The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Genre: Biography, History

This book is about the migration of African-Americans from the Jim Crow South to other areas of the United States. It primarily follows the paths of three people: Ida Mae Gladney - a Mississippi share cropper's wife, George Starling - a Florida picker , and Robert Foster - a doctor from Louisiana. It also documents many of the harsh conditions of the South and several of challenges facing those wishing to resettle in other states.

Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author for this book.

- Sarah R.

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Title: Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Genre: Non-fiction, History, Race Relations

Wow. This is a thoroughly researched, thought-inducing look at how the treatment of race is similar to the caste system of India. Wilkerson walks you through history, and takes you through political, economical, social, and other aspects of race. It is not a short read or an easy one, but a soul-searching look at how stacked the deck has been, and without question still is, against people of color. Highly recommended.

- Sarah R.

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The Pig War by Emma Bland Smith

Title: The Pig War

Author: Emma Bland Smith

Genre: Juvenile Non-fiction

Did you know that a pig rooting for potatoes almost started a war? I didn't until I read The Pig War: How a Porcine Tragedy Taught England and America to Share by Emma Bland Smith. In 1859, on a small island in the Pacific Northwest shared by the English and Americans, a British pig eats some American taters and it escalates into a military standoff. The story of the back and forth responses shows how a simple action can result in a greater conflict, but also demonstrates how cooler heads can prevail when things seem dire. This is a good lesson for those who are quick to anger and vindication for anyone who's willing to use mediation to solve a problem.

I enjoyed how the author proposed several reasons why each side behaved as they did, but still managed to show how that it didn't excuse such a sorry result. Every page has gorgeous color illustrations to move the story along. I highly recommend this new historical children's book.

- Sarah R.

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The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

Title: The Widows of Malabar Hill

Author: Sujata Massey

Genre: Historical Mystery

The historical mystery The Widows of Malabar Hill  by award winning author Sujata Massey takes in place in British colonial India. This is a first in a series with the first female attorney, Parveen Mistry, to practice in the 1920’s Bombay. The story switches between a murder mystery involving Mistry’s clients that are Muslim who practice purdah, total seclusion, and Mistry’s backstory of becoming an attorney in her father’s practice and her first marriage.  The historical and cultural details are fascinating. It’s also a great murder mystery! This book can be recommended to fans of historical fiction and murder mysteries that enjoy  a strong and intelligent heroine. 

- Mary

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The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures by the Library of Congress

As librarians, we are quite often asked about the card catalogs our older patrons remember from their youth. While technology has completely changed the way one finds the books they're looking, the card catalog still lives on, just in a different format. The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures pays homage to those 3x5 manila-colored cards that we all love. Authored by the Library of Congress, with a foreword from new Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, this book explains the origins of the card catalog, the information contained on those little cards, and just how important those cards were in the early days of libraries. The chapter entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Card Catalog" discusses the beginning of the demise of the card catalog following the use of punched cards following the 1890 census and how IBM revolutionized the way librarians cataloged books.

While the background information about the card catalog is interesting, perhaps the best part of this book is the rare photos the reader gets to see. Images of book cover art from Gone With the Wind, The Sound and the Fury, Snowy Day, and many others from the Library of Congress' collection are included. The original card is also included alongside the title. So just what happened to all of those cards? As this book notes, many of the cards have been used as art, jewelry, or collectibles. And those gorgeous wood card catalog drawers? Ask a librarian, chances are they can only dream of ever affording one.

This book, particularly of interest to librarians, would also be of interest to historians, bibliophiles, and avid library users. It's an interesting look at the roots of librarianship and provides a fascinating glimpse at what technology has provided us with.

