As part of the University of Baltimore’s centennial celebration, the Robert L. Bogomolny Library is embarking on an exciting journey through time. We’re turning back the clock to 1925, transforming our modern library into a nostalgic haven reminiscent of a bygone era.  

We’ll begin by reintroducing more bookshelves filled with print books and hard copies of bound academic journals. Replacing the digital articles and ebooks will offer students a tactile experience and re-open opportunities for serendipitous discovery through browsing that have been hard to recreate with our online resources. This shift will not only enhance the aesthetic of our library but also provide a unique opportunity for patrons to engage with texts in their original form.

Next, we’ll be removing the computers and printers, replacing them with vintage typewriters and an old-style card catalog. Since we stopped using the card catalog last century, patrons will initially only be able to find books published before 1990. However, this limitation presents a unique chance to delve into historical scholarship that will offer valuable insight into how ideas have evolved over time. 

We are also using this opportunity to align with the growing trend of digital detox programs, which help individuals concentrate by disconnecting from digital distractions. For an authentic 1925 feel, we will be turning off the WiFi in the building and installing equipment to jam cell phone signals within the library. This move will encourage patrons to focus on their studies without the constant ping of notifications or the temptation to scroll through social media. 

“This transformation is not just about nostalgia; it’s about rediscovering the joys of a simpler, more focused academic environment. So, come and experience the RLB Library as it was meant to be in 1925. Let’s celebrate UBalt’s centennial by embracing the past” wrote perplexity.ai when prompted for text encouraging people to frequent a library that eschews modern technology.

Happy April Fool’s Day! While RLB Library isn’t celebrating the UBalt centennial by removing all technological innovations developed in the past 100 years, we are hosting a UBalt centennial exhibit on the 1st floor. Be sure to stop by and check it out when you are on campus. https://youtu.be/AV5qtd_X3pw?si=ZbdzYL1zYUkwrg_o

Coming soon: The online UBALT 100 exhibit hosted by our Special Collections and Archives will be available at
https://archivesub.omeka.net/exhibits

Publications cover subjects such as agriculture, business, education, environment, health, and public safety. In addition, audit and annual reports are collected from all state agencies. Here are some examples:

The Maryland State Publications Depository and Distribution Program website is on the RLB Library’s list of databases. Through the SPDDP you can find a wealth of information on Maryland!

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

Big box USA : the environmental impact of America’s biggest retail stores, edited by Bart Elmore, Rachel S. Gross, and Sherri Sheu, 2024

Big Box USA presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment.

The meaning of death : a philosophical investigation, by Kai Horsthemke, 2024

If death is the cessation of life, then, as a concept, it draws its meaning from the preceding life. While death and dying are inextricably connected, dying is still a part of life–unlike death. The Meaning of Death: A Philosophical Investigation analyzes death and dying, the biotechnical quest for immortality, the afterlife, and the rationality of self-chosen death. Assuming eternal life will one day become possible, Kai Horsthemke argues that immortality is not obviously desirable, and that. even if the right to life in principle includes the right to eternal life, it must also include the right to self-determined dying and death. Although there is no creationist basis for existence and the finality of death remains a universal, inevitable prospect, this need not undermine confidence in the personal and transpersonal value of human activities. Life is valuable not only because of its uniqueness and unrepeatability, but also because it is finite. The meaning of death is essentially that it gives meaning to life.

The movement : how women’s liberation transformed America, 1963-1973, by Clara Bingham, 2024

Somewhere toward freedom : Sherman’s march and the story of America’s largest emancipation, by Bennett Parten, 2025

In Somewhere Toward Freedom, historian Bennett Parten brilliantly reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how Sherman’s March impacted the war, and what it meant to the enslaved, but also reveals how it laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction. When the war ended, Sherman and various government and private aid agencies seized plantation lands—particularly in the sea islands off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts—in order to resettle the newly emancipated. They were fed, housed, and in some instances, taught to read and write. This first real effort at Reconstruction was short-lived, however. As federal troops withdrew to the north, Confederate sympathizers and Southern landowners eventually brought about the downfall of this program. Sherman’s march has remained controversial to this day. But as Parten reveals, it played a significant role in ending the Civil War, due in no small part to the efforts of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who became a part of it. In Somewhere Toward Freedom, this critical moment in American history has finally been given the attention it deserves.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

Dark laboratory : on Columbus, the Caribbean, and the origins of the climate crisis, by Tao Leigh Goffe, 2025

