the lingering grief that has followed the untimely death of her sister, and presents penguins as a window into how climate change and other environmental impacts are altering what has been one of the most untouched corners of the globe. While penguins and the awe-inspiring landscapes they inhabit provide the thread that runs through this story, a central theme is how the world's most unforgiving environment has shaped the psyches of Antarctica's human visitors, past and present. The story unfolds at the isolated scientific bases of Ross Island, where Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott launched their attempts at the South Pole. Dramatic stories of these and other early explorers are woven into the narrative, along with a cast of compelling modern-day characters who choose to spend long periods in extreme isolation. As the globe lurches from one crisis to the next, Antarctica can be seen as a metaphorical place of sanctuary. Experiencing the Antarctic wildernesses has the potential to heal the human psyche and, perhaps, to give us the optimism to reimagine our relationship with the natural world.
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| Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela ColloffJournalist Pamela Colloff's disturbing debut chronicles the exploits of con man Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant in 1980s Florida whose unreliable testimonies led to multiple wrongful convictions for his fellow inmates, including four men who wound up on death row. Try this next: Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King. |
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| The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK... by Kaitlyn TiffanyThe Atlantic staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany's compelling and well-researched history details how three fearless American women became amateur detectives in the 1960s and '70s and antagonized the government to reveal the truth about John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s 1963 assassination. Try this next: The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home by Heath Hardage Lee. |
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The Cherokee War of 1776: Native Destruction at the Dawn of American Independence
by Kevin Kokomoor
The forgotten history of the US war against the Cherokee offers a crucial reframing of America's origin story.Americans remember 1776 as the year liberty was declared, the moment they cast off tyranny and proclaimed the self-evident truths of equality and freedom. But that same summer, as patriots celebrated their defiant new nation, American armies launched another campaign--this one aimed at destroying the Cherokee nation.The Cherokee War of 1776 recasts America's founding moment by tracing the importance of westward ambition and settler violence to the origins of the Revolutionary War. In this gripping and sobering book, historian Kevin Kokomoor uncovers the rarely acknowledged war waged by the emerging United States against the Cherokee people just days after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Far from a spontaneous frontier skirmish, this war was a coordinated, state-backed campaign with a clear aim: seize Indigenous land and crush Native resistance. Many of the very men who championed liberty on parchment simultaneously advocated for the wholesale destruction of a sovereign Native nation.At the heart of this story is Cherokee resistance, which was strategic, determined, and deeply rooted in community dynamics. Figures like Dragging Canoe emerged to lead a movement that endured long after American armies had burned Cherokee towns to the ground. Kokomoor foregrounds Cherokee voices, motivations, and resilience, challenging the notion that they were merely pawns in a colonial struggle and forcing us to reckon with the real costs of independence and the long fight for Indigenous sovereignty.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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