History
The language puzzle : piecing together the six-million-year story of how words evolved
Steven Mithen
417.7 /Mithen
Nonfiction, History, Science
"The emergence of language began with the apelike calls of our earliest ancestors. Today, the world is home to thousands of complex languages. Yet exactly how, when, and why this evolution occurred has been one of the most enduring--and contentiously debated--questions in science. In The Language Puzzle, renowned archaeologist Steven Mithen puts forward a groundbreaking new account of the origins of language. Scientists have gained new insights into the first humans of 2.8 million years ago, and how numerous species flourished but only one, Homo sapiens, survives today. Drawing from this work and synthesizing research across archaeology, psychology, linguistics, genetics, neuroscience, and more, Mithen details a step-by-step explanation of how our human ancestors transitioned from apelike calls to words, and from words to language as we use it today. He explores how language shaped our cognition and vice versa; how metaphor advanced Homo sapiens' ability to formulate abstract concepts, develop agriculture, and--ultimately--shape the world. The result is a master narrative that builds bridges between disciplines, stuns with its breadth and depth, and spans millennia of societal development."--Inside flap.
Welcome to Samantha's world, 1904 : growing up in America's new century
Catherine Gourley
j973.91 Gourley
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Kids, Nonfiction, History
An in-depth look at life for girls and women in America in 1904, discussing city and town life, social reform, new inventions, amusements, and more.
If you're like me and grew up with American Girl, you know that this book was a highly sought after item! I, myself, am a Samantha, and was absolutely thrilled to find that ICPL had a copy of Welcome to Samantha's World in the collection! I'd never had the privilege of looking through this book before, but always dreamed about it when I was younger. Catherine Gourley provides a wider historical context for the Samantha books that illustrate what life what like for young girls at the turn of the century. I would definitely recommend for any fans of American Girl! -Violette
The soldier's friend : Walt Whitman's extraordinary service in the American Civil War
Gary Golio
j973.7 Golio
Kids, Picture Books, Nonfiction, History
When Walt Whitman saw his brother's name on a list of wounded Union soldiers, he went to see him in the war hospital, and did not stop visiting and ministering to Civil War soldiers for the next three years.
A moving and fascinating story of poet Walt Whitman's service to wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War. In a period that would profoundly influence Whitman's development as a writer and person, after his brother was injured in the war, Whitman worked at a DC military hospital ministering to the wounded - reading to them, listening to them, helping them write letters, feeding them (many had never tried ice cream before, just one of many treats Whitman brought to the hospital to share), and helping to bury the dead. -Anne W
Stalking Shakespeare : a memoir of madness, murder, and my search for the poet beneath the paint
Lee Durkee
704.942 /Durkee
Nonfiction, History, Art / Art History, Biographies
"Following his divorce, down-and-out writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decades-long obsession with Shakespearian portraiture. It began with a simple premise: despite the prevalence of popular portraits, no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like. That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point. Stalking Shakespeare is Durkee's fascinating memoir about an obsession gone awry, the 400-year-old myriad portraits attached to the famous playwright, and Durkee's own unrelenting search-via X-ray and infrared technologies-for a lost picture of the Bard painted from real life. As Durkee becomes better at beguiling curators into testing their paintings with spectral technologies, we get a front-row seat to the captivating mysteries plaguing the various portraits rumored to depict Shakespeare. Whisking us backward in time through layers of paint and into the pages of obscure books on the Elizabethans, Durkee takes us from Vermont to Tokyo to Mississippi to DC and ultimately to London to confront the stuffy curators forever protecting the image of the Bard. For his part, Durkee is the adversary they didn't know they had-a writer from Mississippi with nothing to lose-the "Dan Brown of English portraiture." A lively, bizarre, and surprisingly moving blend of biography, art history, and madness, Stalking Shakespeare is as entertaining as it is rigorous and sheds new light on one of history's greatest cultural and literary icons"--
A fun little escapade through the major theories of who wrote Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, via the various portraits that are purportedly of him. There's a lot of very interesting stuff here, not just literary but also in the art history sense of who created the portraits, how they've been altered, and why they look the way they do. Lee Durkee is also a strong presence in this book, and tbh I veered between thinking of him as someone I felt sympathetic and appreciative towards, for his candor about his own mental health and personal issues, and then thinking that he'd be an absolute tour guide from hell. All in all, a very (VERY) well-researched and entertaining read. -Candice
Gentleman bandit : the true story of Black Bart, the Old West's most infamous stagecoach robber
Boessenecker, John, 1953- author.
