A history of the world in twelve shipwrecks

By Gibbins, David

Publishing Date: 2024

Classification: 900

Call Number: 909 GIB

"From renowned underwater archaeologist David Gibbins comes an exciting and rich narrative of human history told through the archaeological discoveries of twelve shipwrecks across time. The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The SS Gairsoppa, destroyed by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic during World War II. Since we first set sail on the open sea, ships and their wrecks have been an inevitable part of human history. Archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries excavating these sunken ships, their protective underwater cocoon keeping evidence of past civilizations preserved. Now, for the first time, world renowned maritime archaeologist David Gibbins ties together the stories of some of the most significant shipwrecks in time to form a single overarching narrative of world history. A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is not just the story of those ships, the people who sailed on them, and the cargo and treasure they carried, but also the story of the spread of people, religion, and ideas around the world; it is a story of colonialism, migration, and the indomitable human spirit that continues today. From the glittering Bronze Age, to the world of Caesar's Rome, through the era of the Vikings, to the exploration of the Arctic, Gibbins uses shipwrecks to tell all. Drawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past that tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets"--

The wide wide sea: imperial ambition, first contact and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook

By Sides, Hampton

Publishing Date: [2024]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 910.92 SID

"From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two and a half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science--the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment. Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain's imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook's intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook's overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter. At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers"--

Ireland

By Hopkin, Alannah

Publishing Date: 2017

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.1504 HOP

Ireland packs many delights into its compact size and its main attractions from the Wild Atlantic Way to its pubs and craic and numerous places of interest are only the beginning. Be inspired to visit by the new edition of Insight Guide Ireland, a comprehensive full-colour guide to both the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Slains Castle's secret history: warlords, Churchill, and Count Dracula

By Shepherd, Mike

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.2 SHE

Slains Castle is a remote castle in the north of Scotland with shadowy links to Bram Stoker and Dracula. A castle with secrets. Big secrets…Secrets, which are revealed in this unique collection of extraordinary stories. Written like a historical thriller, Slains Castle’s Secret History is a work of incredible historical fiction—everything within is set around real events. A few tasty morsels to whet the appetite: What connects Slains Castle with the Spanish Armada of 1588? When a French secret agent visited Slains Castle in 1705 and 1707, how did he inadvertently influence the formation of the United Kingdom? What was the mysterious black rain of Slains? What happened when Bram Stoker, great-grand uncle of co-author Dacre Stoker, wrote Dracula under the shadow of Slains Castle? Why did Winston Churchill visit the prime minister’s daughter in Slains Castle just before the wedding? With a foreword by Alan Hay, archivist of Clan Hay.—cover.

Paris

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.4

Presents information on accommodations, restaurants, cultural sites, shopping, and nightlife in Paris.

Iceland

Publishing Date: 2011

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.912

Rick Steves Iceland

By Steves, Rick

Publishing Date: 2024

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.9120 STE

"From vast glaciers to steaming volcanic lakes, experience the land of the midnight sun with Rick Steves. Inside Rick Steves Iceland you'll find: Comprehensive coverage for spending a week or more exploring Iceland, including the best road trips; Rick's strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites; Top sights and hidden gems, from the stunning northern lights to hidden hikes and cozy bookstores; How to connect with culture: Soak in hidden hot springs, sample smoked fish, and chat with locals in welcoming rural towns; Beat the crowds, skip the lines, and avoid tourist traps with Rick's candid, humorous insight; The best places to eat, sleep, and relax; Self-guided walking tours of lively Reykjavik and incredible museums as well as mile-by-mile scenic driving tours; Detailed maps for exploring on the go; Useful resources including a packing list, a historical overview, and helpful Icelandic phrases; Over 600 bible-thin pages include everything worth seeing without weighing you down; Complete, up-to-date information on Reykjavik, the Reykjanes Peninsula, the Golden Circle, the South Coast, the Westman Islands, West Iceland, the Ring Road, the East Fjords, and more"--

Night train to Turkistan: modern adventures along China's ancient silk road

By Stevens, Stuart

Publishing Date: 1988

Classification: 900

Call Number: 915.1 STE

The author describes his experiences traveling with three companions from Beijing to India via Kashgar in order to retrace the route followed by Peter Fleming in 1936.

Where the deer and the antelope play: the pastoral observations of one ignorant American who loves to walk outside

By Offerman, Nick

Publishing Date: [2021]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 917.304 OFF

With wit, heartwarming stories and a keen insight into new and exciting ways to see both the past and the future of the country, the actor, writer and woodworker takes a literary journey to America's frontier to celebrate the people and landscape that have made it great.

They called us enemy

By Takei, George

Publishing Date: [2019]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.53 TAK

"A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps, as one of 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love." --

Spare

By Harry

Publishing Date: [2023]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 941.0850 HAR

"It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow - and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling - and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness - and, because he blamed the press for his mother's death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn't find true love. Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple's cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family has been an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother... For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief." --

The Cambridge illustrated history of Germany

By Kitchen, Martin

Publishing Date: 1996

Classification: 900

Call Number: 943 KIT

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany provides what has not been available before: an accessible, single-volume account of German history from earliest times to today, presented both chronologically and thematically. The book succeeds in putting into perspective Germany's complex past without shirking the issues it raises. When did German history begin? Who is a German? How was it possible for such an advanced and civilized state to have been responsible for.

