The Civil War: a visual history

Publishing Date: [2011]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.7022

Produced with the Smithsonian Institution and released in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, "The Civil War" is a definitive visual history of one of the most defining moments in our country's history. Includes comprehensive timelines, first-person accounts by soldiers, civilians, and key political and military leaders, as well as examinations of broader topics such as transportation, the economy, and the treatment of wounded soldiers.

Blood & treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest

By Frazier, Donald S

Publishing Date: c1995

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.7464 FRA

For decades before the Civil War, Southern writers and warriors had been urging the occupation and development of the American Southwest. When the rift between North and South had been finalized in secession, the Confederacy moved to extend their traditions to the westa long-sought goal that had been frustrated by northern states. It was a common sentiment among Southerners and especially Texans that Mexico must be rescued from indolent inhabitants and granted the benefits of American civilization. Blood and Treasure, written in a readable narrative style that belies the rigorous research behind it, tells the story of the Confederacy's ambitious plan to extend a Confederate empire across the continent. Led by Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, later a governor of Arizona, and General H. H. Sibley, Texan soldiers trekked from San Antonio to Fort Bliss in El Paso, then north along the Rio Grande to Santa Fe. Fighting both Apaches and Federal troops, the half-trained, undisciplined army met success at the Battle of Val Verde and defeat at the Battle of Apache Canyon. Finally, the Texans won the Battle of Glorieta Pass, only to lose their supply train--and eventually the campaign. Pursued and dispirited, the Confederates abandoned their dream of empire and retreated to El Paso and San Antonio. Frazier has made use of previously untapped primary sources, allowing him to present new interpretations of the famous Civil War battles in the Southwest. Using narratives of veterans of the campaign and official Confederate and Union documents, the author explains how this seemingly far-fetched fantasy of building a Confederate empire was an essential part of the Confederate strategy. Military historians will be challenged to modify traditional views of Confederate imperial ambitions. Generalists will be drawn into the fascinating saga of the soldiers' fears, despair, and struggles to survive.- (Texas A & M Univ)

Legacy: new perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Publishing Date: 1996

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.82

For many years, most white Americans only saw the battle as a symbol of "the best"--Of George Armstrong Custer's heroic sacrifice for the cause of empire. New scholarship, new investigative techniques, but mostly the growing Native American insistence on inclusion in the Little Bighorn story has made this conventional interpretation of the battle hopelessly outmoded. By bringing together a broad spectrum of scholarly voices, this collection of essays moves us toward a new, more inclusive explanation of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Klan war: Ulysses S. Grant and the battle to save Reconstruction

By Bordewich, Fergus M.

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.82 BOR

"A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil-when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government in an attempt to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as "the first organized terrorist movement in American history," rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable. To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed southern enemies of Reconstruction and northerners seduced by visions of post-war conciliation, testing for the first time the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states' rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri Senator Carl Schurz and the ruthless former slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Klan War is a bold and bracing record of American's past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and to stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies"--

The last honest man: the CIA, the FBI, the mafia, and the Kennedys--and one senator's fight to save democracy

By Risen, James

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.92 RIS

Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the wake of Watergate, he was suddenly tasked with investigating abuses of power in the intelligence community. The dark truths that Church exposed--from assassination plots by the CIA, to links between the Kennedy dynasty and the mafia, to the surveillance of civil rights activists by the NSA and FBI--would shake the nation to its core, and forever change the way that Americans thought about not only their government but also their ability to hold it accountable. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and reams of unpublished letters, notes, and memoirs, some of which remain sensitive today, James Risen tells the gripping, untold story of truth and integrity standing against unchecked power--and winning--in this book -- adapted from jacket

A thousand days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

By Schlesinger, Arthur M

Publishing Date: [1965]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.922 SCH

"The Special Assistant to President Kennedy describes the historic events in which John F. Kennedy participated during his three years in the White House."--

Tired of winning: Donald Trump and the end of the Grand Old Party

By Karl, Jonathan

Publishing Date: [2023]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.933 KAR

"An extraordinary view into the politics of our times, Tired of Winning explores how Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in his own image--and the wreckage he's left in his wake. Packed with new reporting, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party tracks Trump's improbable journey from disgraced and defeated former president to the dominant force, yet again, in the Republican Party. From his exile in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump has become more extreme, vengeful, and divorced from reality than he was on January 6, 2021. His meddling damaged the GOP's electoral prospects for third consecutive election in 2022. His legal troubles are mounting. Yet he's re-emerged as the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Jonathan Karl has known Donald Trump since his days as a New York Post reporter in the 1990s, and he covered every day of Trump's administration as ABC News's chief White House correspondent. No one is in a better position to detail the former president's quest for retribution and provide a glimpse at what the GOP would be signing up for if it once again chooses him as its standard bearer. In 1964, Ronald Reagan told Americans it was "a time for choosing." Sixty years later, Republicans have their own choice to make: Are they tired of winning?" --

Detroit: an American autopsy

By LeDuff, Charlie

Publishing Date: 2013

Classification: 900

Call Number: 977.4 LED

An explosive expose of Detroit, icon of America's lost prosperity, from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff.

