From time to time, when we get a collection of related books into the library we like to share a list on a particular topic. Today we are looking at history books, books that made history? books that are history?, books about history? These titles are housed in Cedar Rapids, but you can request them to be delivered to any of the other centers at any time.
Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin, Call Number: 960.33 F196a
African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer, Call Number: 973.049 F529a
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays, Call Number: 973.04 M474a
Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars by Tara Zahra, Call Number: 909.822 Z19a
Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis, Call Number: 792.802 B167L
NOTE: “Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all ‘negroes and Jews.’ Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. ”
American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, D.C. by Shahan Mufti, Call Number: 362.889 M949a
NOTE: “On March 9, 1977, Washington, DC, came under attack. Seven men stormed the headquarters of B’nai B’rith International, quickly taking control of the venerable Jewish organization’s building and holding more than a hundred employees hostage inside. A little over an hour later, three more men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, the country’s biggest and most important mosque, and took hostages there. Two others subsequently penetrated the municipal government’s District Building, a few hundred yards from the White House. When the gunmen there opened fire, a reporter was killed, and city councilor Marion Barry, later to become the mayor of Washington, DC, was shot in the chest. The deadly standoff brought downtown Washington to a standstill.”
American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics by Kevin Hazzard, Call Number: 362.188 H431a
NOTE: As any fan of the classic TV show “Emergency!” knows paramedics, the people who run the First Responder trucks, have only been a thing since the early 1970s. They weren’t accepted easily and even though there wasn’t an organized way to get medical care to you before them. This book talks about before even that and the black men who created the first paramedic program in Pittsburgh.
Asian American Histories of the United States by Catherine Ceniza Choy, Call Number: 973.049 C552a
Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters by Serhiii Plokhy, Call Number: 363.179 P729a
The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird by Jack E. Davis, Call Number: 598.943 D262b
Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip, Call Number: 338.372 P549b
Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott, Call Number: 940.535 S425b
Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders by Walter Pincus, Call Number: 623.451 P647b
A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty, Call Number: 339.2 P636b
NOTE: “It’s easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality.”
Child Is the Teacher: A Life of Maria Montessori by Cristina De Stefano, Call Number: 371.392 M781c
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer, Call Number: 972.91 F385c
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War by Zhuqing Li, Call Number: 951.04 L693d
NOTE: One sister ended up in Taiwan and started a successful international business, the other stayed in Communist China and became a very famous doctor. The dual biography is written by their mutual niece.
The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets by Matthew Connelly, Call Number: 352.379 C752d
Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them by Dan Bouk, Call Number: 317.3 B762
Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease by Arleen Marcia Tuchman, Call Number: 616.462 T888d 2020
Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails by Campter English, Call Number: 615.782 E584d
Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass by Frank Close, Call Number: 539.092 H637c
Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynne Olson, Call Number: 982.009 O524e
NOTE: A woman archaeologist stood up to multiple governments to arrange moving Egyptian monuments out of the way of the Aswan High Dam.
Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk by Buddy Levy, Call Number: 919.804 L668e
NOTE: “Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery.”
Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery by Ira Rutkow, Call Number: 617 R977e
NOTE: “There are not many events in life that can be as simultaneously life-frightening and life-saving as a surgical operation. Yet, in America, tens-of-millions of major surgical procedures are performed annually but few of us pause to consider the magnitude of these figures because we have such inherent confidence in surgeons. And, despite passionate debates about healthcare and the endless fascination with surgical procedures, most of us have no idea how surgeons came to be because the story of surgery has never been fully told. Now, Empire of the Scalpel elegantly reveals the fascinating history of surgery’s evolution from its earliest roots in Europe through its rise to scientific and social dominance in the United States.”
The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History by James M. Banner, Jr., Call Number: 907.2 B219e
Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet As We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany, Call Number: 004.678 T565e
NOTE: “[This book] reclaims internet history for young women, establishing fandom not as the territory of hysterical girls, but as an incubator for digital innovation, art, and community.”
Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay, Call Number: 677.009 F511f
The Fifties: An Underground History by James R. Gaines, Call Number: 306.09 G142f
Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Call Number: 306.461 P498f
Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power by Greg Bluestein, Call Number: 324.973 B658f
The Forever Prisoner: The Full and Searing Account of the CIA’s Most Controversial Covert Program by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, Call Number: 364.675 S425f
NOTE: “Six months after 9/11, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah and announced he was number three in Al Qaeda. Frantic to thwart a much-feared second wave of attacks, the U.S. rendered him to a secret black site in Thailand, where he collided with retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell. Arguing that Abu Zubaydah had been trained to resist interrogation and was withholding vital clues, the CIA authorized Mitchell and others to use brutal “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would have violated U.S. and international laws had not government lawyers rewritten the rulebook.”
Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality 1920-2020 by Elisabeth Griffith, Call Number: 305.42 G853f
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi, Call Number: 949.65 Y85f
NOTE: “For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”―class status and other associations long in the past―put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking.”
Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts by Silvia Ferrara, Call Number: 411.09 F374g
NOTE: “The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest―all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how―and how many times―human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond.
With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undecipherable scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye.”