The Comic Book Story of Beer by Jonathan Hennessey and Mike Smith

It's Milwaukee. That said, beer is just a part of our history and culture, so why not enjoy an entire graphic novel all about beer? Hennessey and Smith's The Comic Book Story of Beer is a fascinating read if you're interested in the science of beer brewing, the history of various ales, and how beer became one of the all-time most popular drinks. Hennessey, the writer of several other graphic novels and Smith, a longtime beer brewer have researched the history of beer dating back to the beginning of time (roughly 7000 BC), through the rule of the Romans, the era of exploration, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, World War I and II and up until the present. They trace the brewing science from barley, to mash, to bottle, and finally to consumption. With mention of major breweries like Miller, Pabst, and Anheuser Busch as well as newer craft breweries and beer pubs, Hennessey and Smith are clearly beer experts. For avid beer drinkers, home brewers, and historians, this is a fascinating look at an iconic beverage that has changed the world.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Alexander Hamilton’s name has been appearing in the news for the first time in centuries with the talk of the hit Broadway musical based on his life. And this is the book that sparked it all. Aside from Broadway fans, this book may spark the curiosity of readers interested in American history. The award-winning book, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, is a detailed biography of Hamilton and tells us much more than the one fact we all know about him: he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton was a brilliant thinker and gifted organizer. An illegitimate child, orphaned before he reached his teens, Hamilton used his intelligence and abilities to make his way from St. Kitts island in the Caribbean to King’s College in New York. While there he embraced the cause of the American Revolution and became an invaluable aide to General George Washington. After the war, he was a primary writer of the Federalist Papers, defending the newly written Constitution. He was the first Secretary of the Treasury and established policies that secured the new nation’s economic security. A forward thinking man, he staunchly believed in abolition and philanthropy. He feuded with other patriots (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, among others) on the direction the country should take.      

He had, of course, his weaknesses, one of which proved to be fatal. Although devoted to his wife and large family, he had an affair with a married woman and paid blackmail to her husband. This information was eventually leaked to the public in a campaign of slander and dirty tricks aimed at destroying Hamilton’s reputation. It ultimately led to Hamilton’s famous and fatal duel with Aaron Burr.         

Alexander Hamilton is admittedly a daunting read at over 700 pages. But Hamilton did so much in his short life, this is the book he deserves. 

The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna

Set during World War II in Wisconsin's beautiful Door County peninsula, The Cherry Harvest follows the story of Thomas, Charlotte, and Kate Christiansen, the owners of a cherry farm. With their son Ben and most of the men on the peninsula sent away to fight the Nazis, Thomas and Charlotte worry how they're going to survive the harvest season, until the mention of German POWs enter the picture. Many in Door County fear that these German POWs are nothing more than Nazi sympathizers. With enemies on Wisconsin soil, many living in Door County fear for their safety. Even though it's unpopular, the Christiansens, needing all the help they can get to make this cherry harvest successful, agree to have the POWs work on their property.

Much of this story focuses on the relationship between Kate and her mother Charlotte. Their relationship is not rooted in love. Kate is a typical teen, interested in fashion, her friends, and boys, particularly Clay the son of an Illinois senator vacationing in Door County for the summer. When a secret threatens to tear the family apart, Kate and Charlotte are forced to deepen their relationship.

The Cherry Harvest is written by the Wisconsin-born Lucy Sanna. Although this is a work of fiction, there were in fact German POWs who worked the cherry orchards of Door County. During 1944 and 1945, Wisconsin was in fact a harboring place for many German POWs. POW camps were scattered throughout the state from Door County to Eau Claire and Rockfield, just outside of the Cedarburg/Germantown area.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Hehisi Coates, a journalist who works for The Atlantic Magazine, is a writer who is constantly being mentioned in the realm of African American intelligentsia.  The great Toni Morrison has even gone so far as to consider him the next James Baldwin.  Coates' new book Between the World and Me proves this to be a grandiose but true statement in many ways.

The immediate comparison comes from the mirror between writing conventions.  Coates' work is written as a letter to his son explaining the experience of the damage done to black bodies in America.  This is very similar to Baldwin's "A Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation," a section of his book The Fire Next Time.  A section of "Letter" states:

I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it and I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

It is this concept of "the Dream" that Coates often refers to- the idea that the country as a whole is complicit in the crimes against African Americans and does not care to admit it- that shadows his words.

Coates follows the themes of exploitation, segregation and violence. What is it like to live in a black male body in the United States today?  What is it like to have a constant threat of violence enveloping your person?  What is it like to live in fear but with a hope that your child will be safe?  Coates explains "I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself."

He goes on to explain his childhood in Baltimore.  That black children were told to be "twice as good" and yet ended up with half as much. That there was a delicate dance if one wanted to survive the streets but that the schools were no protection nor were they a pass into the Dream.  He says that:

The streets were not my only problem.  If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left.  Fail to comprehend the streets and you give up your body now.  But fail to comprehend the schools and you gave up your body later.

