LibGuides: Booklists for Adults & Teens: Booklists for Adults & Teens

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American Politics

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Selecting a President by Eleanor Clift; Matthew Spieler The debut of a brand-new civics series for high school seniors and college freshmen, that clearly, concisely and cleverly explains how the United States elects its president Selecting a President explains the nuts and bolts of our presidential electoral system while drawing on rich historical anecdotes from past campaigns. Among the world's many democracies, U.S. presidential elections are unique, where presidential contenders embark on a grueling, spectacular two-year journey that begins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Modern presidential campaigns are a marked departure from the process envisioned by America's founders. Yet while they've evolved, many of the basic structures of our original electoral system remain in place--even as presidential elections have moved into the modern era with tools like Twitter and Facebook at their disposal--they must still compete in an election governed by rules and mechanisms conceived in the late eighteenth century. In this book, Clift and Spieler demonstrate that presidential campaigns are exciting, hugely important, disillusioning at times but also inspiring.
Call Number: Check it out now - only available from hoopla digital!
Democracy in One Book or Less by David Litt Bill Bryson meets Thomas Frank in this deeply insightful, unexpectedly hilarious story of how politicians hijacked American democracy and how we can take it back The democracy you live in today is different--completely different--from the democracy you were born into. You probably don't realize just how radically your republic has been altered during your lifetime. Yet more than any policy issue, political trend, or even Donald Trump himself, our redesigned system of government is responsible for the peril America faces today. What explains the gap between what We, the People want and what our elected leaders do? How can we fix our politics before it's too late? And how can we truly understand the state of our democracy without wanting to crawl under a rock? That's what former Obama speechwriter David Litt set out to answer. Poking into forgotten corners of history, translating political science into plain English, and traveling the country to meet experts and activists, Litt explains how the world's greatest experiment in democracy went awry.  (He also tries to crash a party at Mitch McConnell's former frat house. It goes poorly.) The result of Litt's journey is something you might not have thought possible: a page-turner about the political process. You'll meet the Supreme Court justice charged with murder, learn how James Madison's college roommate broke the Senate, encounter a citrus thief who embodies what's wrong with our elections, and join Belle the bill as she tries to become a law (a quest far more harrowing than the one in Schoolhouse Rock!). Yet despite his clear-eyed assessment of the dangers we face, Litt remains audaciously optimistic. He offers a to-do list of bold yet achievable changes--a blueprint for restoring the balance of power in America before it's too late.
Why the People by Beka Feathers; Ally Shwed (Illustrator) Is democracy still the best form of government? Does it ever work like it's supposed to?In the middle of an airport, while waiting for a flight, Julie and Lin wonder aloud how America can ever be a democracy when citizens seem to disagree over everything. From there, the reader is whisked through political history, as Julie and Lin explain the differences between systems of power, including monarchy, theocracy, dictatorship, and oligarchy. In this witty and well-argued political graphic novel, Beka Feathers and Ally Shwed shed light on how democracy works, what makes it more effective, and the way it truly gives power to the people as long as we choose to wield it.
The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actions--and inactions--have defined the course of our country. What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United States--as did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as "the gatekeepers," wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, and--most crucially--enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks.  Through extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeen living chiefs and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker's expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution--and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout might have been prevented by a more effective chief.  Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details, The Gatekeepers offers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington.
The Great Suppression by Zachary Roth A deeply reported look inside the new conservative movement working to undermine American democracy. Control of the country is up for grabs-and Republicans have been rigging the game in their favor. Twenty-two states have passed restrictions on voting. Ruthless gerrymandering has given the GOP a long-term grip on Congress. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, boosting candidates backed by big money. It would be worrying enough if these were just schemes for partisan advantage. But the reality is even more disturbing. As reporter Zachary Roth reveals, a growing number of Republicans distrust the very idea of democracy-and they're doing everything they can to limit it. In The Great Suppression, Roth unearths the deep historical roots of this anti-egalitarian worldview, and introduces us to its modern-day proponents- The GOP officials pushing to make it harder to cast a ballot; the lawyers looking to scrap all limits on money in politics; the libertarian scholars reclaiming judicial activism to roll back the New Deal; and the corporate lobbyists working to ban local action on everything from the minimum wage to the environment. And he travels from Rust Belt cities to southern towns to show us how these efforts are hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing progress on pressing issues. A sharp, searing polemic in the tradition of Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi, The Great Suppression is an urgent wake-up call about a threat to our most cherished values, and a rousing argument for why we need democracy now more than ever.
The Runner-Up Presidency by Mark Weston America's Strangest Presidential Elections-including the ones that defied the people's will-and the real threat that we'll send more runner-up presidents to the White House Book jacket.
A Politics of Love by Marianne Williamson In this stirring call to arms, the activist, spiritual leader, and New York Times bestselling author of the classic A Return to Love confronts the cancerous politics of fear and divisiveness threatening the United States today, urging all spiritually aware Americans to return to--and act out of--our deepest value: love. America's story is one of great social achievement. From the Abolitionists who fought to outlaw slavery, to the Suffragettes who championed women's right to vote, to the Civil Rights proponents who battled segregation and institutionalized white supremacy, to the proponents of the women's movement and gay rights seeking equality for all, citizens for generations have risen up to fulfill the promise of our nation. Over the course of America's history, these activists have both embodied and enacted the nation's deepest values. Today, America once again is in turmoil. A spiritual cancer of fear threatens to undo the progress we have achieved. Discord and hatred are dissolving our communal bonds and undermining the spirit of social responsibility--the duty we feel toward one another. In this powerful spiritual manifesto, Marianne Williamson offers a tonic for this cultural malignancy. She urges us to imitate the heroes of our past and live out our deepest spiritual commitment: where some have sown hatred, let us now sow love. Williamson argues that we must do more than respond to external political issues. We must address the deeper, internal causes that have led to this current dysfunction. We need a new, whole-person politics of love that stems not just from the head but from the heart, not just from intellectual understanding but from a genuine affection for one another. By committing to love, we will make a meaningful contribution to the joyful, fierce and disruptive energies that are rising at this critical point in time. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "we must think anew, and act anew . . . and then we shall save our country."
Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs, and Washington Handshakes by Chuck McCutcheon; David Mark; Jeff Greenfield (Other) To the amusement of the pundits and the regret of the electorate, our modern political jargon has become even more brazenly two-faced and obfuscatory than ever. Where once we had Muckrakers, now we have Bed-Wetters. Where Blue Dogs once slept peaceably in the sun, Attack Dogs now roam the land. During election season--a near constant these days--the coded rhetoric of candidates and their spin doctors, and the deliberately meaningless but toxic semiotics of the wing nuts and backbenchers, reach near-Orwellian levels of self-satisfaction, vitriol, and deceit. The average NPR or talk radio listener, MSNBC or Fox News viewer, or blameless New York Times or Wall Street Journal reader is likely to be perplexed, nonplussed, and lulled into a state of apathetic resignation and civic somnolence by the rapid-fire incomprehensibility of political pronouncement and commentary--which is, frankly, putting us exactly where the pundits want us. Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs, and Washington Handshakes is a tonic and a corrective. It is a reference and field guide to the language of politics by two veteran observers that not only defines terms and phrases but also explains their history and etymology, describes who uses them against whom, and why, and reveals the most telling, infamous, amusing, and shocking examples of their recent use. It is a handbook of lexicography for the Wonkette and This Town generation, a sleeker, more modern Safire's Political Dictionary, and a concise, pointed, bipartisan guide to the lies, obfuscations, and helical constructions of modern American political language, as practiced by real-life versions of the characters on House of Cards.
Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "After five decades of magisterial output, Doris Kearns Goodwin leads the league of presidential historians. Insight is her imprint."--USA TODAY "A book like Leadership should help us raise our expectations of our national leaders, our country and ourselves."--The Washington Post "We can only hope that a few of Goodwin's many readers will find in her subjects' examples a margin of inspiration and a resolve to steer the country to a better place."--The New York Times Book Review In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely--Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)--to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today's polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency.
Give Us the Ballot by Ari Berman A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction ANew York Times Notable Book of 2015 AWashington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015 ABoston Globe Best Book of 2015 AKirkus ReviewsBest Nonfiction Book of 2015 An NPR Best Book of 2015 Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed.Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history,Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.
Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein One of Bill Gates's "5 books to read this summer," this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In this "superbly researched" (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us--and how we are polarizing it--with disastrous results. "The American political system--which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president--is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face," writes political analyst Ezra Klein. "We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole." "A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis" (The New York Times Book Review), Why We're Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. "Well worth reading" (New York magazine), this is an "eye-opening" (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics--and perhaps at yourself.
Primary Politics by Elaine C. Kamarck The 2016 presidential primaries are on the horizon and this new edition of Elaine Kamarck'sPrimary Politics will be there to help make sense of them. Updated to include the 2012 election, it will once again be the guide to understanding the modern nominating system and some of its arcana, including the "robot rule." InPrimary Politics, political insider Elaine Kamarck explains how the presidential nomination process became the often baffling system we have today. Her focus is the largely untold story of how presidential candidates since the early 1970s have sought to alter the rules in their favor and how their failures and successes have led to even more change. She describes how candidates have sought to manipulate the sequencing of primaries to their advantage and how Iowa and New Hampshire came to dominate the system. She analyzes the rules that are used to translate votes into delegates, paying special attention to the Democrats' twenty-year fight over proportional representation. Drawing on meticulous research, interviews with key figures in both parties, and years of experience, this book explores one of the most important questions in American politics -- how we narrow the list of presidential candidates every four years.
Charlie Brown's America by Blake Scott Ball Despite--or because of--its huge popular culture status, Peanuts enabled cartoonist Charles Schulz to offer political commentary on the most controversial topics of postwar American culture through the voices of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang. In postwar America, there was no newspaper comic strip more recognizable than Charles Schulz's Peanuts. It was everywhere, not just in thousands of daily newspapers. For nearly fifty years, Peanuts was a mainstay of American popular culture in television, movies, and merchandising, from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to the White House to the breakfast table. Most people have come to associate Peanuts with the innocence of childhood, not the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. Some have even argued that Peanuts was so beloved because it was apolitical. The truth, as Blake Scott Ball shows, is that Peanuts was very political. Whether it was the battles over the Vietnam War, racial integration, feminism, or the future of a nuclear world, Peanuts was a daily conversation about very real hopes and fears and the political realities of the Cold War world. As thousands of fan letters, interviews, and behind-the-scenes documents reveal, Charles Schulz used his comic strip to project his ideas to a mass audience and comment on the rapidly changing politics of America. Charlie Brown's America covers all of these debates and much more in a historical journey through the tumultuous decades of the Cold War as seen through the eyes of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang.
Let the People Pick the President by Jesse Wegman "Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America's 'core democratic principles' and should be done away with..." --Publishers Weekly The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose? Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question--and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans--Republicans and Democrats alike--find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Now, as political passions reach a boiling point at the dawn of the 2020 race, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed--now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president? In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count--and restore belief in our democratic system.
