History
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
How a lone man's epic obsession led to one of America's greatest cultural treasures: Prize-winning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history -- and the driven, brilliant man who made them. Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.
The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory by Tom D. Dillehay
Who were the first Americans? Where did they come from, when did they get here, and how did they settle the Americas? Until three years ago, the Clovis people were credited as the pioneers, arriving across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last Ice Age, no earlier than 12,000 B.C. Now that standard scientific account has been demolished. As the principal investigator since 1977 at Monte Verde, Chile, the most important site in overturning the old theories, Thomas Dillehay spent many years being dismissed for his insistence on the presence of impossibly ancient human artifacts dating back 20,000 years. In the past few years, he has been soundly vindicated, and in this book, he presents a highly readable account of who the earliest settlers are likely to have been, where they may have landed, and how they dispersed across two continents.
The Mongols by David O. Morgan
The Mongol Empire was the largest continuous land empire known to history, its violent creation the major political event of the 13th century world. Yet little is known of the history of Christendom's most formidable and dangerous eastern neighbour. This chronicle benefits from new discoveries and a broad range of source material. David Morgan explains how the vast Mongolian Empire was organized and governed, examining the religious and political character of the steppe nomadic society. He assesses the astonishing military career of Chingiz (Genghis) Khan, considers the nature of Mongol imperial government, and the effects of Mongol campaigns on the countries and peoples they conquered in China, Russia, Persia and Europe. Dr Morgan extends his narrative through the collapse of the empire and the formation of a People's Republic as a Russian satellite.
The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression—the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims—men, women, and children—we encounter secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the welcome that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenseless, endured great brutality and degradation.
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin
In our time the Middle East has proven a battleground of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and dynasties. All of these conflicts, including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis that have flared yet again, come down, in a sense, to the extent to which the Middle East will continue to live with its political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed upon the region by the Allies after the First World War.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well.
The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice by Maria Laurino
Between 1950 and 1970, the Vatican and the American Catholic Church sent nearly four thousand Italian children to the United States for adoption into “good” Catholic homes. With the religious stigma of unwed motherhood turning families against daughters and a Church and State wanting “illegitimate” children sent abroad, mothers were lied to, given forms to sign that they didn’t understand, or even told their baby had died, all to further supply this international adoption pipeline.