Award-winning historian, professor, and journalist Tao Leigh Goffe, launches an investigation of the Caribbean as the seat of corrupt Western wealth and environmental exploitation. When Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean island of Guanahaní, it was remade, at least in mythology, as Eden. Since then, the Caribbean and its peoples have paid the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuses, falling prey to the planting of sugarcane and other cash crops. In Dark Laboratory, Goffe embarks on a historical journey into the influences that have made these islands — from Jamaica and Aruba to Cuba and Martinique — a target of Western capitalism and the foundation of the global economy as we know it today. Through the lens of personal and family memoir, as well as cultural and social history, Goffe seeks to radically transform how we conceive of Blackness, natural history, colonialism, and the climate crisis. Her writing considers the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude as Chinese laborers worked alongside enslaved Black people to excavate products like sugarcane and guano — in its day more valuable than gold — from these island nations. How can we combat contemporary racism and environmental degradation using the Caribbean and its dark history as guide? In autobiographical writing that shines light on both environmental upheaval and racial subjugation, Goffe offers solutions based on island ecologies, locating the origins of racism and the climate catastrophe in the colonization of the Caribbean. Her combination of personal narrative and research provides a record of the violence that has shaped these nations and a testament to our capacity for renewal. In stunning, lyrical prose, Goffe dismantles our longest-held notions about island utopias and proposes new modes of thinking about the ruin and restoration of the environment.

The many lives of Anne Frank, by Ruth Franklin, 2025

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929-1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary–its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne’s ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity. With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne’s life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne’s evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.

The mighty red : a novel, by Louise Erdrich, 2024

Tell me everything : a novel, by Elizabeth Strout, 2024

With her ‘extraordinary capacity for radical empathy’ (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst; fall in love and yet choose to be apart; and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it: What does anyone’s life mean? It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known–‘unrecorded lives,’ Olive calls them–reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza : a reckoning, by Peter Beinart, 2025

In Peter Beinart’s view, one story has long dominated Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of sacred Jewish tradition and history, and also warps our understanding of modern history. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, he argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate story that would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish history. A story in which Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One in which we inhabit a world that recognizes the infinite value of all human life, beginning in the Gaza Strip. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative and fearless argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral nuance, and a clear vision for the future.

Calming the storm : a leader’s handbook for managing unproductive conflicts, by Peter Steven Adler, 2024

This handbook is for leaders in the public, private, and civil sectors who need to help people negotiate considerations, calm frictions, mend fences, and facilitate cooperation. The book presents seventy-five ideas and fifteen engaging stories for getting past useless arguments and taming cranky issues.

Equality : what it means and why it matters, by Thomas Piketty & Michael Sandel, 2025

Uncertain ground : citizenship in an age of endless, invisible war, by Phil Klay, 2022

When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago, after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences-for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war-from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens? Unlike previous eras of war, few other Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible wars of the post-9/11 world at all; in fact, increasingly, few people are even aware they are still going on. It’s as if there’s a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit, while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed. This chasm between military and civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay’s powerful series of reckonings in essay form over the past ten years with some of our country’s thorniest concerns. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with one another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

You will need to set up an account using your UBalt email address. Go to the library’s A-Z database list under “B” for “Baltimore Banner” to register.

Questions? Contact Debbie Li at dli@ubalt.edu.

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

The containment : Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the battle for racial justice in the North, by Michelle Adams, 2025

In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit’s students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country’s promise.

Emotions in the digital world : exploring affective experience and expression in online interactions, edited by Robin L. Nabi & Jessica Gall Myrick, 2023

The 21st century has seen rapid and profound technological innovations that have fundamentally changed our media environment. Our now unlimited access to information, entertainment, and social interaction is simply unprecedented. It is undeniable that this new media landscape impacts important aspects of our daily experiences – how we spend our time, who we connect with, what we know about each other and the world around us. But at a deeper level, this newer, digitized media age influences a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human: our emotional experiences. Given the centrality of emotions to both psychological and physical well-being, as well as to shaping human behavior, understanding how our current media environment impacts our emotional experiences – in ways both helpful and harmful – is critical to understanding the role media use plays in emotional development, life experiences, and societal events.

New prize for these eyes : the rise of America’s second civil rights movement, by Juan Williams, 2025

Soldiers and kings : survival and hope in the world of human smuggling, by Jason De León, 2024

An intimate and one-of-a-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, by a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and anthropologist. Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet media and politicians have always characterized smugglers-or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services-using tired tropes and stereotypes, as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognized anthropologist and expert Jason De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years. The result of this unprecedented access is SOLDIERS AND KINGS: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote, Chino, who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De León expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. SOLDIERS AND KINGS is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!This will be the last The Friday List of the year, as we’ll be going on break until Spring 2025. We hope everyone had a successful Fall semester, and congrats to all who are graduating this month!

