History and Current Events
November 2023
Recent Releases
Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for...
by Azam Ahmed

New York Times correspondent Azam Ahmed's disturbing and action-packed debut chronicles Miriam Rodriguez's fight for justice after members of the Zeta drug cartel kidnapped and murdered her 20-year-old daughter, Karen. Read-alike: Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel by Dan Slater.
The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I
by Douglas Brunt

Historian and novelist Douglas Brunt (Ghosts of Manhattan) revisits the unsolved 1913 disappearance and death of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, in this richly detailed investigation. Read-alike: The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies by Paul Fischer.
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
by Michael Harriot

TheGrio columnist and former The Root writer Michael Harriot offers an irreverent and "essential" (Kirkus Reviews) retelling of American history that eschews Eurocentric narratives by placing Black lives and achievements front and center. Read-alike: Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies by Dick Gregory.
Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation
by Tiya Miles

Award-winning historian Tiya Miles (All That She Carried) thoughtfully explores how 19th-century Black and Indigenous women were shaped by their relationship to the natural world, which freed them from the oppressive confines of domestic spaces. Read-alike: Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy.
Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland
by Scott Shane

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Scott Shane evocatively spotlights the pivotal yet little-known role freedman Thomas Smallwood and white abolitionist Charles Torrey played in helping hundreds of enslaved people escape to Canada in the 1840s; Smallwood himself gave the Underground Railroad its name. Read-alike: Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo.
For Fans Of: Killers of the Flower Moon
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's sweeping account surveys centuries of American history from an Indigenous perspective, from early colonization efforts to the present day. Read-alike: Indigenous Continent: The Epic Conquest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen. 
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
by Nicole Eustace

Historian Nicole Eustace's Pulitzer Prize winner and National Book Award finalist examines the 1722 murder of Seneca man Sawantaeny by two white fur traders, an event that impacted the tenuous relationship between Native populations and colonists for years to come. Read-alike: Terror to the Wicked: America's First Trial by Jury That Ended a War and Helped Form a Nation by Tobey Pearl.
Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
by Sierra Crane Murdoch

Sierra Crane Murdoch's Pulitzer Prize finalist centers on the 2012 disappearance of a truck driver on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota and the Arikara freelance investigator who took up the cause to find him, seeking redemption for her own troubled past along the way. Read-alike: Red River Girl: The Life and Death of Tina Fontaine by Joanna Jolly.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
by David Treuer

Ojibwe novelist and historian David Treuer's vivid 125-year history of Native America details the ways that tribes have survived -- and thrived -- in the face of adversity. Read-alike: The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk.
Contact your librarian for more great books!