Imperial twilight: the opium war and the end of China's last golden age

By Platt, Stephen R.

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 900

Call Number: 951.033 PLA

Describes how nineteenth-century British efforts to open China to trade set in motion the fall of the Qing dynasty and started a war that allowed for the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century.

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The two Koreas

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 951.9

"For the United States and allied nations, North Korea has long been a source of controversy and concern. In the spring and summer of 2018, North Korea again entered the public debate when news reports indicated that the nation had developed offensive nuclear capabilities and was rapidly approaching a state in which it could attack the United States directly. For decades, the United States and allies have attempted to prevent the escalation of North Korea's military, utilizing negotiation, economic sanctions, and even threats of military force, but to little avail. To better understand the North Korean controversy, it is useful to look at the history and bifurcated cultures of the Korean Peninsula, from the kingdoms that united the peninsula to the struggle for global ideological dominance that ultimately tore the nation into warring halves. From the economic importance of South Korea's bustling urban economies, to the constant threat of North Korea's fundamentalist conservatism, to the lives of transplanted Koreans in the United States and elsewhere, Korea's long and storied culture has left a deep impact on the world."--Preface.

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Places and names: on war, revolution, and returning

By Ackerman, Elliot

Publishing Date: [2019]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 956.7044 ACK

"From a decorated Marine war veteran and National Book Award Finalist, an astonishing reckoning with the nature of combat and the human cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Toward the beginning of [this book], Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after establishing a rapport with Abu Hassar, he takes a risk by revealing to him that in fact he was a Marine special operations officer. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary quickly joins him in the game of filling in the map with the names and dates of where they saw fighting during the war. They had shadowed each other for some time, it turned out, a realization that brought them to a strange kind of intimacy. The rest of Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir is in a way an answer to the questions of why he came to that refugee camp, and what he hoped to find there. By moving back and forth between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and its environs and his deeper past in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressurization. Ackerman shares vivid and powerful stories of his own experiences in combat, culminating in the events of the Second Battle of Fallujah--the most intense urban fighting for the Marines since Hue in Vietnam--where Ackerman's actions leading a rifle platoon saw him awarded the Silver Star. He weaves these stories into the latticework of a masterful larger reckoning with contemporary geopolitics through his vantage as a journalist in Istanbul and with the human extremes of both bravery and horror. At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the deeper meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region and the world, Places and Names bids fair to take its place among our greatest books about modern war."--Dust jacket.

NEW RELEASE

As long as grass grows: the indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock

By Gilio-Whitaker, Dina

Publishing Date: [2019]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 970.004 GIL

"Interrogating the concept of environmental justice in the U.S. as it relates to Indigenous peoples, this book argues that a different framework must apply compared to other marginalized communities, while it also attends to the colonial history and structure of the U.S. and ways Indigenous peoples continue to resist, and ways the mainstream environmental movement has been an impediment to effective organizing and allyship"--

The populist vision

By Postel, Charles

Publishing Date: 2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.8 POS

The Populist Vision is about how Americans responded to wrenching changes in the national and global economy. In the late nineteenth century, the telegraph and steam power made America and the world a much smaller place. The new technologies also made possible large-scale bureaucratic organization and centralization. Corporations grew exponentially and the rich amassed great fortunes. Those on the short end of these changes responded in the Populist revolt, one of the most effective challenges to corporate power in American history. But what did Populism represent? Half a century ago, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Since then, historians have largely restored Populism's good name. But in so doing, they have sustained a romantic notion of Populism as the resistance movement of tradition-based and pre-modern communities to a modern and commercial society, or even a counterforce to the Enlightenment ideals of innovation and progress. Postel's work marks a departure. He argues that the Populists understood themselves as, and were in fact, modern people. Farmer Populists strove to use the new innovations for their own ends. They sought scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale cooperative businesses, and pressed for state-centered reforms on the model of the nation's most elaborate bureaucracy--the Postal Service. Hundreds of thousands of Populist farm women sought education, employment in schools and offices, and a more modern life. Miners, railroad workers, and other labor Populists joined with farmers to give impetus to the regulatory state. Activists from Chicago, San Francisco, and other urban centers lent the movement an especially modern tone. Modernity was also menacing, as the ethos of racial progress influenced white Populists in their pursuit of racial segregation and Chinese exclusion. The Populist Vision offers a broad reassessment. Working extensively with primary sources, it looks at Populism as a national movement, taking into account both the leaders and the led. It focuses on farmers but also wage-earners and bohemian urbanites. It examines topics from technology, business, and women's rights, to government, race, and religion. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, business and political leaders are claiming that critics of their new structures of corporate control represent anti-modern attitudes towards the new realities of globalization. The Populist experience puts into question such claims about who is modern and who is not. And it suggests that modern society is not a given but is shaped by men and women who pursue alternative visions of what the modern world should be.

Acheson: the Secretary of State who created the American world

By Chace, James

Publishing Date: [1998]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.91 CHA

"Acheson is the first complete biography of the most important and controversial secretary of state of the twentieth century. More than any other of the renowned "Wise Men" who together proposed our vision of the world in the aftermath of World War II, Dean Acheson was the quintessential man of action."--BOOK JACKET. "Drawing on Acheson family diaries and letters as well as recent revelations from Russian and Chinese archives, historian James Chace traces Acheson's remarkable life, from his days as a schoolboy at Groton and his carefree life at Yale to his work for President Franklin Roosevelt on international financial policy and his unique partnership with President Truman."--BOOK JACKET. "Chace corrects many misconceptions about Acheson's role in the Cold War. Acheson was not one of the original Cold Warriors. In 1945, willing to acknowledge Soviet concerns about its security, Acheson worked closely with Secretary of War Henry Stimson on a plan to share America's scientific information about atomic energy with Moscow in order to avert an arms race. It was only when Moscow made threatening demands on Turkey for bases in the Dardanelles that Acheson hardened his views toward the Soviet Union."--BOOK JACKET. "Later, Acheson encouraged President Kennedy to stand firm against the Soviets in the Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crises. He headed a group of elder statesmen who advised President Johnson on the Vietnam War. When Acheson turned against the war, Johnson realized that domestic support for his policy had crumbled."--BOOK JACKET.