Saving Yellowstone: exploration and preservation in Reconstruction America

By Nelson, Megan Kate

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 900

Call Number: 978.7 NEL

"From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the propulsive and vividly told story of how Yellowstone became the world's first national park amid the nationwide turmoil and racial violence of the Reconstruction era. Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park--one of the most popular of all national parks--but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey's discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world. Now, author Megan Kate Nelson examines the larger context of this American moment, illuminating Hayden's survey as a national project meant to give Americans a sense of achievement and unity in the wake of a destructive civil war. Saving Yellowstone follows Hayden and two other protagonists in pursuit of their own agendas: Sitting Bull, a Lakota leader who asserted his peoples' claim to their homelands, and financier Jay Cooke, who wanted to secure his national reputation by building the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Northwest. Hayden, Cooke, and Sitting Bull staked their claims to Yellowstone at a critical moment in Reconstruction, when the Grant Administration and the 42nd Congress were testing the reach and the purpose of federal power across the nation. A narrative of adventure and exploration, Saving Yellowstone is also a story of Indigenous resistance, the expansive reach of railroad, photographic, and publishing technologies, and the struggles of Black southerners to bring racial terrorists to justice. It reveals how the early 1870s were a turning point in the nation's history, as white Americans ultimately abandoned the the higher ideal of equality for all people, creating a much more fragile and divided United States"--

Hillerman country: a journey through the Southwest with Tony Hillerman

By Hillerman, Tony

Publishing Date: 1991

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979 HIL

Portrays Navajo country in the Arizona desert and describes the customs and culture of the native peoples.

Heartbeat of struggle: the revolutionary life of Yuri Kochiyama

By Fujino, Diane Carol

Publishing Date: 2005

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.4 FUJ

On February 12, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom, Yuri Kochiyama cradled Malcolm X in her arms as he died, but her role as a public servant and activist began much earlier than this pivotal public moment. Heartbeat of Struggle is the first biography of this courageous woman, the most prominent Asian American activist to emerge during the 1960s. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with Kochiyama's family, friends, and the subject herself, Diane C. Fujino traces Kochiyama's life from an "all-American" childhood to her achievements as a tireless defender of - and fighter for - human rights. Raised by a Japanese immigrant family in California during the 1920s and 1930s, Kochiyama was active in sports, school, and church. She was both unquestioningly patriotic and largely unconscious of race and racism in the United States. After Pearl Harbor, however, Kochiyama's family was among the thousands of Japanese Americans forcibly removed to internment camps for the duration of the war, a traumatic experience that opened her eyes to the existence of social injustice. After the war, Kochiyama moved to New York. It was in the context of the vibrant Black movement in Harlem in the 1960s that she began her activist career. There, she met Malcolm X, who inspired her radical political development and the ensuing four decades of incessant work for Black liberation, Asian American equality, Puerto Rican independence, and political prisoner defense. Kochiyama is widely respected for her work in forging unity among diverse communities, especially between Asian and African Americans. Fujino, a scholar and activist, offers an in-depth examination of Kochiyama's political awakening, rich life, and impressive achievements with particular attention to how her public role so often defied gender, racial, and cultural norms. Heartbeat of Struggle is a source of inspiration and guidance for anyone committed to social change.

Japanese Americans in San Diego

By Hasegawa, Susan

Publishing Date: 2008

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.4 HAS

For over 100 years, Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans have called San Diego County home. Attracted to the warm climate and economic opportunities, Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants) drifted into San Diego in the 1880s and introduced effective new fishing techniques that contributed to the growth of this industry. From the Tijuana River Valley on the border with Mexico to Oceanside in North County, Japanese American families started small truck farms in the first decades of the 20th century, developing techniques to improve crop production. Surviving the heartbreak of evacuation and incarceration during World War II in desert internment camps, San Diegans returned to rebuild a vibrant community after the war. - (Arcadia Publishing)

Building a community: the story of Japanese Americans in San Mateo County

By Yamada, Gayle K

Publishing Date: 2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.4 YAM

Ishi, the last Yahi: a documentary history

Publishing Date: 1981, 1979

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.4004

Original documents concerning Ishi, "the last wild Indian of North America," detail the last five years of his life after his discovery took him from the Stone Age to modern civilization - (Baker & Taylor)

War comes to the Middle Kingdom

Publishing Date: 1991

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.478

Historical accounts and very personal stories of how a rural area became known for its "schools of war."

Death Valley Scotty rides again: tales told by Death Valley Scotty winter of 1952-1953 at Scotty's Castle

By Scott, Walter E

Publishing Date: ©1955

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.487 SCO 979.487

Latin America 2023-2024

By Beezley, William H

Publishing Date: [2023]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 980 BEE

The World Today Series: Latin America offers the latest available economic, demographic, political, and cultural information. Including solid statistical data expressing freedom, violence, and governmental orientation. Consideration is given to the evolving relationships with the United States and other Latin American nations. Revisions have also addressed new historical interpretations, for example, of the history of Mexico and latest political changes, for example, in Venezuela and Cuba. Maps, charts, and photographs provide extensive visual expressions of the region, its geography, peoples, and cultures, in particular public architecture, agricultural technology, specular geology, and striking diversity. The images offer a narrative of the multiplicity of peoples as demonstrated in their clothing, economic and everyday activities, their physical surroundings. Consequently, the narrative combines global economics, national politics, and daily social life throughout the region. The chapters can be read as individual histories for each of the countries, within the context created by contrasts and similarities with the other nations of Latin America.