 Coates compares the personal discoveries of injustice between himself and his son.  He discusses at length the day when he discovered that one of his college friends had been murdered by an undercover police officer just steps away from his fiance's home.  The author then says this about his son's experience:

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free.  The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished.  It was not my expectation that anyone would ever be punished.  But you were young and still believed.  You stayed up til 11 P.M. that night, waiting for the announcement of an indictment, and when instead it was announced that there was none you said, "I've got to go," and you went into your room, and I hear you crying.

Coates' views are only those of one black man living in America today.  He doesn't claim to speak for everyone and he doesn't want absolution.  He writes to wake up his whit.

Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides

Many Americans know little about the history of the American Southwest, other than the false impressions we have gotten through cowboy movies. In some of our minds, the fight for the Alamo was part of the Mexican-American war; “Manifest Destiny” was a righteous ideology justifying the absorption of western lands by the United States; the Indians were savages; and Kit Carson gets jumbled in with those other buckskin-wearing frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. The actual history of the area and its people is far more complicated and interesting than these stereotypes would make it seem. Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides is a well-researched, detailed, and entertaining history of the territory taken from Mexico by President James K. Polk as a result of the Mexican-American War. Basically a biography of Kit Carson-- hunter, trapper, explorer, guide, U.S. Army officer and both friend and foe of Native Americans—this book sets Carson’s life in the context of the greater American experience. And a violent and bloody experience it was, as emigrants from the East struggled to wrest New Mexico, Arizona, California and Colorado from the control of the indigenous people and residents still loyal to Mexico.  Later, after the discovery of gold in California and Colorado, and still later the Civil War, additional factions contributed to the turbulence in the area. Carson was at the center of much of the action. He lived in the vast wilderness west of the Missouri River from the age of sixteen and, although illiterate, could speak English, Spanish and various Native American languages. He became the go-to man when Santa Fe Trail merchants or the U.S. Army needed a scout or guide. He assisted John C. Fremont’s exploration of California. He was a scout and messenger for General Kearney, the first U.S. Army officer in the newly acquired territory. He was an agent for peace and war with Native American tribes, particularly the Navajo. And he was an officer in the Union Army, fighting in little known battles of the Civil War fought in New Mexico. The life of Kit Carson and the story of New Mexico are intertwined and filled with contradictions: cruelty and kindness, courage and cowardice, nobility and dishonor.  Blood and Thunder is fascinating reading, relaying an American history we should all be aware of. 

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

In 1996 Joanna Rakoff left her graduate studies in London, moved to New York and took a job as an assistant to a literary agent at a well-respected company. But the job was not the literary dream job she had expected. Rather than reading manuscripts and hobnobbing with authors, her duties consisted mainly of typing form letters on an old electric typewriter. In the mid 1990’s, working in an office that refused to use computers, her primary job was to type the same form letter over and over again and mail them to the fans of The Agency’s most famous author, J.D. Salinger. Salinger, a recluse who had not published an original work since 1965, refused to accept the large amount of fan mail he received daily.  Hence, it was Ms. Rakoff’s duty to read and answer each letter. And, no matter how plaintive the message, she was to send the same typed form letter. This was a directive she eventually felt compelled to ignore. Feeling compassion for some of the letter writers, she broke the rules and responded with heartfelt sympathy and some good advice.

She could have used some sympathy and good advice in her personal life.  She lived with her inconsiderate, self-absorbed boyfriend in an apartment that had neither heat nor a kitchen sink. (No problem! They had a bathtub and sweaters.) Poorly paid, she was not able to stretch her salary to cover all her expenses. Her boyfriend expected her to shoulder the entire responsibility for the rent so he could work on his novel. And her well-to-do father surprised her with the bills for student loans she had not known had been taken out in her name.

However her life was not all stress and struggle. She loved living in New York and her descriptions of the city are quite enticing. She adjusted to working at The Agency and eventually was assigned more interesting work. Her descriptions of an office and agents that seem to have come right out of a 1940’s comedy film are amusing. She spoke to Salinger on the phone and met him once. She eventually came to love his books as much as the writers of the fan mail she answered. And she developed the self-confidence to leave the job and the boyfriend and move on to a more fulfilling life. My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff is an account of a young woman maturing, helped into adulthood by the creator of Holden Caufield, the eternal teenager.