The final days of Edgar Allan Poe : nevermore in Baltimore, by David Gaylin, 2024

Occurring in a time of primitive medicine and inconsistent record-keeping, Poe’s death has become one of the enduring mysteries of American literature. David F. Gaylin’s book marks the first attempt to offer a comprehensive and balanced study of this historical event. After chronicling the circumstances that may have contributed to the poet’s death, the book examines key details about the story. It traces Poe’s movements and personal encounters before also exploring how Poe was handled and treated by others who attempted to come to his aid. Proceeding with the liveliness of a detective story, the discussion sheds new light on these events, and it offers new information about the burial of Poe’s body and the subsequent relocations of his tomb. With the addition of supplementary reference materials including a register of formally proposed causes of death, a timeline of relevant events, and a map of Poe’s final movements in Baltimore, this book is an essential resource for both scholars and general readers seeking answers to the mystery of Poe’s death.

Free and equal : what would a fair society look like?, by Daniel Chandler, 2023

Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating manifesto, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today.

Long Island : a novel by Colm Tóibín, 2024

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town in Ireland where she grew up remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child, and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead will deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does–and what she refuses to do–in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting. Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’s life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one defter than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest of bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost. Eilis is perhaps Tóibín’s most moving and unforgettable character, and this novel is a masterpiece.

Protest art, by Jessica Lack, 2024

From anticolonial struggle to the campaign for nuclear disarmament, from the Suffragettes to Black Lives Matter, art has long been a powerful tool by which to upend the status quo. Protest Art looks at the multitude of ways in which art and politics have intertwined in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, taking in a broad range of artists’ actions including performance and street art, banners and digital media, sculpture and painting. Over nine thematic chapters, Jessica Lack explores art’s relationships with the media, institutions and the state, its use by activists as a weapon, a tool or a way of imagining otherwise, and ideas of artists as warriors, prophets and revolutionary leaders. Lack situates major artworks, campaigns and movements in their social and political contexts, recognizing the networks of solidarity, inspiration and cooperation that remain vital to both protest and art-making. Beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, Protest Art offers an accessible introduction to this vast and unruly field from the early twentieth century onwards.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

Moving pictures: a history of American animation from Gertie to Pixar and beyond by Darl Larsen, 2024.

“A fascinating look at the history of film and television animation in the United States, from the animated comic strips of the early 1900s to the proliferation of animation companies and hit films of the present”– Provided by publisher.

Pardon power : how the pardon system works — and why by Kim Wehle, 2024.

“The president’s power to pardon federal crimes is immense, with roots in ancient notions of mercy and amnesty. However, this power, seemingly boundless under the Constitution, lacks clear constraints, inviting concerns about abuse. Recent discussions in the U.S. Supreme Court have raised alarms about the potential for presidential abuse of pardons, highlighting the need for accountability within the pardon system to uphold the foundational premise that no one is above the law.”– Provided by publisher.

Survival is a promise : the eternal life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2024.

“We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer and a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofits’ annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde’s teachings on ‘the creative power of difference’ may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. The focus on Lorde’s quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has obscured her deep engagement with the natural world and the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. Lorde’s ecological imagery is not merely metaphorical but rather a literal guide to being of Earth on Earth, to survival–to living the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands. In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Lorde’s life and work become more than sound bites; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on Earth.”–Book jacket flap copy.

What is antiracism? : and why it means anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani, 2023.

This scintillating intellectual and political history provides a new understanding of racism, and a better way to fight it.
Liberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today’s liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

America first : Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the shadow of war, by H. W. Brands, 2024

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America’s role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 launched a momentous period of decision-making for the United States. With fascism rampant abroad, should America take responsibility for its defeat? For popular hero Charles Lindbergh, saying no to another world war only twenty years after the first was the obvious answer. Lindbergh had become famous and adored around the world after his historic first flight over the Atlantic in 1927. In the years since, he had emerged as a vocal critic of American involvement overseas, rallying Americans toward isolationism as the nominal head of the America First Committee. As Hitler advanced across Europe and threatened the British Isles, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt struggled to turn the tide of public opinion. With great effort, political shrewdness and outright deception–aided by secret British disinformation efforts in America–FDR readied the country for war. He pushed the US onto the world stage where it has stayed ever since. In this gripping narrative, H.W. Brands sheds light on a crucial tipping point in American history and depicts the making of a legendary president.

How to think about climate change : insights from economics for the perplexed but open-minded citizen, by Riccardo Rebonato, 2024

Intelligent laypersons are bewildered when faced with the complexity of climate change. Economics can give them a powerful tool to think clearly about the problem and to make up their own mind. The new-generation economics models are painting a radically different and exciting picture of the best course of climate action.

Resisting racial capitalism : an antipolitical theory of refusal, by Ida Danewid, 2024

We refuse : a forceful history of Black resistance, by Kellie Carter Jackson, 2024

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women. The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force–from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt–has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)