History
The sewing girl's tale : a story of crime and consequences in Revolutionary America
John Wood Sweet
364.1532 /Sweet
History
Summer, 1793. A crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel-- the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. Sweet takes us from a chance encounter in the street, and shows that if our laws and our culture were changed by a persistent young woman and the power of words two hundred years ago, they can be changed again. - adapted from jacket
The occult, witchcraft & magic : an illustrated history
Christopher Dell
133.4 /Dell
Nonfiction, History, Art / Art History, Nature
From the earliest Paleolithic cave rituals, magic has gripped the imagination. Magic and magicians appear in early Babylonian texts, the Bible, Judaism and Islam. Secret words, spells and incantations lie at the heart of every mythological tradition. Today, magic means many things: contemporary Wicca is practised widely as a modern pagan religion in Europe and the US; 'magic' also evokes the cathartic rituals of Chaos magic, but stretches to include the non-spiritual, rapid-fire sleight of hand performed by slick stage magicians who fill vast arenas. The book is packed with authoritative text and a huge and inspired selection of images, chosen from unusual and hidden sources. The material is presented in 100 entries, and includes some of the best-known representations of magic and the occult from around the world.
This book was so popular when it came out that we had to stock multiple copies. This is a book for you if you love history, art, and illustrations. It doesn't have to be Halloween for me to love leafing through this book! -Melody
The swerve : how the world became modern
Stephen Greenblatt
940.21 /Greenblatt
Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Biographies
In this work, the author has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.
I'm a little late to this book, but I am so glad that I am reading it (on the recommendation of Natalie Haynes, for you podcast lovers!). This book so eloquently relays an important aspect of the humanism movement--that of finding and preserving and making known again--works from the Romans and Greeks. In this case, our questing hero goes by the name of Poggio, and he re-discovers a text by the Roman thinker Lucretius, who had been heavily influenced by Greek philosopher Epicurus. It's a layer cake of scrumptious meditation on how to live, combined with juicy details of the lives of Romans and Florentines--a real treat! -Candice
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
Lindsey Fitzharris
OverDrive Audiobook
Literary Nonfiction, History, Biographies
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. .
This book is devastating and hopeful at the same time. It is a story that starts out harrowing, but after hard work and ingenuity by a few individuals, things change for the better. The Facemaker, a history of World War I facial reconstruction, sets the scene: how World War I was fought in new and horrific ways. It was industrial. There were a lot of advancements in weapons of war. (And of course, for what?) Lindsey Fitzharris describes this moment in time very well. Then there are the people put in the trenches and at sea and in the air, not to mention the civilians, facing this new weaponry. Fitzharris makes these stories personal and individual, the pain experienced both inside and out. She picks a number of individuals that came home with significant facial injuries and how they viewed their lives as over. Enter Harold Gillies, an ears, nose, and throat doctor, who is about to become the leading expert in facial reconstruction. If you love compelling histories of war or medicine, I recommend this book. As an aside, the audio version was excellently narrated. -Anne M
The Middle Ages : a graphic guide
Eleanor Janega
940.1 /Janega
Nonfiction, History
"The Middle Ages: A Graphic Guide busts the myth of the 'Dark Ages', shedding light on the period's present-day relevance in a unique illustrated style. This history takes us through the rise and fall of empires, papacies, caliphates and kingdoms; through the violence and death of the Crusades, Viking raids, the Hundred Years War and the Plague; to the curious practices of monks, martyrs and iconoclasts. We'll see how the foundations of the modern West were established, influencing our art, cultures, religious practices and ways of thinking. And we'll explore the lives of those seen as 'Other' - women, Jews, homosexuals, lepers, sex workers and heretics. Join historian Eleanor Janega and illustrator Neil Max Emmanuel on a romp across continents and kingdoms as we discover the Middle Ages to be a time of huge change, inquiry and development - not unlike our own."--
Illustrations are my jam. Any creatively rendered true story is going to grab my attention. I've been reading a lot of business and conflict management books lately, so this one is a nice reprieve where I can sit and enjoy an artist interpreting history. -Melody
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
Eric Klinenberg
OverDrive eBook
Political, History
“A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward.”—Jon Stewart NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together and find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done? In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed. Interweaving his own research with examples from around the globe, Klinenberg shows how “social infrastructure” is helping to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges. Richly reported and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People offers a blueprint for bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION “Just brilliant!”—Roman Mars, 99% Invisible “The aim of this sweeping work is to popularize the notion of ‘social infrastructure'—the ‘physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact'. . . . Here, drawing on research in urban planning, behavioral economics, and environmental psychology, as well as on his own fieldwork from around the world, [Eric Klinenberg] posits that a community’s resilience correlates strongly with the robustness of its social infrastructure. The numerous case studies add up to a plea for more investment in the spaces and institutions (parks, libraries, childcare centers) that foster mutual support in civic life.”—The New Yorker “Palaces for the People—the title is taken from the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s description of the hundreds of libraries he funded—is essentially a calm, lucid exposition of a centuries-old idea, which is really a furious call to action.”—New Statesman “Clear-eyed . . . fascinating.”—Psychology Today
A great look at how social spaces, ie Libraries ;) are the cure to our division. This is also available on e-audio, or as a book club kit! -Mykle
American demon : Eliot Ness and the hunt for America's Jack the Ripper
Stashower, Daniel, author.