Hitler's people: the faces of the Third Reich

By Evans, Richard J

Publishing Date: 2024

Classification: 900

Call Number: 943.086 EVA

"Through a connected set of biographical portraits of Nazi leaders and followers that tracks power as it radiated out from Hitler to the inner and outer circles of the regime's leadership, one of our greatest historians answers the enduring question: How does a society come to carry out a program of unspeakable evil? Richard J. Evans, author of the acclaimed Third Reich Trilogy and over a dozen other volumes on modern Europe, is our preeminent scholar of Nazi Germany. Having spent half a century searching for the truths behind one of the most horrifying episodes in human history, in Hitler's People he brings us back to the original site of the Nazi movement--namely, the lives of its important and representative figures. Working in concentric circles out from Hitler and his closest allies, Hitler's People forms a typological framework of German society under Nazi rule, from the top down. With a novelist's eye for detail, Evans explains the Third Reich through the personal characteristics and professional ambitions of its members, from its most notorious deputies--such as Goebbels, the regime's propagandist, and Himmler, the Holocaust's chief architect--to the crucial enforcers and instruments of the Nazi agenda that history has largely forgotten, such as the schoolteacher Julius Streicher or the actress and film director Leni Riefenstahl. Drawing on a wealth of recently unearthed historical sources, Hitler's People lays bare the characters whose choices caused the deaths of millions. Nearly a century after Hitler's rise, the leading nations of the west are once again being torn apart by an untamed will to power. By telling the stories of these infamous individuals as human lives, Evans asks us to grapple with the complicated nature of agency and complicity, showing us that the distinctions between individual and collective responsibility--and even between pathological evil and rational choice--are never easily drawn"--

NEW RELEASE

Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza: a reckoning

By Beinart, Peter

Publishing Date: 2025

Classification: 900

Call Number: 956.9405 BEI

"A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time. In Peter Beinart's view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations' efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future." --

9 presidents who screwed up America: and four who tried to save her

By McClanahan, Brion T

Publishing Date: [2016]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.099 MCC

Americans seem to have resigned ourselves to the exact form of government that the framers and ratifiers of our Constitution feared most: the tyranny of an elected monarch. The executive branch of the United States federal government has grown so far beyond the bounds set for it in our Constitution that Americans can no longer claim to govern ourselves. We only get the chance to pick the man who will spend four years legislating unilaterally with his pen, waging undeclared wars, and usurping still more powers that the people and the states never delegated to the federal government in the first place. But how did we get here? Step by unconstitutional step, as historian Brion McClanahan reveals, ranking presidents on the only true standard: whether they kept their oath of office to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'

Ruin nation: destruction and the American Civil War

By Nelson, Megan Kate

Publishing Date: 2012

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.7 NEL

During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers' bodies were transformed into "dead heaps of ruins," novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans--northern and southern, black and white, male and female--make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war's destructiveness. Architectural ruins--cities and houses--dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the "savage" behavior of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things--trees and bodies--also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war's ruination--in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war's costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.--Publisher website.

The confidante: the untold story of the woman who helped win World War II and shape modern America

By Gorham, Christopher C.

Publishing Date: [2023]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.9109 GOR

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt's special envoy to Europe in World War II, Anna Rosenberg went where the president couldn't go. She was among the first Allied women to enter a liberated concentration camp, and stood in the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat, days after its capture. She guided the direction of the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Manhattan Project. Gorham shows that Rosenberg was the real power behind national policies critical to America winning the war and prospering afterward. Astonishingly, her story remains largely forgotten. He shows how Rosenberg's career continued after FDR's death, tapped in 1950 to become the assistant secretary of defense, and fighting tirelessly for causes from racial integration to women's equality to national health care until the end of her life. -- adapted from jacket.

NEW RELEASE

The JFK conspiracy: the secret plot to kill Kennedy--and why it failed

By Meltzer, Brad

Publishing Date: 2025

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.922 MEL

"Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is often ranked among Americans' most well-liked presidents. Yet what most Americans don't know is that JFK's historic presidency almost ended before it began--at the hands of a disgruntled sociopathic loner armed with dynamite. On December 11, 1960, shortly after Kennedy's election and before his inauguration, a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick waited in his car--a parked Buick--on a quiet street in Palm Beach, Florida. Pavlick knew the president-elect's schedule. He knew when Kennedy would leave his house. He knew where Kennedy was going. From there, Pavlick had a simple plan--one that could've changed the course of history. Written in the gripping, page-turning style that is the hallmark of Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch's bestselling series, this is a slice of history vividly brought to life. Meltzer and Mensch are at the top of their game with this brilliant exploration of what could've been for one of the most compelling leaders of the 20th century"--

Reagan: his life and legend

By Boot, Max

Publishing Date: [2024]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.927 BOO

"Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician--America's fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. In this "monumental and impressive" biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president's aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides "the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date" (Robert Mann). The story begins not in star-studded Hollywood but in the cradle of the Midwest, small-town Illinois, where Reagan was born in 1911 to Nelle Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan's life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor. The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan's coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift. Reagan's 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America's spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan's opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of "trickle-down economics," the Cold War's end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan's family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades."--

Pearls of wisdom: little pieces of advice (that go a long way)

By Bush, Barbara

Publishing Date: 2020

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.928 BUS

"The best advice First Lady Barbara Bush offered her family, staff, and close friends"--