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Earthrise: Apollo 8 and the Photo That Changed the World
By James Gladstone. 2018
1968 was a year of unrest: many nations were at war. People marched for peace, fairness, and freedom. At the…
same time, the Apollo 8 crew was about to go farther into space than anyone had gone before—to the moon. As they surveyed the moon’s surface, astronauts aboard Apollo 8 looked up just when Earth was rising out of the darkness of space. They saw the whole planet—no countries, no borders. The photograph they took, Earthrise, had a profound effect when published widely back on Earth, galvanizing the environmental movement, changing the way people saw our single, fragile home planet, and sparking hope during a year of unrest. This important and timely picture book is publishing to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, telling the story behind the photograph, both inside the spaceship and back on Earth. Text includes dialogue pulled from NASA’s Apollo 8 transcript, drawing readers into the iconic moment Earth was photographed from space. An author’s note at the end explains more about the photograph, the Apollo 8 mission, and how Earthrise went on to inspire Earth Day.Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
By Steve Sheinkin. 2017
When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in…
Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and the Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work. But this is not just an underdog story. It's an unflinching look at the persecution of Native Americans and its intersection with the beginning of one of the most beloved and exploitative pastimes in America, expertly told by nonfiction powerhouse Steve Sheinkin. From the Compact Disc edition.Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (King Legacy #1)
By Martin Luther King, Jr.. 2015
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolent resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory,…
and intimate. King described his book as "the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth." Stride Toward Freedom traces the phenomenal journey of a community and shows how the twenty-six-year-old King, with his conviction for equality and nonviolence, helped transform the nation and the world.NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Epic and debate-shifting." -David Brooks, New York Times "More than any book published so far in…
this century, it deserves to be called a conservative classic." -Yuval Levin, National Review With his trademark blend of political history, social science, economics, and pop culture, two-time NYT bestselling author, syndicated columnist, National Review senior editor, and American Enterprise Institute fellow Jonah Goldberg makes the timely case that America and other democracies are in peril as they lose the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity. Instead we are surrendering to populism, nationalism and other forms of tribalism. Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history-in 18th century England when we accidentally discovered the miracle of liberal democratic capitalism. As Americans we are doubly blessed that those radical ideas were written into the Constitution, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society: - Our rights come from God not from the government. - The government belongs to us; we do not belong to the government. - The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls. - The fruits of our labors belong to us. In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation and "white privilege," the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right. At a moment when authoritarianism, tribalism, identity politics, nationalism, and cults of personality are rotting our democracy from within, Goldberg exposes the West's suicidal tendencies on both sides of the ideological aisle. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals that led us out of the bloody muck of the past - or back to the muck we will go. Suicide is painless, liberty takes work.World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
By Franklin Foer. 2017
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech,…
and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspectiona world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer sciencefrom Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon ValleyFoer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They're monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance. Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times L.A. Times NPRWhy is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change,…
have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefsthat taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedomare sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws. The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights. When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible "philanthropy." These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decisiona case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network. The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied. Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews-including with several sources within the network-and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings inHow to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
By Daniel Immerwahr. 2019
A pathbreaking history of the United States' overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire We are familiar with…
maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire," exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories-the islands, atolls, and archipelagos-this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.The Wright Brothers
By David McCullough. 2018
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world…
