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)

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)

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)

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).

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back

Thomas L. Friedman. Reflecting on America's past greatness and its slipping position among global powers, Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World is Flat) and foreign policy expert Mandelbaum (The Frugal Superpower) warn against the United States' "dangerous complacency" in the face of increasingly complex global challenges.--Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)

With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918

Stevenson, David. Stevenson's detailed, lucid description of the development and maturation of that ability reflects encyclopedic mastery of published and archival sources while synergizing military, economic, political, and social-cultural factors. It is also a door-opener to any reader seeking to understand the Great War's last stage.--Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)

The Empire State: A History of New York

Milton Klein. New York now has a new, comprehensive history book that chronicles the state through centuries of change. A richly illustrated volume, The Empire State begins in the early seventeenth century (when the region was still populated solely by Native Americans) and concludes in the mid-1990s, by which time people from all over the world had made the state their home.--Publisher. (Check Catalog)

Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam

Thomas McKenna. McKenna, in his first book, presents a well-researched, heavily detailed look at the 1972 North Vietnamese Army invasion of South Vietnamthe so-called Easter Offensive designed to topple the South Vietnamese government and end the war. McKenna, severely wounded near the end of the offensive, switches from the first person to the third and includes excessive military minutiae, but does an effective job of melding his own story with the bigger picture. --Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)