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25 copies

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Aug 12 - Sep 1217 hours left
24.9k entries
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In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970.

Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.

Non-fiction
History

5 copies

Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System

Dagomar deGroot

Aug 22 - Sep 22
4,931 entries
US & CA

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The untold story of how environmental change throughout the cosmos shaped five hundred years of human civilization.

Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth.

In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking human endeavor to the rest of the solar system. He reveals how variability in planetary environments has shaped geopolitics, spurred scientific and cultural innovation, and encouraged new ideas about the emergence and fate of life. Martian dust storms altered the trajectory of the Cold War and inspired fantastical stories about alien civilizations. Comet impacts on Jupiter led to the first planetary defense strategy. And volcanic eruptions spewed sulfuric acid into Venus’s atmosphere, exposing the existential risks of climate change at home.

As we stand on the brink of a new era of space settlement, cosmic environments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to human activity. They may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of environments on Earth. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean urges us to develop an interplanetary environmentalism across a vast mosaic of entangled worlds and to consider the profound connections that bind us to the cosmos and each other.

Science
History

25 copies

The Dangerous Shore: How a Motley Crew of Scientists, Mobsters, Double Agents, Retirees, Volunteer Pilots (and a Boy Scout) Stopped the Invasion of America

Sara Vladic

Sep 2 - Sep 27
2,831 entries
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Sara Vladic, New York Times bestselling author of Indianapolis, reveals the gripping, untold history of the United States under attack during World War II and the improbable patriots who stepped up to defend their country in her hour of need.

History books have told us, in the decades following World War II, that Pearl Harbor was the only major attack on the United States’ home front. But this is not the whole truth. In The Dangerous Shore, leading researcher and bestselling author Sara Vladic unveils a much different story, one hidden away in dusty archives and behind press embargoes: Throughout the Second World War, German U-boats presented a very real threat to America’s eastern coastline, destroying ships, landing spies, and planning assaults on cities. With the country’s attention focused on the European and Pacific fronts, the U.S. would have been left undefended, if not for a ragtag bunch of characters who rose to the occasion.

Comprised of misfits, rejects, and outlaws, this motley crew came from unexpected places. Among their ranks was the stalwart Gill Robb Wilson, leader of a barnstorming corp of volunteer civilian pilots; the brilliant Dayton engineer, Joe Desch; and the nearsighted yet "clairvoyant" Kenneth Knowles, commander of the Phantom Fleet, entrusted with ULTRA intelligence.

Meanwhile, the cooperation of Grace Buchanan-Dineen, a self-styled countess and German spy turned double agent, helped the FBI net even more spies. Notorious but all-American mobsters Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Socks Lanza struck deals with Naval Intelligence and kept watch over critical ports. Together their efforts turned the tide of war at home and saved thousands of American lives.

A thrilling and eye-opening read, The Dangerous Shore leads you through American history like never before. The story is an ode to the bravery, loyalty, and patriotism of our most unsung—and unlikely—heroes.

History
Non-fiction

100 copies

We Survived the Night

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Sep 10 - Oct 11
2,073 entries
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A stunning work of narrative non-fiction from one of the most powerful young Native American writers at work today—We Survived the Night combines investigative journalism, folklore, and a deeply personal father-son journey in a searing portrait of a community fighting for self-determination in a fractured nation.

Born to a Secwepemc father and Jewish-Irish mother, Julian Brave Noisecat’s childhood was full of contradictions. Despite living in the urban Native community of Oakland, California, he was raised primarily by his white mother. He was a competitive powwow dancer, but asked his father to cut his hair short, fearing that his white classmates would call him a girl if he kept it long. When his father, tormented by an abusive and impoverished rez upbringing, eventually left the family, Noisecat was left to make sense of his Indigenous heritage and identity on his own.

Now, decades later, Noisecat has set across the country to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding this nation’s First Peoples, as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist in his own right. On his way he meets the activists campaigning to change the Washington football team’s name, members of the Quinault Nation forced to relocate due to rising sea levels, and Navajo families still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. He follows the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline and retraces his family’s own canoe journey honoring the 50th anniversary of the Alcatraz Occupation, an experience that brought Noisecat and his father closer as Native men than they had been before.

Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning with a relationship between a father and a son. Soulful, formally daring, indelible work from an important new voice.

History
Biography

20 copies

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

John Green

Sep 1 - Oct 1
21.2k entries
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John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

Non-fiction
History

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