how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright. On December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright's Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How did they do it? And why? David McCullough tells the extraordinary and truly American story of the two brothers who changed the world. Sons of an itinerant preacher and a mother who died young, Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in a small side street in Dayton, Ohio, in a house that lacked indoor plumbing and electricity but was filled with books and a love of learning. The brothers ran a bicycle shop that allowed them to earn enough money to pursue their mission in life: flight. In the 1890s flying was beginning to advance beyond the glider stage, but there were major technical challenges that the Wrights were determined to solve. They traveled to North Carolina's remote Outer Banks to test their plane because there they found three indispensable conditions: constant winds, soft surfaces for landings, and privacy. Flying was exceedingly dangerous; the Wrights risked their lives every time they flew in the years that followed. Orville nearly died in a crash in 1908, before he was nursed back to health by his sister, Katharine, an unsung and important part of the brothers' success and of McCullough's book. Despite their achievement, the Wrights could not convince the US government to take an interest in their plane until after they demonstrated its success in France, where the government instantly understood the importance of their achievement. Now, in this revelatory book, master historian David McCullough draws on nearly 1,000 letters of family correspondence-plus diaries, notebooks, and family scrapbooks in the Library of Congress-to tell the full story of the Wright brothers and their heroic achievement.The Wright Brothers: Nose-Diving Into History (Epic Fails #1)
By Ben Thompson, Erik Slader. 2018
A hilarious nonfiction look at two of history's most epic "failures": the Wright brothers, whose countless crashes ultimately led to…
groundbreaking success. Although Orville and Wilbur Wright are celebrated today as heroes for their revolutionary contributions to science and engineering?they are acknowledged as the first men to successfully achieve powered, piloted flight?their success was hard-earned. (Spoiler alert: there were a lot of nosedives involved.) In fact, it took the self-taught engineers years of work and dozens of crashes before they managed a single twelve-second flight! In this first installment of the brand new Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take readers through the Wright brothers' many mishaps and misadventures as they paved the way for modern aviation. The Epic Fails series takes a humorous and unexpected view of history, exploring the surprising stories behind a variety of groundbreaking discoveries, voyages, experiments, and innovations, illustrating how many of mankind's biggest successes are in fact the result of some pretty epic failures.The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage
By Walter Dean Myers, Bill Miles. 2018
New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers and renowned filmmaker Bill Miles deftly tell the true story of the…
unsung American heroes of the 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I in The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage. At a time of widespread bigotry and racism, the African American soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment put their lives on the line in the name of democracy. The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage is a portrait of bravery and honor.Abraham Lincoln's Dueling Words
By Donna Janell Bowman. 2018
As a young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln was known for his sense of humor. But in 1842, he did something so…
rascally--so downright mean--he was challenged to a duel. Lincoln needed his wit and a healthy dose of humility to save his life and his career. He didn't know it at the time, but the future of this great country was at stake. Ultimately, what he referred to as the meanest thing he had ever done, taught Lincoln to be a better man.Letter from Birmingham Jail
By Martin Luther King. 2013
April 16th. The year is 1963. Birmingham, Alabama has had a spring of non-violent protests known as the Birmingham Campaign,…
seeking to draw attention to the segregation against blacks by the city government and downtown retailers. The organizers longed to create a non-violent tension so severe that the powers that be would be forced to address the rampant racism head on. Recently arrested was Martin Luther King, Jr.. It is there in that jail cell that he writes this letter; on the margins of a newspaper he pens this defense of non-violence against segregation. His accusers, though many, in this case were not the white racist leaders or retailers he protested against, but 8 black men who saw him as "other" and as too extreme. To them and to the world he defended the notion that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".Obama's Wars
By Bob Woodward. 2010
Day-by-day account of President Obama’s national security decisions during his administration’s first eighteen months. Discusses his lack of pre-election experience…
with intelligence briefings or the military and describes deliberations with Pentagon officials about the Afghanistan war. Highlights struggles between the brass and Obama’s campaign aides. Some strong language. Bestseller.Arbitrary Stupid Goal
By Tamara Shopsin. 2017
"Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world-when I looked up from its pages regular life seemed boring and safe…
and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life."-Miranda July In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the reader on a pointillist time-travel trip to the Greenwich Village of her bohemian 1970s childhood, a funky, tight-knit small town in the big city, long before Sex and the City tours and luxury condos. The center of Tamara's universe is Shopsin's, her family's legendary greasy spoon, aka "The Store," run by her inimitable dad, Kenny-a loquacious, contrary, huge-hearted man who, aside from dishing up New York's best egg salad on rye, is Village sheriff, philosopher, and fixer all at once. All comers find a place at Shopsin's table and feast on Kenny's tall tales and trenchant advice along with the incomparable chili con carne. Filled with clever illustrations and witty, nostalgic photographs and graphics, and told in a sly, elliptical narrative that is both hilarious and endearing, Arbitrary Stupid Goal is an offbeat memory-book mosaic about the secrets of living an unconventional life, which is becoming a forgotten art.Harry Houdini (FIRST NAMES #bk. 1)
By Kjartan Poskitt. 2019
Before Harry Houdini (1874-1926) became the greatest magician in the world, he was just little Ehrich Weisz, a Hungarian-born immigrant…