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Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past by Ransom Riggs

In a world obsessed with selfies, a picture is just something we take for granted, but photographs weren't always as easy to take and develop as they are today. Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued From the Past by Ransom Rigg, the author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, tells various stories using old photographs. If you enjoy human interest stories, have an interest in history, or just love looking at old photographs, this is the book for you. As Riggs mentions in the forward of his book, he has long had an interest in old photographs that he's found at antique stores and resale shops. While questioning how families can just discard a piece of their familial history, Riggs began to buy the old photographs, but only old photographs that had some kind of caption or writing somewhere on them. 

With the sometimes adorable, sometimes quirky, sometimes awkward photos he bought, Riggs tells a story by intertwining pictures of complete strangers into chapters that focus on love, war, and illness, among others. Not only are some of these pictures funny, many are thought provoking, endearing, heartwarming, and some even tug at your heart strings.

Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past is a fast read, coffee-table-type book that is sure to make you wonder just exactly who the subjects are in the photographs and what their long lost story actually is.

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Zealot by Reza Aslan

            Perhaps the most controversial book of 2013, Zealot by Reza Aslan examines the life of Jesus of Nazareth from a historical, not spiritual, perspective. By examining the political and economic circumstances of first century Palestine, Aslan speculates about the movements and motives of Jesus. The Jews of Palestine were cruelly oppressed by both the Roman Empire and corrupt High Priests. Aslan believes that Jesus was trying to raise an earthly rebellion against both. Many reviews have been written about this book and some scholars state that Aslan’s ideas are not new and some of his facts and hypotheses are questionable. Nevertheless, Zealot is an interesting book and a good introduction for those who know little or nothing about first century history. According to this book, Jesus was an illiterate peasant who struggled to overthrow the Romans and return Israel to the Law of Moses. Mr. Aslan is a skilled writer and his explanation of the early history of Christianity is engaging and easily understood. The struggle for control of the early Christian Church (between those who wanted it to remain a Jewish sect and those who wanted to accept Gentiles) is explained in depth. The late first century was a time of turmoil for Christians and Jews. A Jewish revolt against the Romans resulted in a crushing defeat, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine. This series of events determined the future of the Christian Church as well as the fate of the Jewish people to this day. Regardless of religious belief, Zealot is a good introduction to a part of history many know little about.

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The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Jordan Smith’s estranged mom is accused of murdering her polygamous husband.  He goes to visit her in jail and realizes she’s innocent.  He was kicked out of the community of Firsts in Mesadale where she lives when he was a teen but must go back to free his mom.  In addition to Jordan’s story the author tells the tale of Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young’s so called “19^th wife”.  She did exist and helped eliminate polygamy from the Mormon religion in the late nineteenth century.  Rich with history and interesting relationships, this book raises emotional and ethical questions that don’t have easy answers. 

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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis

Epic life pretty much sums it up! In the early 1900’s many believed, including Edward Curtis, that the American Indians and their cultures were going to disappear. Curtis photographed American Indians and documented their languages, religions, alphabets, art, etc. as much as humanly possible. He felt that this endeavor was a race against time. This artistic and cultural achievement was also radical for its time, because the majority of this country believed that American Indians had no culture or religion and were barely human. Curtis sacrificed everything for this undertaking, his business, family, money and reputation. This book is recommended for readers that enjoy biographies of larger than life personalities or histories of the United States, photography, the America West, or American Indians.

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Boy 30529: A Memoir by Felix Weinberg

There are a lot of Holocaust memoirs out there.  This one is a little bit different.  Czech-English physicist Felix Weinberg does not like to refer to himself as a “camp survivor.”  He considers it a series of miracles that he lived and his family did not.  But I find it hard to call Weinberg anything but a survivor.  This book tells the story of a teenager who survived not only Terezín, but Auschwitz-Birkenau, Blechhammer, the Blechhammer death march, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald.  Once the war was over, Weinberg vowed only to look toward the future.  But years of not talking about his experiences left him feeling that he owed it to both his living and deceased relatives to put his story on paper.

Much of this book is a monument to his family.  Weinberg’s memories begin when he was a young child living in Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), Czechoslovakia.  He speaks fondly of the beautiful family home. How he and his mother, father and brother went to visit his mother’s parents in Prague during the holidays.  He talks about his health obsessed father, Victor,  who always took the family on nature outings, fed them all vitamins and even went so far as to hire a gymnastics trainer for young Felix. 