Lyndon B. Johnson

By Peters, Charles

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.923 PET

Documents the 36th president's term in office and the legacy of his achievements, revealing the insights he gained while serving in the Senate and throughout the Kennedy-Johnson administration and discussing how factors including the Vietnam War drove him from office.

Richard M. Nixon

By Drew, Elizabeth

Publishing Date: 2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.924 DRE

The complex man at the center of America's most self-destructive presidency. In this revelatory assessment of the only president ever forced out of office, Washington journalist Drew explains how Nixon's troubled inner life offers the key to understanding his presidency. She shows how Nixon was surprisingly indecisive on domestic issues and often wasn't interested in them. Turning to international affairs, she reveals the inner workings of Nixon's complex relationship with Henry Kissinger, and their mutual rivalry and distrust. The Watergate scandal that ended his presidency was both an overreach of executive power and the inevitable result of his paranoia and passion for vengeance. Even Nixon's post-presidential rehabilitation was motivated by a consuming desire for respectability, and he succeeded through his remarkable resilience. While giving him credit for his achievements, Drew questions whether such a man--beleaguered, suspicious, and motivated by resentment and paranoia--was fit to hold America's highest office.--From publisher description.

The stranger in the woods: the extraordinary story of the last true hermit

By Finkel, Michael

Publishing Date: 2017

Classification: 900

Call Number: 974.122 FIN

"For readers of Jon Krakauer and The Lost City of Z, a remarkable tale of survival and solitude--the true story of a man who lived alone in a tent in the Maine woods, never talking to another person and surviving by stealing supplies from nearby cabins for twenty-seven years. In 1986, twenty-year-old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even in winter, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store food and water, to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothes, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed, but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of the why and how of his secluded life--as well as the challenges he has faced returning to the world. A riveting story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded"--Publisher description.

The power broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York

By Caro, Robert A.

Publishing Date: 1974

Classification: 900

Call Number: 974.704 CAR

This is the first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man-an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives.

NEW RELEASE

The pioneers: the heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west

By McCullough, David G.

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 977 MCC

"Best-selling author David McCullough tells the story of the settlers who began America's migration west, overcoming almost-unimaginable hardships to build in the Ohio wilderness a town and a government that incorporated America's highest ideals"--

Hidalgo and other stories: the complete works of Frank T. Hopkins, with a comprehensive study by an international team of experts

By Hopkins, Frank T.

Publishing Date: 2004, c2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 978.033 HOP

Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Research team -- Introduction -- Last of the buffalo hunters -- My years in the saddle -- 1800-mile trail ride - Texas to Vermont -- Gentling -- Mustangs -- Endurance horses as I know them -- Judge's impression of the ride -- Hunting buffalo -- Riders and their records -- Buffalo Bill as I knew him -- Horses and horsemen -- Mustang -- Carrying notes for Uncle Samuel -- Truth about "Buffalo Bill" -- Horsemen and horsemanship -- Only a war horse -- Understanding horses -- Trail horses -- Bibliography -- Index.

NEW RELEASE

Aloha rodeo: three Hawaiian cowboys, the world's greatest rodeo, and a hidden history of the American West

By Wolman, David

Publishing Date: [2019]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 978.7 WOL

Traces the role of three Hawaiian cowboys who became champions at the 1908 Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo, detailing how their careers influenced post-annexation Hawaiian identity, island ranching, and the rodeo culture of Cheyenne.

Boundaries between: the Southern Paiutes, 1775-1995

By Knack, Martha C.

Publishing Date: [2001]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.004 KNA

"Before the arrival of Euro-Americans, Southern Paiutes foraged the arid hills and valleys of the area that is today southern Utah, Arizona north of the Grand Canyon, southern Nevada, and southeastern California. By all the "rules" of history and anthropology, such a small-scale, foraging culture should have disappeared long ago, but the Southern Paiutes survive, and their story unsettles assumptions about the role that social complexity, power, and culture play in the dynamics of human history.".

Archaeology and rock art of the eastern Sierra and Great Basin frontier

By Garfinkel, Alan P.

Publishing Date: 2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.401 GAR

The Sierra Nevada before history: ancient landscapes, early peoples

By Jackson, Louise A.

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.4401 JAC

Describes the natural history of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with a focus on the southern High Sierra region, discussing wildlife, landscapes, and geological development, and examining the cultures of prehistoric peoples such as the Western Monache and the Central Miwok.

Hitler in Los Angeles: how Jews foiled Nazi plots against Hollywood and America

By Ross, Steven Joseph

Publishing Date: 2017

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.494 ROS

Reveals the little known story of a private Los Angeles spy operation organized by attorney Leon Lewis--which included Neil Ness, Joseph Roos, and Charles Slocombe--to stop the rise of Nazis from killing the city's Jews and sabotaging the nation's military installations. Also discusses Nazi threats and their influence on Hollywood film content and the sometimes conflicted role of German consul Georg Gyssling, and also Los Angeles's anti-Semitic political movements.