Highlights Archives
History Books for the Holidays
Each year more than 10,000 new books pass through the hands of the Society's librarians on their way to the 14 miles of shelves in the headquarters building. The Society routinely acquires every American history title you see at Barnes & Noble or Borders, as well as every relevant book published by every university press and thousands of obscure pamphlets or family histories issued privately by organizations and individuals.
As you try to decide what books to buy this season for your history-loving friends, consider these that struck Society staff as noteworthy, among the thousands that streamed across their desks. They're not all from 2006, but all are recent and available through our museum store or other online vendors:
- Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History, Volume 1, 1856-1931 by Stuart Levitan — A romp through the history of our capital city that Jack Holzhueter, dean of Wisconsin historians, says "informs, entertains, engages, surprises, and, in some instances, will outrage."
- Cream City Chronicles by John Gurda — Stories of the people, events, landmarks and institutions that made Milwaukee a unique American community, from singing mayors to summer festivals, blueblood weddings to bloody strikes. The book was published by the Society and is available for purchase online.
- The American Homefront by Alistair Cooke — Written during World War II when the venerable television host was a young journalist, it was never published until now. According to Columns editor Erika Janik, it's "a remarkably insightful and personal travelogue of American life, regional culture and social problems on the wartime homefront."
- American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville by Barnard-Henri Levy — The author is a French social critic who journeyed hectically through our "magnificent, mad country" from coast to coast, leaving in his wake a kaleidoscope of reflections on the prisons, celebrity mansions, cafes, rural towns, military institutions, and other sites he visited. Society reference librarian Gerry Strey found it "more entertaining than profound, and proof that not all the French despise the U.S."
- The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf by William C. Davis — A thoroughly researched and fascinatingly detailed account of the legendary Jean Laffite and his brother Pierre. The Society's well-known genealogical expert, Jim Hansen, says he "learned much not only about Laffite, but also about the history of the Gulf Region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries."
- The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way by University of Minnesota professor Lary May — The author argues that Hollywood movies of the 1930s, particularly comedies and musicals, were not mindless escapes from the Depression, but promoted egalitarian visions of democracy. "A startling, revisionist history of Hollywood's impact on politics and American culture," according to the publisher, and a good read for film buffs, according to Society reference librarian Jim Bredeson.
- Neal Cassady: the Fast Life of a Beat Hero by David Sandison and Graham Vickers — Cassady was not only the protagonist of Kerouac's On the Road but also drove the magic bus that carried Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters across the nation in 1964, spewing day-glo colors and LSD-inspired mania from San Francisco Bay to Staten Island. He never wrote anything himself, but to the writers and musicians who created the 1960s counter-culture he was an avatar of crazy American wisdom. This biography, according to digital collections librarian Michael Edmonds, is "everything you'd expect it to be."
If you're looking for something more serious for the scholars on your shopping list, consider these recent books by University of Wisconsin history faculty. Some were researched in the Society's nationally renowned manuscript and book collections, and their authors are frequent visitors to the Society's library at 816 State Street:
- Violence Over the Land, by Ned Blackhawk — This new book from Harvard University Press chronicles the impact of Spanish, British, and American imperial expansion on the indigenous peoples of the Southwest during the 18th and 19 centuries.
- Experiencing Mount Vernon: Eyewitness Accounts, 1784-1865 by Jean Lee — This collection of primary sources helps reveal the creation of an American icon as well as documenting the history of one of the nation's most famous historic sites.
- A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York by Tony Michels — This book investigates the intersection of ethnic identity and political activism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror by Alfred McCoy — The author reveals the historical context of recent ugly news stories from Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
- America's Public Schools: From the Common School to "No Child Left Behind"by Bill Reese — This is another volume that puts current controversies into their proper historical perspective.
Finally, the producers of Jon Stewart's Daily Show include a Wisconsin native, and when they wanted to add scholarly comments to the second edition of their best-selling America: The Book, they turned to Professor Emeritus Stanley Schultz. According to his colleagues in the department, he "displays his encyclopedic knowledge of American history to good advantage ... with marginal comments and corrections, in a handwriting font especially encoded for this production."
:: Posted December 11, 2006
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