The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Saket Soni, Call Number: 331.117 S698g
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez, Call Number: 973.046 G643h
In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet, Call Number:
NOTE: “Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed? Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted: the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct heirs to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions.”
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hamalainen, Call Number: 970.004 H198i
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu, Call Number: 495.11 T882k
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann, Call Number: 940.531 W114k
The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines, Call Number: 306.362 R155L
Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman, Call Number: 613.704 F911L
NOTE: “For American women today, working out is as accepted as it is expected, fueling a multibillion-dollar fitness industrial complex. But it wasn’t always this way. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered unladylike and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to literally fall out. It was only in the sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse.”
Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath by Dan Stone, Call Number: 940.531 S877L
Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton, Call Number: 973.308 H758L
NOTE: “Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics.”
Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judith Batalion, Call Number: 940.531 B328L
NOTE: “Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick, taught children, and hid families. Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown.”
The Long Shadow: The Legacies of The Great War in the 20th Century by David Reynolds, Call Number: 940.314 R462L
The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schroter, Call Number: 220.1 S348m
The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State by Philip Bowring, Call Number: 959.9 B788m
Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies by Paul Fischer, Call Number: 777.092 F529m
NOTE: “In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and a half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history–until now. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and reveals the riveting story of both Louis Le Prince’s life and work, dispelling the secrets that shroud each. This captivating, impeccably researched work presents the never before told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.”
Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became the Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast by Joan Dejean, Call Number: 976.02 D326m
My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song by Emily Bingham, Call Number: 782.42 B613m
O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of the Star-Spangled Banner by Mark Clague, Call Number: 782.42 C584o
The Odyssey of Philis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence by David Waldstreicher, Call Number: 881.1 W557o
Over my Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville, Call Number: 393.1 M531o
NOTE: “wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States’ ambition and reach.
But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.”
Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor, Call Number: 973.049 T239o
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo, Call Number: 002.09 V182p
Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States by Samantha Seeley, Call Number: 304.809 S452r
Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution by Eric Jay Dolin, Call Number: 973.35 D664r
Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by RJ Young, Call Number: 305.8 Y681r
Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy by Erich Schwartzel, Call Number: 791.43 S399r
NOTE: “The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world.”
The Revolutionary Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff, Call Number: 973.309 A211s
Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle, Call Number: 330.122 G383r
The Routledge Atlas of African American History (2nd ed.) by Jonathan Earle, Call Number: 973.049 E122r
The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill, Call Number: 133.43 G248r
NOTE: Before the Salem Witch Trials started travel further back in time to 1651 and Springfield, Massachusetts where it all started.
Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (Vol. 1) by Yuvar Noah Harari, Call Number: 741.5 H254s
The Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy, Call Number: 7883716 L668s
Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy by Amy Gajda, Call Number: 342.73 G145s
Seven Games by Oliver Roeder, Call Number: 794 R712s
Note: “Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.”
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence by Amy B. Zegart, Call Number: 327.12 Z44s
NOTE: “Spying has never been more ubiquitous―or less understood. The world is drowning in spy movies, TV shows, and novels, but universities offer more courses on rock and roll than on the CIA and there are more congressional experts on powdered milk than espionage. This crisis in intelligence education is distorting public opinion, fueling conspiracy theories, and hurting intelligence policy. In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology.”
The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes, Call Number: 947 F471s
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon, Call Number: 333.75 B773t
NOTE: Bourgon “introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way. Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn’t include communities that have been uprooted or marginalized when park boundaries are drawn. As Bourgon discovers, failing to include working class and rural communities in the preservation of these awe-inducing ecosystems can lead to catastrophic results.”
Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians from the Civil Ear to the 21st Century by Jasmine Brown, Call Number: 610.922 B877t
The Twilight World by Werner Herzog, Call Number: 833.92 H582t
NOTE: Hiroo Onoda was order to hold an island by Japanese Imperial Forces. The war continued. The Japanese lost and in the melee Onoda was forgotten. So he spent the next couple of decades following his orders to guard the island until 1974 when a Japanese student tracked him down and the government brought his brother and his old commander to relieve him of his duty.
Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle by Jody Rosen, Call Number: 629.227 R813t
NOTE: “The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does.”
Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams, Call Number: 858.114 S849u
The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction by Jamie Kreiner, Call Number: 153.733 K922w
We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys by Erin Kimmerle, Call Number: 365.42 K499w
NOTE: From 1900 to 2011 (yes, that’s supposed to be 2011) The Dozier School was a reform school where children were abused, farmed out locally as labor, and sometimes killed. This is the story of finding the truth and bringing those bodies home.
Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.
And the People Stayed Home by Kitty O’Meara, Call Number: CL Easy Reading 303.485 O55p
Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by David Quammen, Call Number: 614.592 Q16b 2022
Pandemic Societies, edited by Jean-Louis Denis, Catherine Régis 1976, and Daniel M Weinstock, Call Number: ebook
Call Number: 020 B879r 
welve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University’s library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve ‘American culture’ in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic–including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
class clown, popular with most kids (if not the teachers), and an ardent fan of all games: board games, word games, and particularly video games. His hero, Luigi 
by Anika Aldamuy Denise & Paola Escobar, Call Number: Easy Reading 020.92 D395p 
Monday, April 24th is also 
LibBLOG 