364.1552 /Boessenecker
Nonfiction, True Crime, History
"Black Bart is widely regarded today as not only the most notorious stage robber of the Old West but also the best behaved. Over his lifetime, Black Bart held up at least twenty-nine stagecoaches in California and Oregon with mild, polite commands, stealing from Wells Fargo and the US mail but never robbing a passenger. Such behavior earned him the title of a true 'gentleman bandit.' His real name was Charles E. Boles, and in the public eye, Charles lived quietly as a boulevardier in San Francisco, the wealthiest and most exciting city in the American West. Boles was an educated man who traveled among respectable crowds. Because he did not drink, fight or consort with prostitutes, his true calling as America's greatest stage robber was never suspected until his final capture in 1883. Sheriffs searched and struggled for years to find him, and newspaper editors had a field day reporting his exploits. Legends and rumors trailed his name until his mysterious death, and his ultimate fate remains one of the greatest mysteries of the Old West. Now historian John Boessenecker sheds new light on Black Bart's beginnings, reputation and exploits, bringing to life the glittering story of the mysterious stage robber who doubled as a rich, genteel socialite in the golden era of the Wild West"--
A little western history with your crime never hurts! The extremely picky Kirkus Reviews says: "An entertaining, well-researched foray into the life of a well-known but legend-layered outlaw." -Candice
The angel makers : arsenic, a midwife, and modern history's most astonishing murder ring
McCracken, Patricia Nell, author.
364.1523 /McCracken
Nonfiction, True Crime, History
"THE ANGEL MAKERS is a true-crime story like no other--a 1920s midwife who may have been the century's most prolific killer, leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men"--
A story that seems unlike any other, with an old-world, clandestine feel that could easily be the plot of a fiction book--but it isn't. -Candice
Five stories
Ellen Weinstein
j813.54 Weinstein
Picture Books, History, Kids, Nonfiction
"Five children, from five different cultures and in five different decades, grow up in the same building on the Lower East Side of New York City"--
Fascinating look at the generations who arrive and make New York their own - the neighborhood businesses changes, cultures ebb and flow and blend, but the vibrancy and character remain and build year after year! -Anne W
Hell put to shame : the 1921 Murder Farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery
Swift, Earl, 1958- author.