The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter; Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics," Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Like only a handful of American historians before him--Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples--Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
Call Number: eBook
Lost in a Gallup by W. Joseph Campbell A sweeping look at the messy and contentious past of US presidential pre-election polls and why they aren't as reliable as we think. Polls in U.S. presidential elections can and do get it wrong--as surprising outcomes in 2020, in 2016, in 2012, in 2004, in 2000 all remind us. Lost in a Gallup captures in lively and unprecedented fashion the stories of polling flops, epic upsets, unforeseen landslides, and exit poll fiascoes in presidential elections since 1936. Polling's checkered record in elections has rarely been considered in detail and, until now, has never been addressed collectively.   Polling embarrassments are not all alike. Pollsters have anticipated tight elections when landslides occurred; they have indicated the wrong winner in closer elections; state polls have confounded expected national outcomes. Exit polling has thrown Election Day into confusion. The work of venerable pollsters has been singularly and memorably in error. It is a rare presidential election not to be marred by polling controversies. Lost in a Gallup casts a critical eye on major figures in election polling such as George Gallup, a prickly founding father of public opinion research. The book also considers the polling innovations of Warren Mitofsky, whose admonition rings true across generations: "There's a lot of room for humility in polling. Every time you get cocky, you lose."   Lost in a Gallup examines how polling failure often equates to journalistic failure. Historically, poll-bashing was quite pronounced among prominent journalists, including well-known newspaper columnists such as Mike Royko in Chicago and Jimmy Breslin in New York. They and other journalists challenged the presumption that polls could accurately measure or interpret what the public was thinking. Even so, polls drive news media narratives about presidential elections, shaping conventional wisdom about how competitive those races are. As Lost in a Gallup makes clear, polls are not always in error. But when they fail, they can fail in surprising ways.  
American Government 101 by Kathleen Sears All you need to know about elections, politics, and government! Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of government into tedious discourse that would put even the president to sleep. American Government 101 cuts out the boring explanations, and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you learn. From the backstory of the Constitution to the institution of the Electoral College, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts to help you learn about how the government of the United States actually works. So whether you want to learn about how policies and laws are created, or just want to become a better-informed voter, American Government 101 has all the answers--even the ones you didn't know you were looking for.
The Red and the Blue by Steve Kornacki From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the birth of political tribalism in the 1990s--one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape from Clinton to Trump In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him Speaker.  The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns--their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the '90s were not just about them.  Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo's stubborn presence around Clinton's 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton's star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot's wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others.  With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.
Camelot's End by Jon Ward From a strange, dark chapter in American political history comes the captivating story of Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign for president against the incumbent Jimmy Carter, told in full for the first time. The Carter presidency was on life support. The Democrats, desperate to keep power and yearning to resurrect former glory, turned to Kennedy. And so, 1980 became a civil war. It was the last time an American president received a serious reelection challenge from inside his own party, the last contested convention, and the last all-out floor fight, where political combatants fought in real time to decide who would be the nominee. It was the last gasp of an outdated system, an insider's game that old Kennedy hands thought they had mastered, and the year that marked the unraveling of the Democratic Party as America had known it. Camelot's End details the incredible drama of Kennedy's challenge -- what led to it, how it unfolded, and its lasting effects -- with cinematic sweep. It is a story about what happened to the Democratic Party when the country's long string of successes, luck, and global dominance following World War II ran its course, and how, on a quest to recapture the magic of JFK, Democrats plunged themselves into an intra-party civil war. And, at its heart, Camelot's End is the tale of two extraordinary and deeply flawed men: Teddy Kennedy, one of the nation's greatest lawmakers, a man of flaws and of great character; and Jimmy Carter, a politically tenacious but frequently underestimated trailblazer. Comprehensive and nuanced, featuring new interviews with major party leaders and behind-the-scenes revelations from the time, Camelot's End presents both Kennedy and Carter in a new light, and takes readers deep inside a dark chapter in American political history.
Vanguard by Martha S. Jones The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America. In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women--Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more--who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.
The Fight to Vote by Michael Waldman "Important and engaging" --The Washington Post From the president of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and the author of The Second Amendment, the history of the long struggle to win voting rights for all citizens. In The Second Amendment, Michael Waldman traced the ongoing argument on gun rights from the Bill of Rights to the current day. Now in The Fight to Vote, Michael Waldman takes a succinct and comprehensive look at a crucial American struggle: the drive to define and defend government based on "the consent of the governed." From the beginning, and at every step along the way, as Americans sought to right to vote, others have fought to stop them. This is the first book to trace the full story from the founders' debates to today's challenges: a wave of restrictive voting laws, partisan gerrymanders, the flood of campaign money unleashed by Citizens United. Americans are proud of our democracy. But today that system seems to be under siege, and the right to vote has become the fight to vote. In fact, that fight has always been at the heart of our national story, and raucous debates over how to expand democracy have always been at the center of American politics. At first only a few property owners could vote. Over two centuries, working class white men, former slaves, women, and finally all Americans won the right to vote. The story goes well beyond voting rules to issues of class, race, political parties, and campaign corruption. It's been raw, rowdy, a fierce, and often rollicking struggle for power. Waldman's The Fight to Vote is a compelling story of our struggle to uphold our most fundamental democratic ideals.
The Hispanic Republican by Geraldo Cadava An illuminating and thought-provoking history of the growth of Hispanic American Republican voters in the past half century and their surprising impact on US politics, updated with new material reflecting on the 2020 election In the lead-up to every election cycle, pundits predict that Latino Americans will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the Democratic candidate. And it's true--Latino voters do tilt Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in a "landslide," Barack Obama "crushed" Mitt Romney among Latino voters in his reelection, and, four years earlier, the Democratic ticket beat the McCain-Palin ticket by a margin of more than two to one. But those numbers belie a more complicated picture. Because of decades of investment and political courtship, as well as a nuanced and varied cultural identity, the Republican party has had a much longer and stronger bond with Hispanics. How is this possible for a party so associated with draconian immigration and racial policies? In The Hispanic Republican, historian and political commentator Geraldo Cadava illuminates the history of the millions of Hispanic Republicans who, since the 1960s, have had a significant impact on national politics. Intertwining the little understood history of Hispanic Americans with a cultural study of how post-World War II Republican politicians actively courted the Hispanic vote during the Cold War (especially Cuban émigrés) and during periods of major strife in Central America (especially during Iran-Contra), Cadava offers insight into the complicated dynamic between Latino liberalism and conservatism, which, when studied together, shine a crucial light on a rapidly changing demographic that will impact American elections for years to come.
The Impeachers by Brenda Wineapple "This absorbing and important book recounts the titanic struggle over the implications of the Civil War amid the impeachment of a defiant and temperamentally erratic American president."-Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice-President Andrew Johnson became "the Accidental President," it was a dangerous time in America. Congress was divided over how the Union should be reunited- when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and when and whether black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and resorting to violence, many white Southerners hoped to restore a pre-Civil War society, if without slavery, and the pugnacious Andrew Johnson seemed to share their goals. With the unchecked power of executive orders, Johnson ignored Congress, pardoned rebel leaders, promoted white supremacy, opposed civil rights, and called Reconstruction unnecessary. It fell to Congress to stop the American president who acted like a king. With profound insights and making use of extensive research, Brenda Wineapple dramatically evokes this pivotal period in American history, when the country was rocked by the first-ever impeachment of a sitting American president. And she brings to vivid life the extraordinary characters who brought that impeachment forward- the willful Johnson and his retinue of advocates-including complicated men like Secretary of State William Seward-as well as the equally complicated visionaries committed to justice and equality for all, like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Ulysses S. Grant. Theirs was a last-ditch, patriotic, and Constitutional effort to render the goals of the Civil War into reality and to make the Union free, fair, and whole. Praise for The Impeachers "In this superbly lyrical work, Brenda Wineapple has plugged a glaring hole in our historical memory through her vivid and sweeping portrayal of President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment. She serves up not simply food for thought but a veritable feast of observations on that most trying decision for a democracy- whether to oust a sitting president. Teeming with fiery passions and unforgettable characters, The Impeachers will be devoured by contemporary readers seeking enlightenment on this issue. . . . A landmark study."-Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winningauthor ofGrant
The Broken Constitution by Noah Feldman A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution--a system he regarded as the "last best hope of mankind." But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States' founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution's place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact--a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text--a transcendent statement of the nation's highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them--and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln's Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations
Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal Instant New York Times Bestseller MSNBC legal commentator Elie Mystal thinks that Republicans are wrong about the law almost all of the time. Now, instead of talking about this on cable news, Mystal explains why in his first book. "After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don't understand--quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer . . ." --Michael Harriot, The Root Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past. Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media. You don't need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don't need to accept the "whites only" theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn't have to be.
An Argument Open to All by Sanford Levinson From one of America's most distinguished constitutional scholars, an intriguing exploration of America's most famous political tract and its relevance to today's politics In An Argument Open to All, renowned legal scholar Sanford Levinson takes a novel approach to what is perhaps America's most famous political tract.  Rather than concern himself with the authors as historical figures, or how The Federalist helps us understand the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, Levinson examines each essay for the political wisdom it can offer us today. In eighty-five short essays, each keyed to a different essay in The Federalist, he considers such questions as whether present generations can rethink their constitutional arrangements; how much effort we should exert to preserve America's traditional culture; and whether The Federalist's arguments even suggest the desirability of world government.
Beautiful Country Burn Again by Ben Fountain "Ben Fountain's BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY BURN AGAIN is the bravest, boldest, most bracing political book of the year." -Bill Moyers In a sweeping work of reportage set over the course of 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Fountain recounts a surreal year of politics and an exploration of the third American existential crisis Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt's New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a "burning" of the old order as America attempts to remake itself. Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon's southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump. In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation.  Beautiful Country Burn Again is a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.
The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish, and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges. No wonder, then, that Americans -- and the politicians who represent them -- are overwhelmingly nostalgic for a better time. The Left looks back to the middle of the twentieth century, when unions were strong, large public programs promised to solve pressing social problems, and the movements for racial integration and sexual equality were advancing. The Right looks back to the Reagan Era, when deregulation and lower taxes spurred the economy, cultural traditionalism seemed resurgent, and America was confident and optimistic. Each side thinks returning to its golden age could solve America's problems. In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin argues that this politics of nostalgia is failing twenty-first-century Americans. Both parties are blind to how America has changed over the past half century -- as the large, consolidated institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but less security, stability, and national unity. Both our strengths and our weaknesses are therefore consequences of these changes. And the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strengths of our decentralized, diverse, dynamic nation. Levin argues that this calls for a modernizing politics that avoids both radical individualism and a centralizing statism and instead revives the middle layers of society -- families and communities, schools and churches, charities and associations, local governments and markets. Through them, we can achieve not a single solution to the problems of our age, but multiple and tailored answers fitted to the daunting range of challenges we face and suited to enable an American revival.
