Inyo County Free Library - New Acquisitions

These are books and media new to the library and cataloged by the Inyo County Free Library.

Additional information about each title can be found in the catalog (click on the title). For older acquisition lists choose from Select another list. To request any of these titles please contact your local library branch.

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Race to the polar sea: the heroic adventures of Elisha Kent Kane

By McGoogan, Kenneth

Publishing Date: 2008

Classification: 900

Call Number: 910.92 MCG

In 1853 Kane sailed to the Arctic, seeking what McGoogan calls the Open Polar Sea and John Franklin, the lost British explorer. Kane and his men became trapped in the ice and faced starvation, disease, and an attempted mutiny before leaving the ship. Kane led an escape in sleds and small boats. McGoogan had access to hundreds of pages that Kane devoted to describing the Arctic's people and animals as well as glaciers, ice fields, icebergs, and the Greenland ice cap. Kane wrote of sailing among tables of ice 14 feet thick and described hummocks forced skyward by the pressure of pack ice rising in cones like crushed sugar, some of them 40 feet high. He also wrote about hunting birds, seals, and walrus and how polar bears ravaged a cache of provisions. An incredible and frightening journey. Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

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The call of Everest: the history, science, and future of the world's tallest peak

By Anker, Conrad

Publishing Date: 2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 915.496 ANK

Presents a historical survey of the world's tallest mountain, featuring accounts of famous climbs and tragedies, previously unpublished photographs, and scientific findings on the impact of climate change.

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Song of wrath: the Peloponnesian War begins

By Lendon, J. E.

Publishing Date: c2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 938.05 LEN

Song of Wrath tells the story of Classical Athens' victorious Ten Years' War (431-421 BC) against grim Sparta -- the first decade of the terrible Peloponnesian War that turned the Golden Age of Greece to lead. Historian J.E. Lendon presents a sweeping tale of pitched battles by land and sea, sieges, sacks, raids, and deeds of cruelty and guile -- along with courageous acts of mercy, surprising charity, austere restraint, and arrogant resistance. Recounting the rise of democratic Athens to great-power status, and the resulting fury of authoritarian Sparta, Greece's traditional leader, Lendon portrays the causes and strategy of the war as a duel over national honor, a series of acts of revenge. A story of new pride challenging old, Song of Wrath is the first work of Ancient Greek history for the post-cold-war generation. - Publisher.

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The war that ended peace: the road to 1914

By MacMillan, Margaret

Publishing Date: 2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.311 MAC

Presents a narrative portrait of Europe in the years leading up to World War I that illuminates the political, cultural, and economic factors and contributing personalities that shaped major events.

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Lawrence in Arabia: war, deceit, imperial folly and the making of the modern Middle East

By Anderson, Scott

Publishing Date: 2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.4 AND

A narrative chronicle of World War I's Arab Revolt explores the pivotal roles of a small group of adventurers and low-level officers who orchestrated a secret effort to control the Middle East, demonstrating how they instigated jihad against British forces, built an elaborate intelligence ring and forged ties to gain valuable oil concessions.

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A storm in Flanders: the Ypres salient, 1914-1918 : tragedy and triumph on the Western Front

By Groom, Winston

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.4144 GRO

/*Starred Review*/ In many ways, the four-year slaughter in Belgian Flanders is representative of the most horrifying aspects of World War I. It was there that the futility of trench warfare was "perfected," as the daily meat grinder chewed up thousands of lives to gain a few yards of real estate. It was there that the destructive power of new weapons--including poison gas, flamethrowers, and airplanes--was fully realized. Groom is best known as the author of Forest Gump (1986), but he has also written extensively on military history. In this moving and oddly inspiring chronicle, Groom captures the absurd waste and sickening brutality of a conflict that had no redeeming moral purpose. Groom pulls no punches as he conveys an atmosphere of hell on Earth, made all the more outrageous by the political blunders of men ensconced safely behind the lines. Yet Groom, a Vietnam veteran, finds true nobility in the ordinary soldiers who fought in Flanders, both killers and killed, who managed to remain decently human under intolerable conditions. This is an important and brilliantly written work that is a vital addition to twentieth-century history collections. ((Reviewed May 15, 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews

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NEW RELEASE

50 children: one ordinary American couple's extraordinary rescue mission into the heart of Nazi Germany

By Pressman, Steven

Publishing Date: [2014]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5318 PRE

Based on the acclaimed HBO documentary, the astonishing true story of how one American couple, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, transported fifty Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Austria to America in 1939 -- the single largest group of unaccompanied refugee children allowed into the United States during a time when deep-seated anti-Semitism and isolationism gripped much of the country.

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NEW RELEASE

Operation Paperclip: the secret intelligence program that brought Nazi scientists to America

By Jacobsen, Annie

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.54 JAC

Details how the U.S. government embarked on a covert operation to recruit and employ Nazi scientists in the years following World War II in an effort to prevent their knowledge and expertise from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union.

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The giant of the French Revolution: Danton, a life

By Lawday, David

Publishing Date: c2009

Classification: 900

Call Number: 944.041 LAW

In the first biography of Danton in over forty years, the historian David Lawday reveals the tragic, larger-than-life figure who joined the fray at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 at age twenty-nine and was dead five years later.