In 1939, Weinberg’s father left Czechoslovakia for London where he was arranging to move the entire family.  Hitler invaded the country in March of that year.  Victor had secured three Red Cross transportation passes for the remaining Weinbergs but through some sort of red tape or missing documents, they were not allowed to leave the country.  Nelly, Felix’s mother, moved them all to the small town of Wildenschwert (Ústí nad Orlicí) to live with the family of Rudolph Pick, a family friend.  Things continued to deteriorate in Czechoslovakia.  Soon, Felix was refused access to the local school due to his status as a Jew.  Food shortages worsened.  The SS even had the nerve to confiscate all of the skis belonging to Jews living in that mountain town.  Rudolph and Nelly decided to send inexperienced Felix to live at a nearby farm where he would be well fed.  This arrangement lasted about a week.  The Germans requisitioned the Picks’ large home in 1942 and the Weinbergs were soon after deported to Terezín; beginning a five year journey of horror and chance survival.

Weinberg’s short memoir is striking in its straightforward tone but is not filled with ghastly details of Nazi atrocities.  Felix explains that he does not remember large portions of those five years; that his mind enabled him to “see without seeing” as a coping mechanism.  Weinberg defied so many odds by surviving the war and his everyday account of life in Nazi concentration camps makes for an enthralling read.  Boy30529 is a thoughtful account of one man’s family and his experience during the holocaust.  

The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax by Tom Piazza

Alan Lomax was a renowned music documentarian as well as a singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist who is best known for his work (along with his father John) with the Library of Congress in preserving seminal American folk music. Between 1932 and 1942 Alan and his father worked as archivists for the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk song series. This was groundbreaking work that lead the Lomax’s to record important African American and Afro-Caribbean music as well as folk song traditions of the Ozarks and Appalachia, lumbermen, sailors, fishermen, bargemen, and Native Americans. They traveled out into the field to document the music - most of which was handed down from generation to generation and generic to its locality.

Alan Lomax also made the first recordings of bluesmen Muddy Waters, “Mississippi” Fred McDowell, Jelly Roll Morton and David “Honeyboy” Edwards – among others. He was also responsible for facilitating the careers of many well-known folk artists including, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Woody Gutherie, Burl Ives, Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Wade Ward, Almeda Riddle and many more. In 1936 he and his father John produced the Slave Narrative project, now residing at the Library of Congress. Lomax had an insatiable hunger for discovering distinctly American original folksingers and tracing their influences. Much of the music he documented was found in the southern regions of the United States and often in rural, poor areas.

The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax is a compilation of photographs, words and music (a CD is included with 12 songs of some of the musicians Lomax recorded), spanning Lomax’s life’s work. The photographs and stories behind the people in them are wonderful and bring to life a better understanding of the music Lomax documented. The photographs cover the periods Lomax cultivated 1934-1978, but particularly emphasize his 1959- 1960 southern journey to the rural sections of Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and Arkansas. These photos vividly tell a tale of the persons behind the music and span juke joints, back porches, farms, churches, and even penitentiaries.

The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax is a wonderful testament to a man doggedly devoted to recording the origins and legacies of American folk music. Lomax’s valuable work forever preserves the origins of not only the musical roots of the land, but perhaps more importantly portrays the history and culture of the country.

The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 by Molly Peacock

Mary Delaney was a minor member of the British aristocracy in the 18^th century. After the death of a much older husband ended an unhappy marriage, she created for herself a new life, full of friends, music, art, science and remarriage. During her second widowhood, at the age 72, Mrs. Delaney began to construct flower mosaics from cut paper and continued to do so for the next 10 years, creating 985 beautiful and botanically correct pictures, now kept in the British Museum. Paper Garden contains color reproductions of some of her work.

Escape from the Land of Snows by Stephan Talty

If you love 1950s history, we highly recommend Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero.  It also explains at a basic level Tibetan Buddhism and the spiritual and political position of the Dalai Lama.  The author interviews most of the key people involved and brings this part of history to life.  This book will appeal to readers that enjoy espionage/thrillers and those seeking religious and spiritual reading.  Those genres do not combine very often!  This is a great book about an incredible person.