The Nation City by Rahm Emanuel At a time of anxiety about the effectiveness of our national government, Rahm Emanuel provides a clear vision, for both progressives and centrists, of how to get things done in America today--a bracing, optimistic vision of America's future from one of our most experienced and original political minds. In The Nation City, Rahm Emanuel, former two-term mayor of Chicago and White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama, offers a firsthand account of how cities, rather than the federal government, stand at the center of innovation and effective governance. Drawing on his own experiences in Chicago, and on his relationships with other mayors around America, Emanuel provides dozens of examples to show how cities are improving education, infrastructure, job conditions, and environmental policy at a local level. Emanuel argues that cities are the most ancient political institutions, dating back thousands of years and have reemerged as the nation-states of our time. He makes clear how mayors are accountable to their voters to a greater degree than any other elected officials and illuminates how progressives and centrists alike can best accomplish their goals by focusing their energies on local politics. The Nation City maps out a new, energizing, and hopeful way forward.
The Field of Blood by Joanne B. Freeman In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.These fights didn't happen in a vacuum. Freeman's dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities--the feel, sense, and sound of it--as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
American Rule by Jared Yates Sexton Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation's very beginning, and myths of America's unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here - and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination. Stirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been - and challenges us to forge a new path.
Dissent by Ralph Young Finalist, 2016 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award One of Bustle's Books For Your Civil Disobedience Reading List Examines the key role dissent has played in shaping the United States, emphasizing the way Americans responded to injustices Dissent: The History of an American Idea examines the key role dissent has played in shaping the United States. It focuses on those who, from colonial days to the present, dissented against the ruling paradigm of their time: from the Puritan Anne Hutchinson and Native American chief Powhatan in the seventeenth century, to the Occupy and Tea Party movements in the twenty-first century. The emphasis is on the way Americans, celebrated figures and anonymous ordinary citizens, responded to what they saw as the injustices that prevented them from fully experiencing their vision of America. At its founding the United States committed itself to lofty ideals. When the promise of those ideals was not fully realized by all Americans, many protested and demanded that the United States live up to its promise. Women fought for equal rights; abolitionists sought to destroy slavery; workers organized unions; Indians resisted white encroachment on their land; radicals angrily demanded an end to the dominance of the moneyed interests; civil rights protestors marched to end segregation; antiwar activists took to the streets to protest the nation's wars; and reactionaries, conservatives, and traditionalists in each decade struggled to turn back the clock to a simpler, more secure time. Some dissenters are celebrated heroes of American history, while others are ordinary people: frequently overlooked, but whose stories show that change is often accomplished through grassroots activism. The United States is a nation founded on the promise and power of dissent. In this stunningly comprehensive volume, Ralph Young shows us its history.
Fault Lines by Kevin M. Kruse; Julian E. Zelizer Two award-winning historians explore the origins of a divided America. In the middle of the 1970s, America entered a new era of doubt and division. Major political, economic, and social crises-Watergate, Vietnam, the rights revolutions of the 1960s-had cracked the existing social order. In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines, leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost four decades ago, and how they were echoed and amplified by a fracturing media landscape that witnessed the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media. How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers one of the few comprehensive, wide-angle history views toward an answer.
Electing the Senate by Wendy J. Schiller; Charles Stewart How U.S. senators were chosen prior to the Seventeenth Amendment--and the consequences of Constitutional reform From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were not directly elected by the people--instead the Constitution mandated that they be chosen by state legislators. This radically changed in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the public a direct vote. Electing the Senate investigates the electoral connections among constituents, state legislators, political parties, and U.S. senators during the age of indirect elections. Wendy Schiller and Charles Stewart find that even though parties controlled the partisan affiliation of the winning candidate for Senate, they had much less control over the universe of candidates who competed for votes in Senate elections and the parties did not always succeed in resolving internal conflict among their rank and file. Party politics, money, and personal ambition dominated the election process, in a system originally designed to insulate the Senate from public pressure. Electing the Senate uses an original data set of all the roll call votes cast by state legislators for U.S. senators from 1871 to 1913 and all state legislators who served during this time. Newspaper and biographical accounts uncover vivid stories of the political maneuvering, corruption, and partisanship--played out by elite political actors, from elected officials, to party machine bosses, to wealthy business owners--that dominated the indirect Senate elections process. Electing the Senate raises important questions about the effectiveness of Constitutional reforms, such as the Seventeenth Amendment, that promised to produce a more responsive and accountable government.
Our Unfinished March by Eric Holder; Sam Koppelman A brutal, bloody, and at times hopeful history of the vote; a primer on the opponents fighting to take it away; and a playbook for how we can save our democracy before it's too late-from the former U.S. Attorney General on the front lines of this fight Voting is our most important right as Americans-"the right that protects all the others," as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act-but it's also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. After the 2020 election, President Trump's effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril. But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won- first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynchings and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away since Shelby-a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted. Full of surprising history, intensive analysis, and actionable plans for the future, this is a powerful primer on our most urgent political struggle from one of the country's leading advocates.
American Reboot by Will Hurd From former US Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a "how-to guide with a prescription for getting the nation on the right footing" (Politico) and "a clarion call for a major political pivot" (San Antonio Report) rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. "Hurd has the biography and the charisma and the God-given political chops to put the Republican Party--and the rest of the country--on notice." --THE ATLANTIC It's getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called "the future of the GOP" by Politico, provides a "detailed blueprint" (Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, 2006-2011) for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism--a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party's failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House's only Black Republican, representing a seventy-one percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of the US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd, who the Houston Chronicles calls "a refreshing contract to the panderers, petty demagogues, and political provocateurs who reign these days," draws on his remarkable experience to present "a call to Americans to consider the most contentious issues of our times more holistically" (The Atlantic). He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America's technological future. We all know we can do better. It's time to hit "ctrl alt del" and start the American Reboot.
The AOC Generation by David Freedlander grassroots look at the future of US politics as the next generation of progressive organizers-sparked by the unstoppable rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-leads us toward a new direction A grassroots look at the future of US politics as the next generation of progressive organizers--sparked by the unstoppable rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez--leads us toward a new direction. The AOC Generation examines the resurgent young left--including groups like Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and Brand New Congress--and documents how and why they got active and energized in political organizing, the success and limitations of their approaches--and through their stories, it tells the history and the future of a generation. In 2018, the country watched as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose from unknown part-time bartender to the halls of Congress at the age of 29 and became a household name for her progressive, passionate politics. With firsthand accounts detailing the final days of her campaign, which he spent beside her as she fought for every last vote, Freedlander connects her ample political talents and ability to command the media and the public's attention to the newfound political awakening of millennial activists. Inspired in part by the Bernie Sanders campaign, and furthered by a series of critical issues including catastrophic climate change, a rigid political system, and widening income inequality, these young people organized into new groups that became a conduit for their energy, ideas, and passions. And all of their activity isn't just political. They've created their own media eco-system, with podcasts, streaming networks, and even dating sites that cater to their interests. With this new generation gaining traction, with little signs of backing down and securing crucial political seats as Ocasio-Cortez did in 2018, The AOC Generation presents a thoughtful analysis of how they came of age in an America they are determined to reshape.
Run to Win by Stephanie Schriock; Christina Reynolds; Kamala Harris (Foreword by) For the last thirty-five years EMILY's List has helped the campaigns of thousands of pro-choice Democratic women, but the hardest part has always been convincing more women to run. Then Donald Trump was elected, and something shifted into place. Run to Win is for all women who are looking to lead. Organised around the steps that EMILY's List coaches its candidates through (from deciding to run, through celebrating victory), this book is full of essential lessons for any woman trying to succeed in a male dominated field.
We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2021 by Publishers Weekly A rigorous examination of six political myths used to deflect and discredit demands for social justice. In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump declared: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct." Reeling from his victory, Democrats blamed the corrosive effect of "identity politics." When banned from Twitter for inciting violence, Trump and his supporters claimed that the measure was an assault on "free speech." In We Need New Stories, Nesrine Malik explains that all of these arguments are political myths--variations on the lie that American values are under assault. Exploring how these and other common political myths function, she breaks down how they are employed to subvert calls for equality from historically disenfranchised groups. Interweaving reportage with an incendiary analysis of American history and politics, she offers a compelling account of how calls to preserve "free speech" are used against the vulnerable; how a fixation with "wokeness," "political correctness," and "cancel culture" is in fact an organized and well-funded campaign by elites; and how the fear of racial minorities and their "identity politics" obscures the biggest threat of all--white terrorism. What emerges is a radical framework for understanding the crises roiling American contemporary politics.
The Age of Acrimony by Jon Grinspan A penetrating, character-filled history "in the manner of David McCullough" (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the "normal" politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William "Pig Iron" Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.
Playing with Fire by Lawrence O'Donnell From the host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, an important and enthralling new account of the presidential election that changed everything, the race that created American politics as we know it today The 1968 U.S. Presidential election was the young Lawrence O'Donnell's political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations.  For years he has deployed one of America's shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself, but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different, and how we got to where we are now. Playing With Fire represents O'Donnell's master class in American electioneering, embedded in the epic human drama of a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time. Nothing went according to the script. LBJ was confident he'd dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson's greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren't prepared to challenge their own party's incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring to run against the president and the Vietnam War. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, LBJ dropped out, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage. Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth façade behind which he feverishly held his party's right and left wings in the fold, through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace.  But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason.  The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today. Playing With Fire is the perfect holiday gift!
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin One of the most influential books of the past fifty years, Team of Rivals is Pulitzer Prize-winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's modern classic about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, his unlikely presidency, and his cabinet of former political foes. Winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize and the inspiration for the Oscar Award winning-film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Steven Spielberg, and written by Tony Kushner. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war. We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.
