Adult

Over the course of his 40-year career, Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In SHOWDOWN, Wil Haygood uses the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, to weave a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as at the politicians, lawyers, activists and others who shaped --- or desperately tried to stop --- the civil rights movement.

In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African-American, with a little more than 100 families who were “other.” Currently the African-American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Latin American origin living all over the county. A NATION OF NATIONS follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually “Americanize.”

The years 1913-1923 saw the emergence in Ireland of the Ulster Volunteer Force to resist Irish home rule and in response, the Irish Volunteers, who would later evolve into the IRA. World War One, the rise of Sinn Fein, intense Ulster unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish war of Independence, which ended with a compromise Treaty with Britain and then the enmities and drama of the Irish Civil War. Drawing on an abundance of newly released archival material, witness statements and testimony from the ordinary Irish people who lived and fought through extraordinary times, A NATION AND NOT A RABBLE explores these revolutions.

No American statesman has been as revered or as reviled as Henry Kissinger. He has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every “telcon” for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial two-volume biography, drawing not only on Kissinger’s hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding.

Jack Kemp’s role in a pivotal period in American history is at last illuminated in this first-ever biography, which also has lessons for the politics of today. Kemp was the congressional champion of supply-side economics --- the idea that lowering taxes would foster growth. Even today, almost no one advocates a return to a top income tax rate of 70 percent. Kemp didn’t just challenge the Democratic establishment. He also encouraged his fellow Republicans to be growth (not austerity) minded, open their tent to minorities and blue-collar workers, battle poverty and discrimination, and once again become "the party of Lincoln."

The fight for gay, lesbian and trans civil rights --- the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heartbreaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers --- is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, THE GAY REVOLUTION tells this unfinished story through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke.

With Lincoln’s assassination, his “team of rivals” was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. By the 1868 election, united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's winning Union general. His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by post-war greed and corruption. Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana.

In a shadowy antiques shop in Rome, violinist Julia Ansdell happens upon a curious piece of music --- the Incendio waltz --- and is immediately entranced by its unusual composition. Back home in Boston, from the moment Julia’s bow moves across the strings, drawing the waltz’s fiery notes into the air, something strange is stirred. The music has a terrifying and inexplicable effect on her young daughter, who seems violently transformed. Convinced that the hypnotic strains of Incendio are weaving a malevolent spell, Julia sets out to discover the man and the meaning behind the score.

The Satellite Sisters have turned their focus to one of the most important relationships in our lives --- our friends, our Satellite Sisters, the women (and men) we call when the best thing in your life happens, or the worst. With their trademark empathy, intelligence and humor, YOU'RE THE BEST is a collection of essays and writings about life, love, family, play and change. Its contributors include both the Satellite Sisters and the Next Generation (nieces, daughters, daughters-in-law), covering how friendships influence choices, relationships, careers, adventures and inevitable changes.

Bench McCarthy is a thug's thug, a hitman, an underworld jack-of-all-trades running his own mob out of Winter Hill in Somerville while simultaneously handling "wet work" for Sally Curto, a half-demented, totally obscene mob boss. After years of gangland peace, Bench and Sally suddenly find themselves clay pigeons for unknown hit crews coming at them from every direction. The motives are as murky as the hitmen themselves, but all roads seem to lead back to the State House, where corrupt pols are battling over a bill to legalize billions of dollars' worth of new casinos.