Friday, November 25, 2011

The New Deal: A Modern History

Michael Hiltzik. With panache and skill, Hiltzik chronicles the rise and decline of the New Deal, from the desperate improvisation of the Hundred Days through the more carefully considered passage of such landmark legislation as the Securities Exchange Act and the Social Security Act. A timely, well-executed overview of the program that laid the foundation for the modern progressive state.--Kirkus (Check Catalog).

1812: The Navy's War

A naval expert's readable take on the U.S. Navy's surprising performance in the war that finally reconciled the British to America's independence. Daughan focuses on the personalities, ships and battles that prevented the British from suffocating the infant nation's maritime ambitions. A smart salute to a defining moment in the history of the U.S. Navy.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

Friday, November 18, 2011

The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India

Siddhartha Deb. Deb offers a refreshingly skeptical rejoinder to the feel-good narratives of an ascendant India happily contributing to and benefiting from globalization. His mosaic of stories of striving, hopes dashed or realized, is more craggy, gritty, and realistic than the glossy accounts of information technology and free markets as benign, modernizing forces--Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)

Friday, November 11, 2011

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

David McCullough. Not content to focus on a few of the 19th-century American artists, doctors and statesmen who benefited enormously from their Parisian education, McCullough embraces a cluster of aspiring young people such as portraitist George Healy and lawyer Charles Sumner, eager to expand their horizons in the 1830s by enduring the long sea passage, then spirals out to include numerous other visitors over an entire eventful century. A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork, eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the human drama McCullough depicts so well.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, Kennedy, Caroline, Beschloss, Michael. Presents the annotated transcription and original audio for the 1964 interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy on her experiences and impressions as the wife of John F. Kennedy, offering an intimate and detailed account of the man and his times.--Book Description (Check Catalog).