A Bookshop in Berlin: The rediscovered memoir of one woman's harrowing escape from the Nazis

By Frenkel, Françoise

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.531 FRE

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel--a Jewish woman from Poland--fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.

Eisenhower's armies: the American-British alliance during World War II

By Barr, Niall

Publishing Date: 2015

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5332 BAR

A history of World War II's "Atlantic Alliance" draws on archival research to share insights into how its unprecedented level of cooperation led to victory in spite of considerable tensions and controversies.

Escape from the deep: the epic story of a legandary submarine and her courageous crew

By Kershaw, Alex

Publishing Date: 2008

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5451 KER

In the early morning hours of October 24, 1944, the legendary U.S. Navy submarine Tang was hit by one of its own faulty torpedoes. The survivors of the explosion struggled to stay alive one hundred-eighty feet beneath the surface, while the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges. As the air ran out, some of the crew made a daring ascent through the escape hatch. In the end, just nine of the original eighty-man crew survived. But the survivors were beginning a far greater ordeal. After being picked up by the Japanese, they were sent to an interrogation camp known as the “Torture Farm.” When they were liberated in 1945, they were close to death, but they had revealed nothing to the Japanese, including the greatest secret of World War II. With the same heart-pounding narrative drive that made The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter national bestsellers, Alex Kershaw brings to life this incredible story of survival and endurance.- (Perseus Publishing)

Sea cobra: Admiral Halsey's task force and the great Pacific typhoon

By Melton, Buckner F.

Publishing Date: c2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5459 MEL

The history of one of the most dramatic and underreported stories of WWII.

Victoria, the queen: an intimate biography of the woman who ruled an empire

By Baird, Julia

Publishing Date: [2016]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 941.08 BAI

A magnificent biography of Queen Victoria by International New York Times columnist Julia Baird. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, 'Victoria: The Queen' is a stunning new portrait of the real woman behind the myth - a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience. When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would begin to threaten many of Europe's monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public's expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger parts of the globe. Born into a world where woman were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand. Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother's meddling and an adviser's bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. 0At twenty years old, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security-queen of a quarter of the world's population at the height of the British Empire's reach.

See you in the piazza: new places to discover in Italy

By Mayes, Frances

Publishing Date: [2019]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 945.0931 MAY

Presents an evocative, recipe-complemented travel narrative through thirteen regions of Italy, from Friuli to Sicily, that identifies the cultural and historical gems enjoyed by locals.

The future is history: how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia

By Gessen, Masha

Publishing Date: 2017

Classification: 900

Call Number: 947.086 GES

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of todays terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

Korea reborn: a grateful nation honors war veterans for 60 years of growth

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 951.9042

A retrospective look at the Korean War and the years of prosperity that followed.

Autumn light: season of fire and farewells

By Iyer, Pico

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 952.184 IYE

"From one of our most astute observers of human nature, a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief. For years, Pico Iyer has split his time between California and Nara, Japan, where he and his Japanese wife Hiroko have a small home. But when his father-in-law dies suddenly, calling him back to Japan earlier than expected, Iyer begins to grapple with the question we all have to live with: how to hold onto the things we love, even though we know that we and they are dying. In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, this question is more urgent than anywhere else. Iyer leads us through the year following his father-in-law's death, introducing us to the people who populate his days: his ailing mother-in-law, who often forgets that her husband has died; his absent brother-in-law, who severed ties with his family years ago but to whom Hiroko still writes letters; and the men and women in his ping pong club, who, many years his senior, traverse their autumn years in different ways. And as the maple leaves begin to redden and the heat begins to soften, Iyer offers us a singular view of Japan, in the season that reminds us to take nothing for granted"--

Sectarian politics in the Gulf: from the Iraq war to the Arab uprisings

By Wehrey, Frederic M.

Publishing Date: 2014

Classification: 900

Call Number: 953.054 WEH

One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc Lynch of The Middle East Channel Beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and concluding with the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates the roots of the Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's political landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by sectarian tensions—Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait—Wehrey identifies the factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including domestic political institutions, the media, clerical establishments, and the contagion effect of external regional events, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab uprisings, and Syria's civil war. In addition to his analysis, Wehrey builds a historical narrative of Shi'a activism in the Arab Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to the development of local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward citizenship, political reform, and transnational identity. He finds that, while the Gulf Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through a nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or Lebanese Hizballah. Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every major Shi'a leader, opinion shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab states, as well as prominent Sunni voices, and consults diverse Arabic-language sources. - (Columbia Univ Pr)

Sophia: princess, suffragette, revolutionary

By Anand, Anita

Publishing Date: 2015

Classification: 900

Call Number: 954 ANA

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary. Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War--and, above all, the fight for female suffrage. She was bold and fearless, attacking politicians, putting herself in the front line and swapping her silks for a nurse's uniform to tend wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefields. Meticulously researched and passionately written, this enthralling story of the rise of women and the fall of empire introduces an extraordinary individual and her part in the defining moments of recent British and Indian history.

