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Reviews

Reviews

by Taya Kyle with Jim DeFelice - Memoir, Nonfiction

Chris and Taya Kyle’s remarkable story has captivated millions through the Academy Award-winning film American Sniper, and because of Chris’ bestselling memoir, in which Taya contributed passages that formed the book’s emotional core. Now, with trusted collaborator Jim DeFelice, Taya writes in never-before-told detail about the hours, days and months after his shocking death when grief threatened to overwhelm her. Then there were wearying battles to protect her husband’s legacy and reputation.

by Jim Grimsley - Memoir, Nonfiction

Jim Grimsley was 11 years old in 1966 when federally mandated integration of schools went into effect in the state and the school in his small eastern North Carolina town was first integrated. What he did not realize until he began to meet these new students was just how deeply ingrained his own prejudices were and how those prejudices had developed in him. Now, more than 40 years later, Grimsley looks back at that school and those times --- remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture.

edited by Ann Imig - Essays, Nonfiction, Parenting

Based on the sensational national performance movement, LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER showcases the experiences of ordinary people of all racial, gender and age backgrounds, from every corner of the country. This collection of essays celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today. The stories are raw, honest, poignant and sometimes raunchy, ranging from adoption, assimilation to emptying nests; first-time motherhood, foster-parenting, to infertility; single-parenting, LGBTQ parenting, to special-needs parenting.

by Thom Hatch - History, Nonfiction

George Armstrong Custer’s death and the defeat of the 7th Calvary by the Sioux was a shock to a nation that had come to believe that its westward expansion was a matter of destiny. While the first reports defended Custer, many have come to judge him by this single event. By reexamining the facts and putting Custer within the context of his time and his career as a soldier, Thom Hatch’s latest work reveals the untold and controversial truth of what really happened in the valley of the Little Bighorn.

by Matthew Parker - Biography, Nonfiction

For two months every year, from 1946 to his death 18 years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica’s stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels were written here. This book explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation of Fleming’s iconic post-war hero and traces his relationship with the land and the people of Jamaica.

by Susan Butler - History, Nonfiction

Making use of previously classified materials from the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, and the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, as well as the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and 300 hot war messages between Roosevelt and Stalin, Susan Butler tells the story of how the leader of the capitalist world and the leader of the Communist world became more than allies of convenience during World War II.

by Christian G. Appy - History, Nonfiction

How did the Vietnam War change the way we think of ourselves as a people and a nation? Christian G. Appy, author of the widely praised oral history of the Vietnam War, PATRIOTS, now examines the relationship between the war’s realities and myths, and its impact on our national identity, conscience, pride, shame, popular culture and postwar foreign policy.

by Andrew Grant Jackson - History, Music, Nonfiction

More than half a century ago, friendly rivalry between musicians turned 1965 into the year rock evolved into the premier art form of its time and accelerated the drive for personal freedom throughout the Western world. The Beatles made their first artistic statement with Rubber Soul. Bob Dylan released "Like a Rolling Stone,” arguably the greatest song of all time, and went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. The Rolling Stones's "Satisfaction" catapulted the band to world-wide success. New genres such as funk, psychedelia, folk rock, proto-punk and baroque pop were born. In 1965, Andrew Grant Jackson combines fascinating and often surprising personal stories with a panoramic historical narrative.

by James Green - History, Nonfiction

From before the dawn of the 20th century until the arrival of the New Deal, one of the most protracted and deadly labor struggles in American history was waged in West Virginia. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis verging on civil war that stretched from the creeks and hollows to the courts and the US Senate. In THE DEVIL IS HERE IN THESE HILLS, celebrated labor historian James Green tells the story of West Virginia and coal like never before.

by Eric Foner - History, Nonfiction

Building on fresh evidence --- including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York --- Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition" --- person by person, family by family.