LatinoLand by Marie Arana "A perfect representation of Latino diversity" (The Washington Post), LatinoLand draws from hundreds of interviews and prodigious research to give us both a vibrant portrait and the little-known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority, in "a work of prophecy, sympathy, and courage" (Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author). LatinoLand is an exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana's life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise twenty percent of the US population, a number that is growing. By 2050, census reports project that one in every three Americans will claim Latino heritage. But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. The largest groups are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Cubans. Each has a different cultural and political background. Puerto Ricans, for example, are US citizens, whereas some Mexican Americans never immigrated because the US-Mexico border shifted after the US invasion of 1848, incorporating what is now the entire southwest of the United States. Cubans came in two great waves: those escaping communism in the early years of Castro, many of whom were professionals and wealthy, and those permitted to leave in the Mariel boat lift twenty years later, representing some of the poorest Cubans, including prisoners. As LatinoLand shows, Latinos were some of the earliest immigrants to what is now the US--some of them arriving in the 1500s. They are racially diverse--a random infusion of white, Black, indigenous, and Asian. Once overwhelmingly Catholic, they are becoming increasingly Protestant and Evangelical. They range from domestic workers and day laborers to successful artists, corporate CEOs, and US senators. Formerly solidly Democratic, they now vote Republican in growing numbers. They are as culturally varied as any immigrants from Europe or Asia. Marie Arana draws on her own experience as the daughter of an American mother and Peruvian father who came to the US at age nine, straddling two worlds, as many Latinos do. "Thorough, accessible, and necessary" (Ms. magazine), LatinoLand unabashedly celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.
Renegade by Adam Kinzinger On January 6, 2021, America watched in horror as a violent mob led by right-wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of then-President Donald Trump. It was one of the darkest days in recent history, yet to former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger it was also the culmination of a cultural and political rupture he'd known had long been building. Constructive criticism from within the Republican party was no longer enough. It was time to act - not just for the sake of the soul of his party, but for the very future of our country. Despite vitriol from the media, fellow colleagues, even members of his own family, Kinzinger became one of only two Republican members to join the House select committee to investigate the January 6 Capitol riots. Now in Renegade, he reveals the inner workings and surprising findings of the committee he served and helped lead, including how the bloody attack on the Capitol was indeed foreseeable and even welcomed by President Trump. Along the way, he examines the forces that allowed such an attack to happen in the first place, from the misinformation campaign waged by Fox News and partisan media to the inculcation of extremism in families and faith communities, and draws from his own personal story of faith, military service, and politics to unpack his most crucial decisions that eventually led him to break from his own party. Part memoir, part searing examination, Renegade offers a searing account of one of the most tumultuous events in recent American history - and the devastating consequences of letting extremism go unchecked, so that the events of January 6 may never happen again.
Nine Black Robes by Joan Biskupic New York Times Editor's Choice "Biskupic, an accomplished and well-sourced journalist, knows the court as well as anyone now covering it... In her new book Biskupic has done something different and a good deal harder. She has written a group narrative that combines close accounts of the court's public business in the Trump years with a history of its private dramas and conflicts... The deeper message of 'Nine Black Robes' is that even with a new president in office we remain captive to the Age of Trump... A quiet urgency ripples through this informative, briskly paced and gracefully written book." --New York Times Book Review "Biskupic opens a window onto the opaque, insular world of the justices to show an institution sinking gradually into crisis . . . Biskupic is a longtime chronicler of the court, and "Nine Black Robes" puts on display her connections within its chambers." --Washington Post "[Biskupic] knows how to make news and illuminate the personalities atop the judicial org chart . . . The book reveals unseen sausage-making . . ." --Wall Street Journal "Fascinating and informative . . . [Biskupic's] long experience covering the court . . . has put her in an incomparable position to comment on its make-up, historical positions and direction. It has also made her privy to many significant, little-known secrets about Supreme Court personalities and their historical behaviors." --The National Book Review CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic provides an urgent and inside look at the history-making era in the Supreme Court during the Trump and post-Trump years, from its seismic shift to the Right to its controversial decisions, including its reversal of Roe v. Wade, based on access to all the key players. Nine Black Robes displays the inner maneuverings among the Supreme Court justices that led to the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade and a half century of women's abortion rights. Biskupic details how rights are stripped away or, alternatively as in the case of gun owners, how rights are expanded. Today's bench--with its conservative majority--is desperately ideological. The Court has been headed rightward and ensnared by its own intrigues for years, but the Trump appointments hastened the modern transformation. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come. Nine Black Robes is the definitive narrative of the country's highest court and its profound impact on all Americans.
The Right by Matthew Continetti A magisterial intellectual history of the last century of American conservatism When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. Yet this narrow view leaves many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican Party? In The Right, Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism's evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism's past, the more one becomes convinced of its future. Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism.
Unbought and Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm "A tremendously impressive book."--Washington Post "Her motto and title of her autobiography--Unbought and Unbossed--illustrates her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives."--National Women's History Museum In this classic work--a blend of memoir, social criticism, and political analysis that remains relevant today--the first Black Congresswoman to serve in American history, New York's dynamic representative Shirley Chisholm, traces her extensive political struggle and examines the problems that have long plagued the American system of government. "I want to be remembered as a woman . . . who dared to be a catalyst of change." Political pioneer Shirley Chisholm--activist, member of the House of Representatives, and former presidential candidate--was a woman who consistently broke barriers and inspired generations of American women, and especially women of color. Unbought and Unbossed is her story, told in her own words--a thoughtful and informed look at her rise from the streets of Brooklyn to the halls of Congress. Chisholm speaks out on her life in politics while illuminating the events, personalities, and issues of her time, including the schism in the Democratic party in the 1960s and '70s--all of which speak to us today. In this frank assessment, "Fighting Shirley" recalls how she took on an entrenched system, gave a public voice to millions, and embarked on a trailblazing bid to be the first woman and first African American President of the United States. By daring to be herself, Shirley Chisholm shows how one person forever changed the status quo.
Untold Power by Rebecca Boggs Roberts A nuanced portrait of the first acting woman president, written with fresh and cinematic verve by a leading historian on women's suffrage and power While this nation has yet to elect its first woman president--and though history has downplayed her role--just over a century ago a woman became the nation's first acting president. In fact, she was born in 1872, and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first woman president of the U.S. (before women could even vote nationwide) when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. Beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, catty, and calculating, she was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever. And still nobody truly understands who she was. For the first time, we have a biography that takes an unflinching look at the woman whose ascent mirrors that of many powerful American women before and since, one full of the compromises and complicities women have undertaken throughout time in order to find security for themselves and make their mark on history. She was a shape-shifter who was obsessed with crafting her own reputation, at once deeply invested in exercising her own power while also opposing women's suffrage. With narrative verve and fresh eyes, Untold Power is a richly overdue examination of one of American history's most influential, complicated women as well as the surprising and often absurd realities of American politics.
Secret City by James Kirchick The New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Named one of Vanity Fair's "Best Books of 2022" "Not since Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history." --George Stephanopoulos Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick's Secret City. For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret "too loathsome to mention" held enormous, terrifying power. Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of "the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States," James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II-era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a "homosexual ring" controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory. Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.
Two Cheers for Politics by Jedediah Purdy One of the country's most astute legal scholars explains how American political culture disempowers ordinary citizens and makes the case for a reinvigorated democracy    Americans across the political spectrum agree that our democracy is in crisis. We view our political opponents with disdain, if not terror, and an increasing number of us are willing to consider authoritarian alternatives. In Two Cheers for Politics, Jedediah Purdy argues that this heated political culture is a symptom not of too much democracy but too little. Today, the decisions that most affect our lives and our communities are often made outside the political realm entirely, as market ideology, constitutional law, and cultural norms effectively remove broad swaths of collective life from the table of collective decision. The result is a weakened and ineffective political system and an increasingly unequal and polarized society. If we wish to renew that society, we'll need to claw back the ground that we've ceded to anti-politics and entrust one another with the power to shape our common life. 
Them by Ben Sasse Our culture has always had tribalism--different political parties, preferred media outlets, and shifts in positions when politically advantageous. But now our country is facing a far deeper, far more serious existential crisis. We're reaching a point where we've lost faith and trust in the institutions that have held us together. Even more worrisome is that we've lost a shared sense of truth. What happens to a nation when half of us believe different facts than the other half? In Them, bestselling author and U.S. Senator Ben Sasse argues that the problem is far deeper than politics or even any one politician. Across the nation, local communities are evaporating. The basic framework for everyday life -- family, work, neighborhoods, friends, trust-- is collapsing or, in the case of work, being vastly redefined. Our citizens have become alienated from each other, angry, and lonely. As our traditional tribes are falling apart, Sasse argues, frustrated and displaced Americans are trying to fill the vacuum with Anti-tribes on social media and cable news, surrounding ourselves with people we already agree with and identifying a common enemy. We are stuck in a loop of loneliness, outrage, and anger.Sasse offers his own prescription for addressing this challenge, calling for a radical effort to rebuild and remake the institutions that are foundering within communities and a nationwide discussion and understanding of just how monumental this challenge is.
Out of Order by Sandra Day O'Connor ""I called this book Out of Order because it reflects my goal, which is to share a different side of the Supreme Court. Most people know the Court only as it exists between bangs of the gavel, when the Court comes to order to hear arguments or give opinions. But the stories of the Court and the Justices that come from other 'out of order' moments add to the richness of the Court as both a branch of our government and a human institution."--Justice Sandra Day O'Connor   From Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, comes this fascinating book about the history and evolution of the highest court in the land. Justice O'Connor writes here about some of the landmark changes, unique customs, and remarkable people who served on the Court and helped to shape the history of the institution, and of America as a whole.   Out of Order sheds light on the centuries of change and upheaval that transformed the Supreme Court from its uncertain beginnings into the remarkable institution that thrives and endures today. From the
The Plots Against the President by Sally Denton In March 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally became the nation's thirty-second president. The man swept in by a landslide four months earlier now took charge of a country in the grip of panic brought on by economic catastrophe. Though no one yet knew it-not even Roosevelt-it was a radical moment in America. And with all of its unmistakable resonance with events of today, it is a cautionary tale. The Plots Against the President follows Roosevelt as he struggled to right the teetering nation, armed with little more than indomitable optimism and the courage to try anything. His bold New Deal experiments provoked a backlash from both extremes of the political spectrum. Wall Street bankers threatened by FDR's policies made common cause with populist demagogues like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin. But just how far FDR's enemies were willing to go to thwart him has never been fully explored. Two startling events that have been largely ignored by historians frame Sally Denton's swift, tense narrative of a year of fear: anarchist Giuseppe Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt, and a plutocrats' plot to overthrow the government that would come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch.The Plots Against the President throws light on the darkest chapter of the Depression and the moments when the fate of the American republic hung in the balance.