The road not taken: Edward Lansdale and the American tragedy in Vietnam

By Boot, Max

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 959.704 BOO

A biography of Edward Lansdale, the CIA operative. Boot chronicles his rise and fall as a proponent of a visionary "hearts and minds" diplomacy in Vietnam who was ultimately overruled by the American military bureaucracy, which favored bombs and troop build-ups over winning the people's trust.

Cockroaches

By Mukasonga, Scholastique

Publishing Date: 2016

Classification: 900

Call Number: 967 MUK

"Imagine being born into a world where everything about you--the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth--designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people. Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches is the story of growing up a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda--the story of a happy child, a loving family, all wiped out in the genocide of 1994. A vivid, bitterwsweet depiction of family life and bond in a time of immense hardship, it is also a story of incredible endurance, and the duty to remember that loss and those lost while somehow carrying on. Sweet, funny, wrenching, and deeply moving, Cockroaches is a window onto an unforgettable world of love, grief, and horror"--

The British are coming: the war for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777

By Atkinson, Rick

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.3 ATK

"Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other masterly books about World War II, has long been admired for his unparalleled ability to write deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative history. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he tells the story of the first twenty months of the bloody struggle to shake free of King George's shackles. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, the ragtag Continental Army takes on the world's most formidable fighting force and gradually finds the will and the way to win. It is a riveting saga populated by singular characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of how best to deploy artillery; Nathaniel Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes one of America's greatest battle captains; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves himself the nation's greatest diplomat; George Washington, the commander-in-chief who learns the difficult art of leadership amid the fire and smoke of the battlefield. And the British are here, too: we see the war through their eyes and their gunsights, and as a consequence the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels is all the more compelling. Full of fresh details and untold stories, The British Are Coming gives stirring new life to the first act of our country's creation drama. It is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. But once begun, the war for independence can have only one of two outcomes: death or victory."--Provided by publisher.

The bonanza king: John Mackay and the battle over the greatest riches in the American West

By Crouch, Gregory

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.3 CRO

Traces the rags-to-riches frontier story of Irish immigrant John Mackay, describing how in mid-nineteenth-century Nevada he outmaneuvered the pernicious "Bank Ring" monopoly and thousands of rivals to take control of the history-making Comstock Lode.

What this cruel war was over: soldiers, slavery, and the Civil War

By Manning, Chandra

Publishing Date: 2008

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.74 MAN

In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside the minds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern and Southern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. This is a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Civil War as it has never been rendered before. - (Random House, Inc.)

Ulysses S. Grant: triumph over adversity, 1822-1865

By Simpson, Brooks D.

Publishing Date: ©2000

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.82 SIM

A biography of the Union general challenges stereotypes of Grant, focusing on his military career and his political evolution.

Bobby Kennedy: a raging spirit

By Matthews, Christopher

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.922 MAT

"Bobby Kennedy was a personal hero to a multitude of Americans. As the train carrying his body headed to Washington, whites and blacks alike stood along the tracks, saluting him. They loved him as a fellow patriot who believed a great country could also be a good one. Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's Hardball, has discovered what made him who he was...Drawing on extensive research and intimate interviews, Matthews shines a light on all the important moments of Bobby's life: his upbringing, his start in politics, his crucial role fighting for civil rights as attorney general, and his tragic run for president."--Dust jacket flap.

The only plane in the sky: an oral history of 9/11

By Graff, Garrett M.

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.931 GRA

Journalist and historian Garrett Graff tells the story of September 11, 2001 as it was lived, in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints a vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks. Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York City, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker underneath the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard the small number of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United Flight 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid. More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, this is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son working in the North Tower, caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger's last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from rushing into the burning building to try to rescue their colleagues. A tribute to the courage of everyday Americans, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama on a day that changed the course of history and all of our lives.

Our revolution: a future to believe in

By Sanders, Bernard

Publishing Date: 2016

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.932 SAN

"When Bernie Sanders began his race for the presidency, it was considered by the political establishment and the media to be a "fringe" campaign, something not to be taken seriously. After all, he was just an independent senator from a small state with little name recognition. His campaign had no money, no political organization, and it was taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment. By the time Sanders's campaign came to a close, however, it was clear that the pundits had gotten it wrong. Bernie had run one of the most consequential campaigns in the modern history of the country. He had received more than 13 million votes in primaries and caucuses throughout the country, won twenty-two states, and more than 1.4 million people had attended his public meetings. Most important, he showed that the American people were prepared to take on the greed and irresponsibility of corporate America and the 1 percent. In Our Revolution, Sanders shares his personal experiences from the campaign trail, recounting the details of his historic primary fight and the people who made it possible. And for the millions looking to continue the political revolution, he outlines a progressive economic, environmental, racial, and social justice agenda that will create jobs, raise wages, protect the environment, and provide health care for all--and ultimately transform our country and our world for the better. For him, the political revolution has just started. The campaign may be over, but the struggle goes on."--Provided by publisher.