364.1523/Stashower (NEW)
True Crime, Biographies, History
Stashower (Teller of Tales) traces Eliot Ness's career with a focus on the media-named Torso Murders, which shook the city of Cleveland. Over a course of three years, citizens discovered bundles of dismembered body parts. Twelve killings in all were ascribed to the unknown assailant, dubbed the Mad Butcher, and only two victims were positively identified. Ness was famous for his work in Al Capone's downfall. After some less prestigious work shutting down moonshine stills in the mountains, Ness landed a job that played to his strengths: Cleveland's safety director. Here he could modernize the police force, use his gang busting skills against the city's organized crime, and ferret out corruption within the ranks. Cleveland needed this, but what the city wanted was a hero who could stop the Mad Butcher. Stashower's Ness is a flawed do-gooder, frustrated by city politics, sullied by personal indiscretions, and taunted by postcards from the man he suspected was the Mad Butcher but couldn't prove. VERDICT Stashower was born in Cleveland, and his personal connection to the city breathes life into this well-researched and chilling account.—Terry Bosky Copyright 2022 Library Journal.
Just what did Eliot Ness get up to after taking down Al Capone? -Candice
Book of Phobias and Manias : a history of obsession.
Summerscale, Kate
616.85225/Summerscale
Science, History
Edgar Award winner Summerscale (The Haunting of Alma Fielding) examines the fear of the number 13, the 17th-century Dutch tulip frenzy, and 97 other irrational turns of mind in this fascinating compendium. Acarophobic delusions, caused by the "extreme fear of tiny insects," can be transmitted from person to person and once caused Salvador Dalí to take a razor blade to his back to kill a flea that turned out to be a pimple. Triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13, may have its roots in the story of the Norse trickster god, Loki, who "cursed the earth with darkness" when he crashed a dinner party for 12 other gods at Valhalla and became the 13th at the table. Summerscale also makes the intriguing point that manias and phobias may actually preserve sanity by "crystallising our frights and fancies, and allowing us to proceed as if everything else makes sense," and links obsessions to historical and cultural developments, noting, for example, that arithmomania, or "a pathological desire to count," was first identified in the late 19th century and may be the product "of our era's reverence for mechanical processes." Exquisitely detailed and consistently insightful, this is an entertaining guide to humanity's compulsions. (Sept.) Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly.
The part of the review that says "and links obsessions to historical and cultural developments" was what got me hooked on this book. Luridly fascinating, and educational to boot! -Candice
Meet me by the fountain : an inside history of the mall
Alexandra Lange
381.11 /Lange
Nonfiction, Business, History
Since their birth in the 1950s, malls have been temples of commerce. Amid the aftershocks of financial crises, a global pandemic, and the rise of online retail, abandoned shopping centers have become one of our era's defining images. Lange chronicles the postwar invention of the mall, and shows how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in the cultural ascent. She shows that they are environments of both freedom and exclusion, of consumerism but also of community. --
Oh wow, when I first saw this title, every remnant of my teenaged self reached for the Aqua Net and whatever dayglo clothing I could find! The mall was such a feature of my adolescent years, the word was synonymous with both fashion and social life. Now that I'm older and the wants and ways of people and buying have changed, the mall takes on a bittersweet/wasted space element. Lange's book, however, not only looks back at what the mall was, but also forward, finding ways to repurpose and make equitable the space and resources they provide. Is there hope for the mall yet?? Find out! -Candice
Last call at the Hotel Imperial : the reporters who took on a world at war
Deborah Cohen
070.922 /Cohen
Nonfiction, Biographies, History
"Married foreign correspondents John and Frances Gunther intimately understood that it isn't only impersonal, economic forces that propel history, bringing readers so close to the front lines of history that they could feel how personal pathologies became the stuff of geopolitical crises. Together with other reporters of the Lost Generation--American journalists H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson--the Gunthers slipped through knots of surveillance and ignored orders of expulsion in order to expose the mass executions in Badajoz during the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the millions of dollars that Joseph Goebbels salted away abroad, and the sexual peccadillos of Hitler's brownshirts. They conjured what it was like to ride with Hitler in an airplane ("not a word did he say to any soul"); broke the inside story about Mussolini's claustrophobia and superstitions (he "took fright" at an Egyptian mummy that had been given to him); and verified the hypnotic impression Stalin made when he walked into a room ("You felt his antennae"). But just as they were transforming journalism, it was also transforming them: who they loved and betrayed, how they raised their children and coped with death. Over the course of their careers they would popularize bringing the private life into public view, not only in their reporting on the outsized figures of their day, but in what they revealed about their own (and each other's) intimate experiences as well. What were intimate relationships, after all, but geopolitics writ small?"--
I thought this book had a slow start, but as soon as we got to Europe and in the thick of war reporting, I was hooked. Learning about Dorothy Thompson, Frances Gunther, John Gunther, H.R. Knickerbocker, and Vincent Sheean and how they reported on Europe in the 1930s and 1940s showed how important journalists are. -Anne M
John Wood Sweet brings the story of Lanah Sawyer to light in this historical courtroom account. What I found surprising is even though these cases were tried very differently because of the political and economic status of women in the 18th Century, there is a lot that 21st Century readers would find familiar. -Anne M