aviation

Amelia Earhart & the History of Aviation

July 24 is Amelia Earhart Day

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Amelia Earhart by W. C. Jameson; Gregory A. Feith (Foreword by) This well-researched book is a biography of the life--and disappearance--of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviator who was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic in 1928. But did Amelia's plane really crash and sink in 1937, or was her fate entirely different?
Amelia Earhart by Mike Campbell "Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last", presents many remarkable and enlightening new findings, eyewitness accounts and analysis, and never-before-published revelations from many unimpeachable sources including famed U.S. generals and iconic newsman and Earhart researcher Fred Goerner's files that reveal the truth about her death on Saipan, as well as the sacred cow status of this matter within the American establishment. "The Truth at Last" explodes the government-created myth that Amelia Earhart's Electra, NR 16020 crashed and sank in the central Pacific off Howland Island on July 2, 1937, and is destined to become the definitive Earhart work.
Amelia Earhart by Lori Van Pelt Named to the New York Public Library's Best Books for the Teen Age 2006 As a tomboy growing up in Kansas, Amelia Earhart delighted in trying new and risky things, once even building a roller-coaster in her grandparents' backyard. In her 20s she fell in love with flight while watching an aerobatics exhibition and grew even more enthralled when she took her first airplane ride. At age 24 she earned her pilot's wings and 1928 took part in the transatlantic "Friendship" flight. Her willowy build, wholesome smile, and tousled blonde hair invited comparison to the celebrated pilot Charles Lindbergh, and "Lady Lindy" charmed the public with her unassuming manner. In 1937, Earhart wed publisher George Putnam, who managed her career and promoted her zealously, ensuring her status as the world's best-known aviatrix. The next year, she soloed the Atlantic, afterward receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross and began championing the efforts of women throughout the world to explore careers -- especially in aviation -- traditionally held by men.Tragically, just days before her fortieth birthday, Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan, and their plane vanished en route to tiny Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean as they neared the end of their round-the-world journey. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the greatest land and ocean search ever undertaken but no trace of the missing flyers or their craft were ever found. To Amelia Earhart, even the sky was no limit to those with the courage to test new boundaries.
Finding Amelia by Ric Gillespie In the seventy years since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan during a flight over the Central Pacific, their fate has remained one of history's most debated mysteries despite dozens of books offering solutions. This book is different. It draws on thousands of never before published primary source documents to present a narrative that corrects decades of misconception. Ric Gillespie offers a very realistic picture of Earhart, her attempted world flight, the events surrounding her disappearance, and the U.S. government's failed attempt to find her. Scrupulously accurate yet thrilling to read, the book is based on information uncovered by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director and a former aviation accident investigator, notes that he does not argue for a particular theory but supports the hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan died as castaways on a remote Pacific atoll.
The Girl Explorers by Jayne Zanglein Never tell a woman where she doesn't belong. In 1932, Roy Chapman Andrews, president of the men-only Explorers Club, boldly stated to hundreds of female students at Barnard College that "women are not adapted to exploration," and that women and exploration do not mix. He obviously didn't know a thing about either... The Girl Explorers is the inspirational and untold story of the founding of the Society of Women Geographers-an organization of adventurous female world explorers-and how key members served as early advocates for human rights and paved the way for today's women scientists by scaling mountains, exploring the high seas, flying across the Atlantic, and recording the world through film, sculpture, and literature. Follow in the footsteps of these rebellious women as they travel the globe in search of new species, widen the understanding of hidden cultures, and break records in spades. For these women dared to go where no woman-or man-had gone before, achieving the unthinkable and breaking through barriers to allow future generations to carry on their important and inspiring work. The Girl Explorers is an inspiring examination of forgotten women from history, perfect for fans of bestselling narrative history books like The Radium Girls, The Woman Who Smashed Codes, and Rise of the Rocket Girls.
Rocket Man by David Darling The wonder of flight has long captured the human imagination. In this beguiling history - ranging from the first aircraft to astronauts and beyond - David Darling tells the stories of the true life adventurers whose wonder has translated into bizarre contraptions, magnificent achievements and, sometimes, startling folly. Discover outrageous attempts to fly like a bird and fall from the edge of space. Meet Napoleonic ballooniste Sophie Blanchard and her daredevil husband; the real "X-Men" who flew the supersonic experimental "X-planes" for the US Air Force; stuntman Lincoln Beachey, looping-the-loop in a pinstripe suit; and, of course, The Rocket Man himself: Yves Rossy, who in 2006 was the first person to cross the English Channel using a jet-pack. Eccentric and reckless, Darling's daring cast of dreamers is guaranteed to entertain and inspire.
Fly Girls by Keith O'Brien A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Exhilarating." --New York Times Book Review "Riveting." --People "Keith O'Brien has brought these women--mostly long-hidden and forgotten--back into the light where they belong. And he's done it with grace, sensitivity and a cinematic eye for detail that makes Fly Girls both exhilarating and heartbreaking." --USA Today The untold story of five women who fought to compete against men in the high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s -- and won   Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky. O'Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high-school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue-blood family's expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men -- and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.   Like Hidden Figures and Girls of Atomic City, Fly Girls celebrates a little-known slice of history in which tenacious, trail-blazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness.
Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars by Eileen M. Collins; Jonathan H. Ward The long-awaited memoir of a trailblazer and role model who is telling her story for the first time. Eileen Collins was an aviation pioneer her entire career, from her crowning achievements as the first woman to command an American space mission as well as the first to pilot the space shuttle to her early years as one of the Air Force's first female pilots. She was in the first class of women to earn pilot's wings at Vance Air Force Base and was their first female instructor pilot. She was only the second woman admitted to the Air Force's elite Test Pilot Program at Edwards Air Force Base. NASA had such confidence in her skills as a leader and pilot that she was entrusted to command the first shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster, returning the US to spaceflight after a two-year hiatus. Since retiring from the Air Force and NASA, she has served on numerous corporate boards and is an inspirational speaker about space exploration and leadership.   Eileen Collins is among the most recognized and admired women in the world, yet this is the first time she has told her story in a book. It is a story not only of achievement and overcoming obstacles but of profound personal transformation. The shy, quiet child of an alcoholic father and struggling single mother, who grew up in modest circumstances and was an unremarkable student, she had few prospects when she graduated from high school, but she changed her life to pursue her secret dream of becoming an astronaut. She shares her leadership and life lessons throughout the book with the aim of inspiring and passing on her legacy to a new generation.
Higher, Faster, Longer by Wally Funk US
Chasing the Demon by Dan Hampton NATIONAL BESTSELLER * At the end of World War II, a band of aces gathered in the Mojave Desert on a Top Secret quest to break the sound barrier-nicknamed "The Demon" by pilots. The true story of what happened in those skies has never been told.  Speed. In 1947, it represented the difference between victory and annihilation. After Hiroshima, the ability to deliver a nuclear device to its target faster than one's enemy became the singular obsession of American war planners. And so, in the earliest days of the Cold War, a highly classified program was conducted on a desolate air base in California's Mojave Desert. Its aim: to push the envelope of flight to new frontiers. There gathered an extraordinary band of pilots, including Second World War aces Chuck Yeager and George Welch, who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called "the demon." Shrouding the program in secrecy, the US military reluctantly revealed that the "barrier" had been broken two months later, after the story was leaked to the press. The full truth has never been fully revealed--until now. Chasing the Demon, from decorated fighter pilot and acclaimed aviation historian Dan Hampton, tells, for the first time, the extraordinary true story of mankind's quest for Mach 1. Here, of course, is twenty-four-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager, who made history flying the futuristic Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. Officially Yeager was the first to achieve supersonic flight, but drawing on new interviews with survivors of the program, including Yeager's former commander, as well as declassified files, Hampton presents evidence that a fellow American--George Welch, a daring fighter pilot who shot down a remarkable sixteen enemy aircraft during the Pacific War--met the demon first, though he was not favored to wear the laurels, as he was now a civilian test pilot and was not flying the Bell X-1. Chasing the Demon sets the race between Yeager and Welch in the context of aviation history, so that the reader can learn and appreciate their accomplishments as never before.
The Lost Pilots by Corey Mead The Lost Pilots is the saga of two star-crossed pilots during the height of the roaring twenties who soar to the greatest heights of fame, tailspin into scandal and crime, and go to the ultimate lengths for a chance at redemption. This extraordinary true story, full of adventure, forbidden passion, crime, scandal and tragedy, is a masterwork of narrative nonfiction that restores a leading aviation pioneer to her rightful place in history.
Call Number: Large Print
A Chick in the Cockpit by Erika Armstrong "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard your flight. As you step onto my aircraft, take a quick glance into the cockpit. Yep, that's me sitting in the captains' seat, and that's my first officer laughing about how he accidentally locked himself out of his hotel room. Naked. Again. We're both a little ripe from flying for the last five days, but we're still smiling because we have spent years and thousands of hours training and living an uncommon lifestyle to be up here for you. For the next few hours, you have to turn your life over to us. It's hard to trust others, and there are moments when you don't have a choice about being in control. During those moments, you'll just have to tighten your seatbelt and trust that others will get you through the storm. Our route today will take you through a segment of my life up in the air, and you will see things you could never imagine. Since I have been locked in the cockpit with men for several thousands of hours over the years, I have been given a perspective few get to experience. To help you see a different perspective, too, I am giving you a checklist to use as we move along our route. It will take you from gate to gate, and when we're done, we will have both learned a little more about what it takes to fly. Now...just sit back and relax. It's going to be a bumpy ride." Erika Armstrong has worked every aspect of aviation in her twenty-five years in the industry, including an international corporate airline captain. She is an award-winning staff writer for Colorado Serenity Magazine and is a professional pilot columnist for Disciples of Flight, NYC Aviation, Contrails, Flying, LinkedIn, and Business Insider and is the owner of Leading Edge Aviation Consulting.
The Unsubstantial Air by Samuel Hynes The Unsubstantial Air is the gripping story of the Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I. Much more than a traditional military history, it is an account of the excitement of becoming a pilot and flying in combat over the Western Front, told through the words and voices of the aviators themselves. A World War II pilot himself, the memoirist and critic Samuel Hynes revives the adventurous young men who inspired his own generation to take to the sky. The volunteer fliers were often privileged-the sorts of college athletes and Ivy League students who might appear in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and sometimes did. Others were country boys from the farms and ranches of the West. Hynes follows them from the flying clubs of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale and the grass airfields of Texas andCanada to training grounds in Europe and on to the front, where they learned how to fight a war in the air. And to the bars and clubs of Paris and London, where they unwound and discovered another kind of excitement, another challenge. He shows how East Coast aristocrats like Teddy Roosevelt's son Quentin and Arizona roughnecks like Frank Luke the Balloon Buster all dreamed of chivalric single combat in the sky, and how they came to know both the beauty of flight and the constant presence of death. By drawing on letters sent home, diaries kept, and memoirs published in the years that followed, Hynes brings to life the emotions, anxieties, and triumphs of the young pilots. They gasp in wonder at the world seen from a plane, struggle to keep their hands from freezing in open air cockpits, party with actresses and aristocrats, rest at Voltaire's castle, and search for their friends' bodies on the battlefield. Their romantic war becomes more than that-a harsh but often thrilling reality.Weaving together their testimonies,The Unsubstantial Air is a moving portrait of a generation coming of age under new and extreme circumstances.
His Majesty's Airship by S. C. Gwynne From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a "captivating, thoroughly researched" (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship--and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart. The tragic fate of the British airship R101--which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later--has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty's Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the 20th century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world's most advanced engineering--she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire, from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this, and R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. Gwynne's chronicle features a cast of remarkable--and tragically flawed--characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and George Herbert Scott, a national hero who was the first person to cross the Atlantic twice in any aircraft, in 1919--eight years before Lindbergh's famous flight--but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures--and the ship they built, flew, and crashed--come together in "a Promethean tale of unlimited ambitions and technical limitations, airy dreams and explosive endings" (The Wall Street Journal).
Magnificent Women and Flying Machines by Sally Smith Balloons, parachutes, airplanes, gliders, airships -the extraordinary personal tales of the women who led the way in early British aviation! There is no book that covers the roles played by the lesser known British women in aviation, and while Amy Johnson is a household name, many women performed outstanding feats in this brave new world, from Mrs. Hines in 1785 who inadvertently became the first to do a night-time balloon flight and water landing; to Rose Spencer, who while four months pregnant in 1902 became the first British woman to fly a powered airship; to Winifred Brown, the first and only woman to win the prestigious King's Cup Air Race, beating a formidable array of male pilots. This important new study seeks to record and present the British women who were courageous enough to set the scene for future generations, revealing the tales of the key women who achieved 'firsts' in British aviation from 1785 to 1935. These extraordinary women deserve a place in the history books.