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The Sultan's shadow: one family's rule at the crossroads of East and West

By Bird, Christiane

Publishing Date: c2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 953.53 BIR

Oman's Sultan Said and his rebellious daughter Princess Salme--comes to life in this compelling narrative. Sultan Said and his descendants were shadowed and all but shattered by the rise and fall of East Africa's nineteenth-century slave trade.

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One summer: America, 1927

By Bryson, Bill

Publishing Date: 2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.91 BRY

Bryson examines closely the events and personalities of the summer of 1927 when America's story was one of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy.

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Edward Kennedy: an intimate biography

By Hersh, Burton

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.9209 HER

In this groundbreaking biography, historian and journalist Burton Hersh combines extensive critical research with more than fifty years of never-before-told anecdotes and observations from his lifelong acquaintance with Edward Kennedy to create an indelible portrait of one of the finest legislators and most influential senators in American history. Hersh develops such themes as Kennedy's deep-seated fears that he was an afterthought within his powerful, driven family, as well as Kennedy's genius for conciliation, which arguably made him a more effective senator than either of his older brothers. This book is richly laden with disclosures not made while Kennedy was alive, from amazing details pertaining to the accident at Chappaquiddick to Kennedy's behind-the-scenes manipulations that brought down Richard Nixon. This revelatory account reinterprets Kennedy's public and private personas.--From publisher description.

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JFK: the CIA, Vietnam, and the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy

By Prouty, L. Fletcher

Publishing Date: c2011

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.922 PRO

Reveals Kennedy's plans for Vietnam, Kennedy's intentions to "shatter the CIA," and President Johnson's reversal of Kennedy's orders concerning Vietnam immediately following the assassination, aruging that the assassination was a professionally executed coup d'etat.

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Brothers: the hidden history of the Kennedy years

By Talbot, David

Publishing Date: 2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.922 TAL

Journalist Talbot sheds a dramatic new light on the tumultuous inner life of the Kennedy presidency and its stunning aftermath. The book begins on the shattering afternoon of November 22, 1963, as a grief-stricken Robert Kennedy urgently demands answers about the assassination of his brother, then shifts back in time, revealing the shadowy conflicts that tore apart the Kennedy administration, pitting the young president and his even younger brother against their own national security apparatus. The Kennedy brothers and their small circle of trusted advisors repeatedly thwarted Washington's warriors, the hard-line generals and spymasters hell-bent on a showdown with the Communists--the Kennedys pushing instead for a peaceful resolution to the Cold War. The tensions within the Kennedy administration were heading for an explosive climax, when a burst of gunfire in Dallas terminated John F. Kennedy's presidency.--From publisher description.

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Beyond the White House: waging peace, fighting disease, building hope

By Carter, Jimmy

Publishing Date: 2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.926 CAR

The former president discusses the initiatives that he has undertaken since leaving the White House, including leading peacekeeping efforts for Ethiopia, North Korea, and Haiti, and establishing the Carter Center to help fight neglected diseases.

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The war within: a secret White House history, 2006-2008

By Woodward, Bob

Publishing Date: c2008

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.931 WOO

Bob Woodward's fourth book about the Bush presidency at war declassifies the secrets of America's political and military involvement in Iraq. Woodward once again pulls back the curtain on Washington to reveal the inner workings of a government at war.

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The hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: a free Black man's encounter with liberty

By Harris, J. William

Publishing Date: c2009

Classification: 900

Call Number: 975.7 HAR

In this wholly satisfying work of accessible historical scholarship, Pulitzer Prize finalist Harris (Univ. of New Hampshire; Deep Souths) explores the paradox of Colonial American slave owners fighting for freedom from British rule. His account hinges upon the tragic plight of Thomas Jeremiah. A free black man who made a successful living as a commercial fisherman and riverboat pilot in Colonial Charleston, SC, "Jerry" was publicly hanged in 1775 after being falsely accused of plotting a slave revolt, despite being a slave owner himself. Among the powerful whites convinced of Jeremiah's unproven guilt was civic and political leader Henry Laurens, whose personal letters make up the bulk of the primary-source documentation used here. Laurens's contradictory attitudes toward owning slaves while simultaneously arguing for liberty from Britain represent the broader Colonial attitude at the heart of this study. A third key player is South Carolina's royal governor William Campbell, portrayed as a feckless outsider who never grasped the depths of white Colonists' fears of slave revolt and was tragically unable to effect Jeremiah's release. VERDICT Brimming with illuminating and provocative passages, this concise, highly readable, and thoroughly annotated work will appeal to scholars of Southern slavery and colonialism and is highly recommended to anyone interested in these significant components of American history. [See also "Best Books 2009," p. 48.—Ed.]—Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia [Page 119]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

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Pilgrim's wilderness: a true story of faith and madness on the Alaska frontier

By Kizzia, Tom

Publishing Date: c2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.8 KIZ

Documents the story of Robert "Papa Pilgrim" Hale and the antiestablishment family settlement in remote Alaska that was exposed as a cult-like prison where Hale brutalized and isolated his wife and fifteen children.

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