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All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror
by Peter Bergen
From the New York Times best-selling author, an eye-opening history of the United States' war on terror across four presidential administrations. With an even hand and expert skill, [Peter Bergen] holds US presidents and policymakers accountable for blunders of historic proportion.
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The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished from History
by Sam Kean
Spanning a million years of history, the mysteries in these pages include fabled relics, legendary cities, mythical species, and undeciphered languages that have bedeviled seekers for centuries. Perhaps the single most common theme across all of history is loss. The loss of lands, loss of sacred objects, loss of languages, of rights, of life--the past groans with disappearances of all kinds. This enthralling narrative collects the most spellbinding tales of these experiences and weaves them into a thoughtful meditation on what it all means across the sweep of human history and the scope of human lives. Provocative, surprising, and above all entertaining, this globe-trotting narrative acknowledges the sheer scale of humanity's losses, celebrates the treasures we have managed to retain, and reveals why they continue to captivate us centuries later.
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Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy
by Ben MacIntyre
In 1981, KGB Major Vladimir Kuzichkin, codenamed Redwood, was the best Soviet officer in Iran, running spies in the wake of the Islamic revolution and working with a hidden network of Iranian communists to undermine the new regime. But Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret that, if revealed, would humiliate him with his colleagues, cost him his job, and send him into exile. Desperate for a solution, he reached out to the only place he believed could help: Britain's MI6. So begins one of the most astounding true spy stories of the Cold War, set against the terrifying prospect of nuclear armageddon. Taking readers through shadowy back alleys of Tehran, across bloody streets and into cloistered intelligence offices, Ben Macintyre unfolds a world in turmoil, where no one's motive is what it seems, and exposure means death. As Kuzichkin helps the Soviet leadership plot an overthrow of the Ayatollah's fledgling regime--and the American government secretly contemplates a nuclear response if they do--it falls on MI6's resourceful young undercover officer Ian McCredie to spirit Kuzichkin's vital information back to the West. But when both Iranian intelligence and the KGB close in on the Russian double-agent, McCredie must design an improbable high-stakes escape plan for Kuzichkin, in which failure is almost certain and the direction of the Cold War hangs in the balance. This is the gripping tale of one man's courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It's about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, and betrayal. Drawing on never-before-seen archival material and revealing interviews with the participants, Redwood plunges readers back into the world of The Spy and the Traitor, where the fate of millions turns on the split-second decisions of spies under pressure.
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Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
by Catherine Grace Katz
On the evening of May 6, 1937, the majestic German zeppelin Hindenburg arrived before cheering crowds in Lakehurst, New Jersey, when suddenly, a titanic inferno lit up the sky. Thirty-four seconds later, the greatest airship ever to take flight was gone, destroyed in a ferocious blaze and eternally seared into historical memory. Acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz unites groundbreaking research with thrilling narrative that situates this famous disaster squarely on the collision course between the decade's two prevailing currents. The Hindenburg began as a symbol of hope and progress, a gleaming technological marvel in the nascent age of aviation. But soon, the airship of dreams became a propaganda tool powering the rising Nazi regime. In this sweeping drama, Katz illustrates the story of the Hindenburg through the captivating passengers and crew caught in the grip of fate: an adventurous heiress, a renowned vaudeville star, a Chicago industrialist with German Jewish roots, an esteemed zeppelin captain, and a young cabin boy on his first voyage to the United States. Meanwhile, on the ground, two intrepid journalists' reporting on the Hindenburg fundamentally changed breaking news, paving the way for modern media. In this rigorously researched, ticking-clock account, Shadow Before the Flame offers a portrait of an era when illusions of peace, fueled by the hubris of invention, hovered in suspended time as the clouds of an inevitable war loomed on the horizon. Above all, it is a story of humanity and of lives forever changed by a moment that served as a harbinger for the global conflagration yet to come.
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The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia
by Robert Kolker
In the idyllic American town of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college and started their lives, only Barb was home to see their beautiful, still-young mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn't recognize: withdrawn, neglectful, uncaring. Thus begins The Vanishing Family, journalist Robert Kolker's superb follow-up to Hidden Valley Road. This family, we learn, has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially cruel twist. As early as their forties, formerly loving parents and hard-driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking--shed all inhibitions and sense of responsibility--and become people their families hardly know. Their former personalities seem to vanish--and there is a fifty-fifty chance that it will happen to their children, too. The Vanishing Family unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller as the siblings begin to realize that what happened to their mother is happening to them: first one, then two, three, four, and more begin to change. Sue, in search of a calling, finds her place in caring for the others. Barb sets out to find a cure. Alongside their story, Kolker weaves in the dramatic scientific fight against dementia; after decades of blind alleys, this family's rare form of FTD (frontotemporal dementia) might lead to a breakthrough in the prevention and treatment of all dementia--including the scourge of Alzheimer's disease. Moving, intimate, unexpectedly hopeful and redemptive, The Vanishing Family is an enthralling narrative about one family's fate, and a medical detective story that speaks to all of us who fear losing ourselves at the end.
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The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic
by Malcolm Gladwell
The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why? In this groundbreaking book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the American peculiarity--how the world's wealthiest country came to suffer from a problem typically only seen in the world's poorest countries. Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches the American paradox through a series of stories. What can we learn from the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington, D.C.? How have the legal troubles of a seventeenth-century English knight influenced American attempts at gun control? Why would a European police chief be baffled by the graduation ceremony at any American police academy? In a sweeping narrative, Gladwell travels from a shooting range in North Carolina, to the South Side of Chicago, to an old plantation house in Alabama, painting a picture of a country that does not understand its most pressing social problem, and as result, does not understand how to fix it.
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Confronting America: What Has to Change
by Bill O'Reilly
America remains the world's greatest land of opportunity, but too many Americans have lost sight of the values that made it work. Patriotism and civic responsibility have weakened. Families and schools too often fail to teach discipline, character, and personal responsibility. Hard work and self-reliance are losing ground to entitlement and dependency. Drugs, destructive popular culture, and social media are doing real damage. In Confronting America, Bill O'Reilly argues that the answer is not nostalgia or another government program. It is a return to informed citizenship, strong families, honest education, meaningful work, generosity, self-respect, and a willingness to put country and community ahead of self. His central challenge is straightforward: Americans need to wise up. How do we do that? Education: Our system--once the envy of the world--now ranks below many countries. Restore higher standards of performance so that grade, middle, and high schools prepare our young people for work and life...not unemployment or jail. Family: The collapse of stable family structures is disastrous for young people--especially boys, who need fathers to be present in their lives. Let's honor, rather than denigrate, the values that support two parent households. Drugs: For misguided reasons, we've legalized and enabled drug use through so-called harm reduction--with predictable results. The law must help--and require--drug addicts to get clean and be productive members of society. Work: It used to be normal and expected that people would work for a living. Now, not so much. We need to revive the importance of labor, of all kinds, at all levels, and honor the skills of all who show up and do their jobs. Religion: America is becoming increasingly godless, and the decline of spirituality has weakened shared concepts of right and wrong. Americans don't have to join the God Squad, but religion can reinforce social order--and everyone should respect the law and practice decent behavior. Ultimately, Confronting America is both a warning and a challenge: America will improve when Americans do.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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