Anthony Fokker by Marc Dierikx
Quest for Flight by Craig S. Harwood; Gary B. Fogel The Wright brothers have long received the lion's share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright's powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere. Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history's nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery's pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery's designs, and helped change society's attitude toward what was considered "the impossible art" of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery's story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.
The Big Jump by Richard Bak The trans-Atlantic air race of 1927 and the flight that made Charles Lindbergh a hero The race to make the first nonstop flight between the New York and Paris attracted some of the most famous and seasoned aviators of the day, yet it was the young and lesser known Charles Lindbergh who won the $25,000 Orteig Prize in 1927 for his history-making solo flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. Drawing on many previously overlooked sources, Bak offers a fresh look at the personalities that made up this epic air race - a deadly competition that culminated in one of the twentieth century's most thrilling personal achievements and turned Charles Lindbergh into the first international hero of the modern age. Examines the extraordinary life and cultural impact of Charles Lindbergh, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, and his legendary trans-Atlantic flight that captured the world's imagination Explores the romance of flying during aviation's Golden Age of the 1920s, the enduring mystique of the aviator, and rapid technological advances that made for a paradigm shift in human perception of the world Filled with colorful characters from early aviation history, including Charles Nungesser, Igor Sikorsky, René Fonck, Richard Byrd, and Paul Tarascon History and the imagination take flight in this gripping account of high-flying adventure, in which a group of courageous men tested the both limits of technology and the power of nature in pursuit of one of mankind's boldest dreams.
Fighting for Space by Amy Shira Teitel Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century--man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, ran her own luxury cosmetics company, and counted multiple presidents among her personal friends. She was more qualified than any woman in the world to make the leap from atmosphere to orbit. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, twenty-five years Jackie's junior and a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality--an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress. This dual biography of audacious trailblazers Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb presents these fascinating and fearless women in all their glory and grit, using their stories as guides through the shifting social, political, and technical landscape of the time.
Empires of the Sky by Alexander Rose The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life by the story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky and ended with the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg. At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany's Count von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world's first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the wondrous airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades in the quest to control one of humanity's most inspiring achievements. And it was the airship--not the airplane--that would lead the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count's brilliant protege, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamt-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World Voyage of the Graf Zeppelin. At a time when America's airplanes-rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck-could barely make it from New York to Washington, Eckener's airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doing--crossing the Atlantic in 1927--Eckener effortlessly accomplished three years before the Spirit of St. Louis even took off. Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemoth Hindenburg--a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener's coming airship armada. It was a fight only one man--and one technology--could win. Countering each other's moves on the global chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the two men's struggle for mastery of the air was not only the clash of technologies, but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and their vastly different dreams of the future. Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.
Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women -- known as "human computers" -- who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading. "If Hidden Figures has you itching to learn more about the women who worked in the space program, pick up Nathalia Holt's lively, immensely readable history, Rise of the Rocket Girls." -- Entertainment Weekly
Flight by Carl Warner The Wright Brothers first took their flyer soaring in 1903--and less than a century later, rockets flew us to the moon. Experience the evolution of aviation, from the earliest pioneers to the complex technology of military jets and beyond, as inventors and aviators with skill and imagination push the limits of possibility. A rich selection of photos includes images of groundbreaking designs, patents, and logbooks from record-breaking flights.
Birdmen by Lawrence Goldstone From acclaimed historian Lawrence Goldstone comes a thrilling narrative of courage, determination, and competition: the story of the intense rivalry that fueled the rise of American aviation. The feud between this nation's great air pioneers, the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss, was a collision of unyielding and profoundly American personalities. On one side, a pair of tenacious siblings who together had solved the centuries-old riddle of powered, heavier-than-air flight. On the other, an audacious motorcycle racer whose innovative aircraft became synonymous in the public mind with death-defying stunts. For more than a decade, they battled each other in court, at air shows, and in the newspapers. The outcome of this contest of wills would shape the course of aviation history--and take a fearsome toll on the men involved. Birdmen sets the engrossing story of the Wrights' war with Curtiss against the thrilling backdrop of the early years of manned flight, and is rich with period detail and larger-than-life personalities: Thomas Scott Baldwin, or "Cap't Tom" as he styled himself, who invented the parachute and almost convinced the world that balloons were the future of aviation; John Moisant, the dapper daredevil who took to the skies after three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador, then quickly emerged as a celebrity flyer; and Harriet Quimby, the statuesque silent-film beauty who became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. And then there is Lincoln Beachey, perhaps the greatest aviator who ever lived, who dazzled crowds with an array of trademark twists and dives--and best embodied the romance with death that fueled so many of aviation's earliest heroes. A dramatic story of unimaginable bravery in the air and brutal competition on the ground, Birdmen is at once a thrill ride through flight's wild early years and a surprising look at the personal clash that fueled America's race to the skies. Praise for Birdmen "A meticulously researched account of the first few hectic, tangled years of aviation and the curious characters who pursued it . . . a worthy companion to Richard Holmes's marvelous history of ballooning, Falling Upwards."--Time "The daredevil scientists and engineers who forged the field of aeronautics spring vividly to life in Lawrence Goldstone's history."--Nature "The history of the development of an integral part of the modern world and a fascinating portrayal of how a group of men and women achieved a dream that had captivated humanity for centuries."--The Christian Science Monitor "Captivating and wonderfully presented . . . a fine book about these rival pioneers."--The Wall Street Journal "[A] vivid story of invention, vendettas, derring-do, media hype and patent fights [with] modern resonance."--Financial Times "A powerful story that contrasts soaring hopes with the anchors of ego and courtroom."--Kirkus Reviews "A riveting narrative about the pioneering era of aeronautics in America and beyond . . . Goldstone raises questions of enduring importance regarding innovation and the indefinite exertion of control over ideas that go public."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Non-Stop by Jack El-Hai From its earliest flights in 1926, carrying mail and occasionally a solo passenger to Chicago, to its acquisition by Delta in 2010, Northwest Airlines soared to the heights of technological achievement and business innovation--and sunk to the depths of employee discord, passenger dissatisfaction, and financial bankruptcy. Its story, rich in singular successes and failures, also has the sweep of the history of American business in the twentieth century. Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines captures both the broad context and the intriguing details as it weaves together the accounts of individuals who gave the airline its unique character: from founder Lewis Brittin and pioneering female executive "Rosie" Stein to the CEOs who saw the company through its glory days and its final tumultuous decade. What was it like to pilot a crippled airliner, to be in the vanguard of the new profession of stewardess, to ride in the cabin of a luxurious Stratocruiser for the first time? These are the experiences that come alive as Jack El-Hai follows Northwest from its humble beginnings to its triumph as the envy of the airline industry and then ultimately to its decline into what aggrieved passengers and employees called "Northworst." Non-Stop hits the airline's high points (such as its contributions during World War II and the Korean War) and the low--D. B. Cooper's parachute getaway from a Northwest airliner in 1971 and a terrorist's disruption of the airline's last year. Touching on everything from airline food and advertising to smoking regulations and labor relations, the story of Northwest Airlines encapsulates the profound changes to business, travel, and culture that marked the twentieth century.
The Aviators by Winston Groom Written by gifted storyteller Winston Groom (author of Forrest Gump), The Aviators tells the saga of three extraordinary aviators--Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Jimmy Doolittle--and how they redefine heroism through their genius, daring, and uncommon courage. This is the fascinating story of three extraordinary heroes who defined aviation during the great age of flight. These cleverly interwoven tales of their heart-stopping adventures take us from the feats of World War I through the heroism of World War II and beyond, including daring military raids and survival-at-sea, and will appeal to fans of Unbroken, The Greatest Generation, and Flyboys. With the world in peril in World War II, each man set aside great success and comfort to return to the skies for his most daring mission yet. Doolittle, a brilliant aviation innovator, would lead the daring Tokyo Raid to retaliate for Pearl Harbor; Lindbergh, hero of the first solo flight across the Atlantic, would fly combat missions in the South Pacific; and Rickenbacker, World War I flying ace, would bravely hold his crew together while facing near-starvation and circling sharks after his plane went down in a remote part of the Pacific. Groom's rich narrative tells their intertwined stories--from broken homes to Medals of Honor (all three would receive it); barnstorming to the greatest raid of World War II; front-page triumph to anguished tragedy; and near-death to ultimate survival--as all took to the sky, time and again, to become exemplars of the spirit of the "greatest generation."
A Century of Triumph by Christopher Chant; John Batchelor (Illustrator) On December 17, 1903, on the windswept beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright piloted the world's first powered flight, in one of the most famous moments in history. Within a few short years, airplanes of various designs were lifting into the air over Europe and America. Soon, the entire world was caught up in the fevered advance of flight -- and airplanes, Zeppelins, autogyros, and helicopters were making the world a much smaller place. To celebrate the first full century of powered flight, the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the Aviation World's Fair, together with World of Wings, Inc., have joined forces with premier aviation historian Christopher Chant and world-famous illustrator John Batchelor to showcase an astonishing march of progress. From the early experiments of gliderman Otto Lilienthal to the moon walk of Neil Armstrong, it has indeed been "A Century of Triumph." Batchelor's over two hundred detailed illustrations, including dozens of cutaway images of aircraft structure, are works of art worthy of the design achievements of the greatest aircraft engineers. From the golden age of Zeppelins to the e
Jet Set by William Stadiem In October 1958, Pan American World Airways began making regularly scheduled flights between New York and Paris, courtesy of its newly minted wonder jet, the Boeing 707. Almost overnight, the moneyed celebrities of the era made Europe their playground. At the same time, the dream of international travel came true for thousands of ordinary Americans who longed to emulate the "jet set" lifestyle.   Bestselling author and Vanity Fair contributor William Stadiem brings that Jet Age dream to life again in the first-ever book about the glamorous decade when Americans took to the skies in massive numbers as never before, with the rich and famous elbowing their way to the front of the line. Dishy anecdotes and finely rendered character sketches re-create the world of luxurious airplanes, exclusive destinations, and beautiful, wealthy trendsetters who turned transatlantic travel into an inalienable right. It was the age of Camelot and "Come Fly with Me," Grace Kelly at the Prince's Palace in Monaco, and Mary Quant miniskirts on the streets of Swinging London. Men still wore hats, stewardesses showed plenty of leg, and the beach at Saint-Tropez was just a seven-hour flight away.   Jet Set reads like a who's who of the fabulous and well connected, from the swashbuckling "skycoons" who launched the jet fleet to the playboys, moguls, and financiers who kept it flying. Among the bold-face names on the passenger manifest: Juan Trippe, the Yale-educated WASP with the Spanish-sounding name who parlayed his fraternity contacts into a tiny airmail route that became the world's largest airline, Pan Am; couturier to the stars Oleg Cassini, the Kennedy administration's "Secretary of Style," and his social climbing brother Igor, who became the most powerful gossip columnist in America--then lost it all in one of the juiciest scandals of the century; Temple Fielding, the high-rolling high priest of travel guides, and his budget-conscious rival Arthur Frommer; Conrad Hilton, the New Mexico cowboy who built the most powerful luxury hotel chain on earth; and Mary Wells Lawrence, the queen bee of Madison Avenue whose suggestive ads for Braniff and other airlines brought sex appeal to the skies.   Like a superfueled episode of Mad Men, Jet Set evokes a time long gone but still vibrant in American memory. This is a rollicking, sexy romp through the ring-a-ding glory years of air travel, when escape was the ultimate aphrodisiac and the smiles were as wide as the aisles.   Praise for Jet Set   "Aeronautics history, high times from the 1950s and '60s, incredibly versatile name-dropping (from Mrs. John Jacob Astor to Christine Keeler of the Profumo scandal) and Sinatra's 'Come Fly With Me' as a kind of theme song [all] connected to the glamorous days of air travel."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times   "What a book William Stadium has written. . . . The Kennedys, the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, and early financiers like Eddie Gilbert are dealt with in depth. . . . I lived intimately through it all in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s and I am yet to find a mistake in author Stadiem's amazing book. Order it now. All the players are here."--Liz Smith, syndicated columnist   "William Stadiem sexes up the glory days of aviation in Jet Set. Fly me!"--Vanity Fair   "William Stadiem's Jet Set takes you where no modern airliner can: to a time . . . when the means of travel was as exotic as the destination, and sometimes more so."--Town & Country
Come Fly the World by Julia Cooke Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men-era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire.Cooke's intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to light the story of Pan Am stewardesses' role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift--the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon--the book's special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.

