@ Your Library
Happy Birthday America! 250 is an admirable age. The library will be closed on Friday, July 3 in observance of the holiday. See you Monday, July 6. Summer hours are Monday, Thursday and Friday 10 am – 6 pm, Tuesday and Wednesday 10 am – 7 pm.
New books about America that are worth reading. Learn amazing stories, discover animals you don’t know and so much more. America is Wild by Brad Timm is a gorgeous state-by-state look at the flora and fauna of this country. Discover the good and the bad of pests by dabbling in Pests and other Friends as Halsey Berryman explores animals that have a bad reputation, but serve a purpose in their environment.
Political science books that explore our country today. Nations Apart by Colin Woodard is subtitled “How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America” and explores how those differences have broken us apart and what could bring us back together. Jill Lepore has written ‘a history of the the U.S. Constitution in We the People. This tome explores the history of one of the world’s oldest constitutions and among the hardest to amend. She writes ‘one of the founding purposes was to prevent change’ while ‘another was to allow for change without violence.’ For a lighter (maybe) look at America try Cults Like Us: why doomsday thinking drives America by Jane Borden.
More traditional histories include A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison and the Forging of a Friendship by Louis P Masur. America’s Founding Son : John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick by Bob Crawford. Joseph Ellis’ The Great Contradiction : the tragic side of the American Founding which explores the failure to end slavery and avoid Indian removal at our nation’s beginning. Travel forward in time for The Surgeon’s Battle : how medicine won the Vicksburg campaign and changed the Civil War by Lindsay Rae Smith Privette.
We’ll finish with some new historical fiction set across this country. The Architect of New York by Javier Moro chronicles the live and successes of Rafael Guastavino, an influential, but almost forgotten architect of the Gilded Era. Another New York story can be found in The Sisters of Book Row by Shelley Noble set in Manhattan’s book row of 1915. Travel to Boston for a revolutionary war novel for teens Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson.
Head west with Jack Slade by Adrian Robert Gostick for a novel about the Pony Express, small town Colorado in 1937, the midst of the dustbowls with Hired Man by Sandra Dallas or Detroit in 1927 with A Fortune of Sand by Ruta Sepetys, her first set in this country. Visit New Mexico territory in 1890 with The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow about a Pinkerton woman.
Visit Los Angeles with Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See for a riveting novel about Chinese women immigrants to the city of angels in 1870 or head north to Orcas Island, Washington in 1918 in Heiress of Nowhere by Stacey Lee.