973.9 /Swift
History, True Crime, Nonfiction
On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War. Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before. By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists--then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
A book that combines history, true crime, racial injustice, and taut courtroom drama. NYT says that "...Swift shines a powerful light on the practice of debt slavery, and notes that it persists to this day as human traffickers continue to coerce immigrants..." making it timely as well. -Candice
Differ we must : how Lincoln succeeded in a divided America
Steve Inskeep
973.7092 /Inskeep
History
"From journalist and historian Steve Inskeep, a compelling and nuanced exploration of the political acumen of Abraham Lincoln via sixteen encounters before and during his presidency, bringing to light not only the strategy of a great politician who inherited a country divided, but lessons for our own disorderly present. In 1855, as the United States found itself at odds over the issue of slavery, then lawyer Abraham Lincoln composed a note on the matter to his close friend, the heir to a slaveholding family in the South. Lincoln--who was morally against the institution of slavery--rebuked his friend for his opposing views, he lectured him, he challenged him. But in the end, he wrote: "If for this you and I must differ, differ we must." Throughout his life and political career, Lincoln often agreed to disagree. Democracy demanded it--even an adversary had a vote. The man who went on to become the sixteenth president of the United States has assumed many roles in our historical consciousness, but most notable is that he was, with no apology, a politician. And as Steve Inskeep argues, it was because he was willing to engage in politics--to work with his critics, to compromise with those whom he deeply opposed, and to move only as fast as voters would allow--that he was able to lead a social revolution. In DIFFER WE MUST, Inskeep illuminates this master politician's life through sixteen encounters. Some of these meetings are well known, and others more obscure, but all take on new significance when examined in detail. Each interaction was with a person who differed from Lincoln, and in each someone wanted something from the other. While it isn't clear if Lincoln was able to alter his critics' beliefs--many went to war against him--nor if they were able to change his, what is notable is that he learned how to make his beliefs actionable, via precise and practical techniques. Lincoln was a skilled storyteller, and a great orator. He told jokes, he relied on sarcasm, and often made fun of himself. But behind the banter was a master storyteller, who carefully chose what to say and what to withhold. He knew his limitations and, as history came to prove, he knew how to prioritize. As the host of NPR's Morning Edition for almost two decades, Inskeep has mastered the art of bridging divides and building constructive debate in interviews; in DIFFER WE MUST, he brings his skills to bear on a prior master and in doing so forms a fresh and compelling narrative of Lincoln's life. With rich detail and enlightening commentary, Inskeep expands our understanding of a politician who held strong to his moral compass while navigating between corrosive political factions, one who began his career in the minority party and not only won the majority, but succeeded in uniting a nation"--
Lincoln was a gifted politician. In Steve Inskeep's latest, he explores how Lincoln navigated arguing with, persuading, and standing up to the many different people he disagreed with during his political career, from people in his own party, to people he agreed with morally, but disagreed on methods, to those he didn't want anything to do with, but needed their votes to achieve his ends. Inskeep's engaging book holds lessons for our politically fractured times. -Anne M
Alexandria : the city that changed the world
Islam Issa
962.1 /Issa
Nonfiction, History
An award-winning British-Egyptian writer presents an authoritative history of the first modern city and how it has shaped our modern world, including its role as a global capital of knowledge as well as the site of plagues and violence. A city drawn in sand. Inspired by the tales of Homer and his own ambitions of empire, Alexander the Great sketched the idea of a city onto the sparsely populated Egyptian coastline. He did not live to see Alexandria built, but his vision of a sparkling metropolis that celebrated learning and diversity was swiftly realised and still stands today. Situated on the cusp of Africa, Europe and Asia, great civilisations met in Alexandria. Together, Greeks and Egyptians, Romans and Jews created a global knowledge capital of enormous influence: the inventive collaboration of its citizens shaped modern philosophy, science, religion and more. In pitched battles, later empires, from the Arabs and Ottomans to the French and British, laid claim to the city but its independent spirit endures. In this sweeping biography of the great city, Islam Issa takes us on a journey across millennia, rich in big ideas, brutal tragedies and distinctive characters, from Cleopatra to Napoleon. From its humble origins to dizzy heights and present-day strife, Alexandria tells the gripping story of a city that has shaped our modern world.
Calling all history buffs! This isn't just a well-researched, comprehensive history of one of the most fascinating cities in the world (past and present), written by someone who is from there: it's also wildly interesting! Many of us already know the high points--Alexander and Ptolemy, Cleopatra, the Ottomans, the British, the library (oh, the library!)--but really there's so much more to learn. Islam Issa tells the story of this city with thought and skill, resulting in a delightful book that gives Alexandria the respect it deserves in the minds of readers. -Candice
If you're like me, you've often lain awake at night, wondering how language came to be. As in, how did we take that step (more likely, steps) from whoops and grunts and hoots to making sounds that were intentional and imbued with meaning, and how did we get others to agree on those sounds and meanings, and how did we spread this newfound amazing ability, and how did it evolve? And so on. If you've had these thoughts, this book is for you. -Candice