lucky dip

Choose Your Own Reading Adventure

Each month is chock full of less well known celebrations that you might not know about. There might not be enough books in the library catalog to make a whole booklist to celebrate some of these offbeat holidays, so for this month we've created a "lucky dip" - choose which holidays you'd like to celebrate, and we'll suggest a book related to that topic! Lists may include fiction and/or non-fiction.

summer reading bingo

Beach Reads Bingo!

Just for fun! Play book bingo with some reading prompts to get your vacation reading started, including:

Read 5 magazines.
Read outside.
Beat the heat and read a book set in a cold place.

Check out the bingo sheets linked below to view more prompts! Then, try to fill a row and BINGO! If you fill the whole sheet, that's called a blackout!

Printable Bingo Sheets

SRP 2025

Color Our World

Fiction & non-fiction

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Non-Fiction

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair One of USA Today's "100 Books to Read While Stuck at Home During the Coronavirus Crisis"  A dazzling gift, the unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume. "Beautifully written . . . Full of anecdotes and fascinating research, this elegant compendium has all the answers." --NPR, Best Books of 2017 The Secret Lives of Color tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes, and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture. "This passionate and majestic compedium will leave you bathed in the gorgeous optics of light." --Elle
The Brilliant History of Color in Art by Victoria Finlay The history of art is inseparable from the history of color. And what a fascinating story they tell together: one that brims with an all-star cast of characters, eye-opening details, and unexpected detours through the annals of human civilization and scientific discovery. Enter critically acclaimed writer and popular journalist Victoria Finlay, who here takes readers across the globe and over the centuries on an unforgettable tour through the brilliant history of color in art. Written for newcomers to the subject and aspiring young artists alike, Finlay's quest to uncover the origins and science of color will beguile readers of all ages with its warm and conversational style. Her rich narrative is illustrated in full color throughout with 166 major works of art-most from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Readers of this book will revel in a treasure trove of fun-filled facts and anecdotes. Were it not for Cleopatra, for instance, purple might not have become the royal color of the Western world. Without Napoleon, the black graphite pencil might never have found its way into the hands of Cézanne. Without mango-eating cows, the sunsets of Turner might have lost their shimmering glow. And were it not for the pigment cobalt blue, the halls of museums worldwide might still be filled with forged Vermeers. Red ocher, green earth, Indian yellow, lead white-no pigment from the artist's broad and diverse palette escapes Finlay's shrewd eye in this breathtaking exploration.
Color Rush by Katherine A. Bussard; Lisa Hostetler Today color photography is so ubiquitous that it's hard to believe there was a time when this was not the case. Color Rush: Seventy-five Years of Color Photography in America explores the developments that led us to this point, looking at the way color photographs circulated and appeared at the time of their making. From magazine pages to gallery walls, from advertisements to photojournalism, Color Rush charts the history of color photography in the United States from the moment it became available as a mass medium to the moment when it no longer seemed an unusual choice for artists. The book begins with the 1907 unveiling of autochrome, the first commercially available color process, and continues up through the 1981 landmark survey show and book, The New Color Photography, which hailed the widespread acceptance of color photography in contemporary art. In the intervening years, color photography captured the popular imagination through its visibility in magazines like Life and Vogue, as well as through its accessibility in the marketplace thanks to companies like Kodak. Often in photo histories color is presented as having arrived fully formed in the 1970s; this book reveals a deeper story and uncovers connections in both artistic and commercial practices. A comprehensive chronology and examples of significant moments and movements mark the increasing visibility of color photography. Color Rush brings together Ansel Adams and William Eggleston, Eliot Porter and Cindy Sherman, Edward Steichen and Stephen Shore, and examines them in a fresh context paying particular attention to color photography's translation onto the printed page. In doing so, it traces a new history that more fully accounts for color's pervasive presence today.
Pantone: the Twentieth Century in Color by Leatrice Eiseman; Keith Recker Pantone, the worldwide color authority, invites you on a rich visual tour of 100 transformative years. "In this visual feast for color nerds, hue gurus Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker identify the shades that shaped our collective color palette."--Fast Company From the Pale Gold (15-0927 TPX) and Almost Mauve (12-2103 TPX) of the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris to the Rust (18-1248 TPX) and Midnight Navy (19-4110 TPX) of the countdown to the Millennium, the 20th century brimmed with color. In this incredible and unique exploration of color, longtime Pantone collaborators and color gurus Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker identify more than 200 touchstone works of art, products, décor, and fashion, and carefully match them with 80 different official PANTONE color palettes to reveal the trends, radical shifts, and resurgences of various hues. A color theory book like no other, this vibrant volume takes the social temperature of our recent history with the panache that is uniquely Pantone. STUNNING ART BOOK AND RESOURCE GUIDE: A treasure trove of inspiration and reference for artists, designers, stylists, and lovers of fashion design, modern architecture, contemporary art, furniture, and home décor. HANDS-ON GUIDANCE FOR CREATIVES: As one reviewer notes, "this is a coffee table-sized decade-by-decade guide to the colors of the 20th century, with Pantone color palette listings to enable you to reproduce them exactly right." COLOR MATTERS: Color as a form of communication is incredibly powerful. Its ability to influence thought, mood, and action is gaining newfound attention in the field of modern psychology and in our collective reach for bettering ourselves emotionally and spiritually. Perfect for: Artists, graphic designers, fashion and décor designers, set decorators, and any professional who incorporates color into their work Library and museum curation Homeowners looking for period design inspiration Fans of cultural history, color exploration, and interior design Readers of Architectural Digest, Dwell, Wallpaper, and The World of Interiors
The World According to Color by James Fox A kaleidoscopic exploration that traverses history, literature, art, and science to reveal humans' unique and vibrant relationship with color. We have an extraordinary connection to color--we give it meanings, associations, and properties that last millennia and span cultures, continents, and languages. In The World According to Color, James Fox takes seven elemental colors--black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple, and green--and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances and common symbolism throughout history. Through a series of stories and vignettes, the book then traces these meanings to show how they morphed and multiplied and, ultimately, how they reveal a great deal about the societies that produced them: reflecting and shaping their hopes, fears, prejudices, and preoccupations. Fox also examines the science of how our eyes and brains interpret light and color, and shows how this is inherently linked with the meanings we give to hue. And using his background as an art historian, he explores many of the milestones in the history of art--from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein--in a fresh way. Fox also weaves in literature, philosophy, cinema, archaeology, and art--moving from Monet to Marco Polo, early Japanese ink artists to Shakespeare and Goethe to James Bond. By creating a new history of color, Fox reveals a new story about humans and our place in the universe: second only to language, color is the greatest carrier of cultural meaning in our world.
Blue by Kai Kupferschmidt Blue is our favorite color globally--the darling of artists since the time of the pharaohs. So it's startling to turn to the realms of nature and discover that "true" blue is truly rare. The sea and sky are blue, but we can't bottle this trick of physics. And the few creatures, plants, and minerals that appear blue are almost all deceiving us. There's no blue pigment in a blue jay--it would be brown but for how its feathers distort light. Kai Kupferschmidt has been enraptured by blue since childhood. In Blue, he invites readers on his globe-trotting quest to understand his favorite color-- from Kyoto, where scientists are trying to engineer a blue rose, to Brandenburg, where conservationists hope to save the "little blue macaw." Deep underground where blue crystals grow and miles overhead where astronauts gaze at our "blue marble" planet-wherever he finds this alluring color, it has a story to tell.
The Devil's Cloth by Michel. Pastoureau; Jody Gladding (Translator) To stripe a surface serves to distinguish it, to point it out, to oppose it or associate it with another surface, and thus to classify it, to keep an eye on it, to verify it, even to censor it. Throughout the ages, the stripe has made its mark in mysterious ways. From prisoners' uniforms to tailored suits, a street sign to a set of sheets, Pablo Picasso to Saint Joseph, stripes have always made a bold statement. But the boundary that separates the good stripe from the bad is often blurred. Why, for instance, were stripes associated with the devil during the Middle Ages? How did stripes come to symbolize freedom and unity after the American and French revolutions? When did the stripe become a standard in men's fashion? "In the stripe," writes author Michel Pastoureau, "there is something that resists enclosure within systems." So before putting on that necktie or waving your country's flag, look to The Devil's Cloth for a colorful history of the stripe in all its variety, controversy, and connotation.
The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise-the color and the gem-to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape. From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo "velvet grandmothers" whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.
Art and Flair of Mary Blair, the-Updated Edition by John Canemaker For more than a dozen years, a soft spoken, unassuming woman dominated design at The Walt Disney Studios with a joyful creativity and exuberant color palette that stamped the look of many classic Disney animated features, including Cinderella and PeterPan. Favorite theme park attractions, most notably the It's A Small World boat ride, originally created for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, were also among her designs. Now the story behind one of Walt's favorite artists is celebrated in this delightful volume of whimsical art and insightful commentary. In her prime, Mary Blair was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. Her art represented and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer. Mary Blair's personal flair was at one with the imagery that flowed effortlessly and continually from her brush for more than half a century. Walt Disney loved her art and championed it at the Studio. The two shared many sensibilities, including a childlike fondness for playfulness in imagery. Searching for that perfect gift for the animation fan in your life? Explore more behind-the-scenes stories from Disney Editions: The Art of Mulan: A Disney Editions Classic Walt Disney's Ultimate Inventor: The Genius of Ub Iwerks One Day at Disney: Meet the People Who Make the Magic Across the Globe The Walt Disney Studios: A Lot to Remember From All of Us to All of You: The Disney Christmas Card Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney's Animation Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons, Revised Special Edition Disney Villains: Delightfully Evil - The Creation, The Inspiration, The Fascination Illusion of Life: Disney Animation (By Disney Legends Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston)
The Colorful Dry Garden by Maureen Gilmer A design-focused, easy-to-use guide to colorful, eye-catching foliage and flowers for your whole yard, from the ground plane to the canopy, for homeowners and landscapers faced with replacing thirsty gardens in California and other dry regions in the Western US. If readers must reluctantly remove water-guzzling favorites from the garden, they need equally beautiful substitutes! This book is a visual treat that supports the transition to dry gardening by proving that gardeners can have all the gorgeous color and flowers they had in the past using just a fraction of the water. Maureen Gilmer provides chapters on design categories of plants-flowering shrubs, the ground plain, eye-catching accents, ephemeral flowers, perennials for color, animated plants and fine textures, canopy, and edibles-with profiles for each plant plus background info and top picks lists. The Colorful Dry Garden is unique because it features only bold plants that are also heavy bloomers despite heat and limited water. It also features more than just Western native plants by including varieties from the world's driest climates.
The Right Color by Eve Ashcraft The definitive guide to paint by the nation's most sought-after color consultant When Martha Stewart was developing her first paint collection, the Araucana Colors (based on the hues of her chickens' eggs), she turned to the nation's top color consultant: Eve Ashcraft. Eve helped Martha to pinpoint the colors of that enormously successful paint line, thus assisting in transforming an industry along the way. In her first book, The Right Color, her own curated palette (her paint line launches this fall) and countless other favorite shades and color combinations provide inspiration for every room in the house. Packed with trade secrets, such as how to make a small room look bigger, how to use color to brighten a space, and how to use paint to resolve myriad architectural challenges, this book will give anyone the confidence to choose a palette that will make the most of any space.
Face Paint by Lisa Eldridge New York Times BestsellerMakeup, as we know it, has only been commercially available in the last 100 years, but applying decoration to the face and body may be one of the oldest global social practices. In Face Paint, Lisa Eldridge reveals the entire history of the art form, from Egyptian and Classical times up through the Victorian age and golden era of Hollywood, and also surveys the cutting-edge makeup science of today and tomorrow. Face Paint explores the practical and idiosyncratic reasons behind makeup's use, the actual materials employed over generations, and the glamorous icons that people emulate, it is also a social history of women and the ways in which we can understand their lives through the prism and impact of makeup.
Fiorucci by David Owen (Editor); Sofia Coppola (Foreword by) A love letter to one of the cult influencers of 1980s style. Published to coincide with revival and rejuvenation of Fiorucci under the creative direction of Sofia Coppola - will find an audience in anyone familiar with the label, 1980s style, as well as a new target market engaged by heavy push for the brand in the next few years. Will share audience with similarly irreverent / bright / 80s and 90s design and fashion icons from Stephen Sprouse to Chloe Sevigny, as well as with fun and interactive design books like Stickers. A playful and evocative celebration of one of the most irreverent labels in fashion.
Color Theory by Patti Mollica In this essential guide you will be walked through the most important aspects of colour theory as it is related to oil and acrylic painting.
Red by Jacky Colliss Harvey Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. A book that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora to its emergence under Northern skies. She goes on to explore red hair in the ancient world; the prejudice manifested against red hair across medieval Europe; red hair during the Renaissance as both an indicator of Jewishness during the Inquisition and the height of fashion in Protestant England, under the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I; the modern age of art and literature, and the first positive symbols of red hair in children's characters; modern medicine and science and the genetic and chemical decoding of red hair; and finally, red hair in contemporary culture, from advertising and exploitation to "gingerism" and the new movement against bullying.
Colour in Art by John Gage; Kelly Grovier (Foreword by) The complex phenomenon of colour has received detailed attention from the perspectives of physics, chemistry, physiology, psychology, linguistics and philosophy. However, the people who work most closely with colour - artists - have rarely been canvassed for their opinions on this mysterious subject. Colour in Art is concerned with the history of colour, but is not itself a history; instead each chapter develops a theme from a different scientific discipline, but seen from the viewpoint of artists such as Kandinsky, Van Gogh and Anish Kapoor. Flags, synaesthesia, Theosophy, theatre design, chromotherapy and chromophobia are among the many topics covered in this wide-ranging and engaging introduction to the place and power of colour in life and art.

