History and Cultures

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART TIME INDIAN
by Sherman Alexie
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

FORGOTTEN FIRE
by Adam Bagdasarian
Vahan Kenderian lives a life of privilege as the youngest son of a wealthy Armenian family in 1915 Turkey. His secure world is shattered when some family members are whisked away while others are murdered before his eyes. Vahan loses his home and family, and is forced to live a life he would never have dreamed of. Somehow Vahan's incredible strength and spirit help him endure.

IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: INSIDE IRAQ’S GREEN ZONE
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A journalist explores the pristine "Emerald City," the American government's enclave in the middle of war-torn Baghdad.

THE RAPE OF NANKING: THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR II
by Iris Chang
Barely a postscript in official Japanese history, the horrific torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens took place over the course of just seven weeks.

DANIEL, HALF-HUMAN AND THE GOOD NAZI
by David Chotjewitz
In 1933, best friends Daniel and Armin admire Hitler, but as anti-Semitism buoys Hitler to power, Daniel learns he is half Jewish, threatening the friendship even as life in their beloved Hamburg, Germany, is becoming nightmarish.

PYONGYANG: A JOURNEY IN NORTH KOREA
by Guy Delisle
In 2001, cartoonist Guy Delisle lived in the capital of North Korea for two months on a work visa for a French film company. In this remarkable graphic novel, Delisle recorded what he was able to see of the culture and lives of one of the last remaining totalitarian communist societies.

COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED
by Jared Diamond
What do the lack of Icelandic fisherman, the 2008 Chinese Olympics, and Easter Island tree cutters all have in common? Much more than you might think. Collapse explores the political, technological and ecological decisions which merge in order to sustain or destroy societies.

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
by Junot Díaz
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukoe – the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents and, above all, ill-starred love.

THE WORST HARD TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL
by Timothy Egan
The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod huts to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

WHAT IS THE WHAT: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF VALENTINO ACHAK DENG: A NOVEL
by Dave Eggers
The story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refuge of the Sudanese civil war. Fleeing from his village in the mid-1980s, Deng becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys – children pursued by militias, government soldiers, lions and hyenas, and myriad diseases, in their search for sanctuary, first in Ethiopia and then Kenya. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4,000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins.

THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN: A HMONG CHILD, HER AMERICAN DOCTORS, AND THE COLLISION OF TWO CULTURES
by Anne Fadiman
A Hmong refugee family in California clashes with the American medical system when they attribute their daughter's grand mal seizures to a spiritual rather than physical problem.

THE MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM
by Anne Marie Fleming
In his day, Long Tack Sam was an acrobat, a magician, an entrepreneur, a world traveler, a celebrity, a father, a ladies man and a husband. This graphic collage biography pairs narrative writing, handbills, photographs and news clippings along with interviews, comics and commentary to convey the inevitable effects of cultural shifts and global politics on individual lives.

THE KNOWN WORLD
by Edward P. Jones
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker and former slave, has an unusual mentor – William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation – as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart at their plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another.

A VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE: REDISCOVERING THE NEW WORLD
by Tony Horwitz
Horwitz uses humor and candor to literally follow in the footsteps of the first American explorers — from the Vikings and French utopians to America’s first African-American trailblazer — whose discoveries took place hundreds of years before the mythical landing on Plymouth Rock.

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY: MURDER, MAGIC, AND MADNESS AT THE FAIR THAT CHANGED AMERICA
by Erik Larson
The 1893 Chicago World's Fair captured the imagination of the whole world, and also provided a playground for a cunning serial killer.

THE NIGHT BIRDS: A NOVEL
by Thomas Maltman
Three generations of settlers and natives weave a dark tale of family secrets and brutal injustice in Civil War era America.

THE RACE BEAT: THE PRESS, THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE, AND THE AWAKENING OF A NATION
by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
When Harry Reasoner thrust a microphone at an angry mob and yelled "I don't care what you're going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it!" he spoke for all the reporters and photographers, black and white, north and south, who played a critical role in bringing the reality of the Civil Rights movement into the living rooms and consciousness of the American public.

SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of "gringo" racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.

PERSEPOLIS
by Marjane Satrapi
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.
 
MAUS: A SURVIVOR'S TALE
by Art Spiegelman
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER: A DAUGHTER OF CAMBODIA REMEMBERS
by Loung Ung
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege.

LEGACY OF ASHES: THE HISTORY OF THE CIA
by Tim Weiner
With considerable research and extensive interviews, Tim Weiner shows the grave miscalculations that have plagued the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception.

NEW FOUND LAND: LEWIS AND CLARK’S VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY: A NOVEL
by Allan Wolf
The letters and thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, members of the Corps of Discovery, their guide Sacagawea, and Captain Lewis's Newfoundland dog, all tell of the historic exploratory expedition to seek a water route to the Pacific Ocean.