who moved to America with his family and performed stage tricks for a little extra cash. He started off with card tricks and then eventually began performing the escape acts that would make him famous. Known for his daring and death-defying illusions, he would do some of the greatest tricks ever: escaping from a milk can, being buried alive, and being locked inside a crate and thrown into a river. He conquered each of these seemingly impossible feats and showed the world the power of a little magic. Fun and fast-paced, Harry Houdini tells the story of the curious boy who became the world's greatest magician and reveals how Houdini did some of his most stunning escapesBlack radical: the life and times of William Monroe Trotter
By Kerri Greenidge. 2019
William Monroe Trotter (1872- 1934), although still virtually unknown to the wider public, was an unlikely American hero. With the…
stylistic verve of a newspaperman and the unwavering fearlessness of an emancipator, he galvanized black working-class citizens to wield their political power despite the violent racism of post-Reconstruction America. For more than thirty years, the Harvard-educated Trotter edited and published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper that was read across the nation. Defining himself against the gradualist politics of Booker T. Washington and the elitism of W. E. B. Du Bois, Trotter advocated for a radical vision of black liberation that prefigured leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Synthesizing years of archival research, historian Kerri Greenidge renders the drama of turn-of-the-century America and reclaims Trotter as a seminal figure, one whose prophetic, yet ultimately tragic, life offers a link between the vision of Frederick Douglass and black radicalism in the modern eraFight house: rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump
By Tevi Troy. 2020
Washington Post bestselling presidential historian and former senior White House aide Tevi Troy examines some of the juiciest, nastiest, and…
most consequential administration struggles in modern American history. In doing so, he not only provides context on the administrations, the players, and their in-fighting but also show how those fights shaped the administrations in question, the presidents' historical reputations, and the policy landscape of modern America. In showing these fights, the book highlights tough tactics used by sharp-elbowed operatives to prevail in bureaucratic disputes, from leaks to delays in submitting items for review to moving rivals out of cherished office spaces. Fight House also looks at the presidents' role in all of this and questions long-standing assumptions about whether creative tension is really the best method of governing. Troy employs both his historical knowledge as well as his own high-level White House experience to inform his recommendations for the best ways to staff and organize a White House to ensure the best results for the president-and the American people. Part riveting interpersonal history, part case study, and part analysis of the commanders in chief and their teams, Fight House is essential listening for students of the presidency and of the nation as a wholeThe promise and the dream: the untold story of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy
By David Margolick. 2019
No two public figures were more crucial in the drama of race relations in this era than Martin Luther King,…
Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Fifty years after they were both murdered, noted journalist David Margolick explores the untold story of the complex and ever-evolving relationship between these two American icons. Assassinated only sixty-two days apart in 1968, King and Kennedy changed the United States forever, and their deaths profoundly altered the country's trajectory. In The Promise and the Dream, Margolick examines their unique bond and the complicated mix of mutual assistance, impatience, wariness, awkwardness, antagonism, and admiration that existed between the two, documented with original interviews, oral histories, FBI files, and previously untapped contemporaneous accounts. At a turning point in social history, MLK and RFK embarked on distinct but converging paths toward lasting change. Even when they weren't interacting directly, they monitored and learned from one another. Their joint story, a story each man took some pains to hide and which began to come into focus only with their murders, is not just gripping history but a window into contemporary America and the challenges we continue to faceDreams from many rivers: a Hispanic history of the United States told in poems
By Margarita Engle. 2019
From Juana Briones and Juan Ponce de León to eighteenth-century slaves and modern-day sixth graders, the many and varied people…
depicted here speak to the experiences and contributions of Latinos throughout the history of the United States, from the earliest known stories up to the present day. A portrait of a great, enormously varied, and enduring heritage, this is a compelling treatment of an important topic. Some voices are composite characters, not historical figuresOklahoma's Atticus: an innocent man and the lawyer who fought for him
By Hunter Howe Cates. 2019
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1953: An impoverished Cherokee named Buster Youngwolfe confesses to brutally raping and murdering his eleven-year-old female relative. When…
Youngwolfe recants his confession, saying he was forced to confess by the authorities, his city condemns him, except for one man-public defender and Creek Indian Elliott Howe. Recognizing in Youngwolfe the life that could have been his if not for a few lucky breaks, Howe risks his career to defend Youngwolfe against the powerful county attorney's office. Forgotten today, the sensational story of the murder, investigation, and trial made headlines nationwide. Oklahoma's Atticus is a tale of two cities: oil-rich downtown Tulsa and the dirt-poor slums of north Tulsa, of two newspapers-each taking different sides in the trial-and of two men who were both born poor Native Americans but whose lives took drastically different paths. Oklahoma's Atticus is full of colorful characters, from the seventy-two-year-old mystic who predicted where the body was buried to the Kansas City sergeant who founded one of the most advanced forensics labs and pioneered the use of lie detector evidence and the ambitious assistant attorney who would rise to become the future governor of Oklahoma. At the same time, it's a story that explores issues that still divide our nation: police brutality and corruption; the effects of poverty, inequality, and racism in criminal justice; the power of the media; and the primacy of the presumption of innocence