Fiction

All Systems Red by Martha Wells Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Alex Award Winner: 2018 Locus Award One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017 A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid -- a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James One of TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post "Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse NOMINATED FOR THE 2021 HUGO AWARDS AND THE 2020 NEBULA AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic. A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain. Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST * From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists--a haunting story of love and war. * Recipient of the Women's Prize for Fiction "Winner of Winners" award. With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor's beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover's charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna's willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde From the New York Times bestselling author of the Thursday Next series comes a "laugh-out-loud funny" (Los Angeles Times) and "brilliantly original" (Booklist, starred review) novel of a man attempting to navigate a color-coded world. "A rich brew of dystopic fantasy and deadpan goofiness."--The Washington Post Welcome to Chromatacia, where the Colortocracy rules society through a social hierarchy based on one's limited color perception. In this world, you are what you can see.   Eddie Russet wants to move up. When he and his father relocate to the backwater village of East Carmine, his carefully cultivated plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Eddie must content with lethal swans, sneaky Yellows, inviolable rules, an enforced marriage to the hideous Violet deMauve, and a risky friendship with an intriguing Grey named Jane who shows Eddie that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself.   Will Eddie be able to tread the fine line between total conformity--accepting the path, partner, and career delineated by his hue--and his instinctive curiosity that is bound to get him into trouble?
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon The New York Times bestselling "epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones" (Bustle). NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: AMAZON (Top 100 Editors Picks and Science Fiction and Fantasy) * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY * BOOKPAGE * AUTOSTRADDLE A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara Discover the "extraordinary" (The Washington Post) debut novel that "announces the arrival of a literary supernova" (The New York Times Book Review),"a drama of childhood that is as wild as it is intimate" (Chigozie Obioma).   WINNER OF THE EDGAR® AWARD * LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Time * The Washington Post * NPR * The Guardian * Library Journal   In a sprawling Indian city, a boy ventures into its most dangerous corners to find his missing classmate. . . . Through market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn't let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city's fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into this neighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world. Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit. But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined, and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience, and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a community that, once encountered, is impossible to forget.
Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo by Ntozake Shange Ntozake Shange's beloved Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is the story of three sisters and their mother from Charleston, South Carolina. "A jubilant celebration of womanhood--as moving as the moon . . . pure magic." --Kansas City Star Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother before her. Having gone north to college, she is now living with other artists in Los Angeles and trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories and dreams. Cypress, the dancer, leaves home to find new ways of moving in the world. Indigo, the youngest, is still a child of Charleston-"too much of the south in her"-who lives in poetry and has the supreme gift of seeing the obvious magic of the world. Shange's rich and wondrous story of womanhood, art, and passionately-lived lives is written "with such exquisite care and beauty that anybody can relate to her message" (The New York Times).
Pink Glass Houses by Asha Elias "Delicious, decadent, and utterly diabolical. No one serves up a scandal like Asha Elias."--Kirsten Miller, author of The Change A seductive social satire about the wealthy PTA moms of an elite elementary school in Miami Beach, Pink Glass Houses is very Big Little Lies and Pineapple Street, but with diamonds, a tan, and a glass of rosé. There's a reason people call Miami Beach "a sunny place for shady people." Welcome to Sunset Academy, the most coveted elementary school in Miami Beach, where there are three categories of families: rich, wealthy, and ultra-wealthy. Perfectly tanned and smiling Charlotte Giordani is Sunset Academy's alpha mom. With a sleek blowout and relentless charm, Charlotte's brashness serves her well. She's up for election as the PTA president and is riding high, having just secured a massive donation from billionaire Don Walker and his socialite wife Patricia. Don and Patricia are philanthropists, media darlings, and the owners of Villa Rosé, a newly built modern glass house that everyone is talking about. (It's either spectacular or a tacky eyesore, depending on how you feel about billionaires.) Enter Melody Howard, a wide-eyed transplant from Wichita, Kansas. At first a skeptic about Miami Beach and its endlessly hashtaggable social scene, Melody finds herself sucked into the glossy, frenetic world of Sunset Academy moms. Melody's easygoing manner and background in nonprofit management make her an asset to the PTA. But when she emerges as a rival for the PTA presidency, Charlotte begins to unravel. Even the most powerful players on the social scene prove to be vulnerable when an investigation into white-collar crime--triggered by another school mom, the formidable Jamaican-American Judge Carol Lawson--threatens to take down the whole institution. No amount of rosé can soothe tensions as the drama builds to a shocking crisis point. Told in rotating first person voices, Pink Glass Houses is an irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich and infamous, where cocaine playdates, $100,000 kiddie birthday parties, and relentless social climbing are a way of life.  "Asha Elias takes us on a wildly entertaining journey into the seamy underbelly of Miami Beach -- the glamorous, cutthroat, scandalous and sometimes deadly world of (I'm not making this up) elementary-school fundraising." --New York Times bestselling author Dave Barry
Green Dot by Madeleine Gray "Madeleine Gray takes a scalpel to millennial malaise, office romance, and infidelity, and the result is a brainy, gutsy, nervy--and hilarious--wonder of a novel." --Meg Howrey, author of They're Going to Love You An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She's sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet--a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds--introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife--and that she has no idea Hera exists. With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.