This month, get to know the multifaceted historical collection at Mechanics’ Institute Library through a few staff members’ favorite tomes. We’ll be selecting books about historical periods that interest us. Here’s a sample of the works that will be on display:
Taryn recommends Brave Companions by David McCullough (920 M133b)
Seventeen short biographies that McCullough penned over the years for various magazines enlighten the reader about the subject’s extraordinary, if not well known, contributions to life as we know it in the modern world.
Craig recommends The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England by Dan Jones (942.03 J72)
The author examines the period when eight kings ruled England in succession, starting with Henry II, who inherited the Crown in 1154 and ending with the overthrow of Richard II in 1399. He vividly describes the triumphs, savagery, cruelty, and disasters during this turbulent and violent period -- the time of Thomas Becket, the Crusades, the founding of parliament, the Black Death, the Hundred Years War with France, and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 -- a period when England became a major European power.
Chris recommends My American Century by Studs Terkel (920.073 T318)
Collecting excerpts of previously published material by Studs Terkel, this volume presents the story of America, from the 1920's to modern day, in the author's signature oral history style. Terkel forgoes a grand thesis, instead allowing his interviewees to speak for themselves, allowing the sum of their lived experiences and perspectives to create the larger narrative. My American Century serves both as a serviceable introduction to one of the great historians of our time, as well as an unadulterated survey of the modern American experience straight from those who lived it.
Heather recommends For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and the Revolutions by James Gaines (973.4 W318g)
The “sister revolutions” of the French and the Americans have always fascinated me. While the French were rioting over the price of bread, across the Atlantic the American rabble-rousers were making their own bid for freedom from monarchy. This book shows how intertwined the two revolutions were, and how they changed the world in their wake.
