Back History | March Newsletter

SelectReads News
Simple News Pro
  History  
Hitchcock's Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System

Lesley L. Coffin · Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Format: Print book

Although he was a visual stylist who once referred to actors as cattle, Alfred Hitchcock also had a remarkable talent for innovative and creative casting choices. The director launched the careers of several actors and completely changed the trajectory of others, many of whom created some...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Eat the Apple

Matt Young · Bloomsbury USA
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover

"The Iliad of the Iraq war" (Tim Weiner) --a gut-wrenching, beautiful memoir of the consequences of war on the psyche of a young man. Eat the Apple is a daring, twisted, and darkly hilarious story of American youth and masculinity in an age of continuous war. Matt Young joined...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers

Amir D. Aczel · Palgrave Macmillan Trade; First Edition edition
Format: Hardcover

The invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery....
Read More check catalog
 
 
Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe

Inara Verzemnieks · W. W. Norton & Company
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover

"Extraordinarily tender and finely wrought." -- Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel"It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born ... that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy

Andrew Morton · Grand Central Publishing
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover

For fans of the Netflix series The Crown and from the author of the New York Times bestseller 17 Carnations comes a captivating biography of Wallis Simpson, the notorious woman for whom Edward VIII gave up the throne. "You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Give Me a Fast Ship: The Continental Navy and America's Revolution at Sea

Tim McGrath · NAL; 1St Edition edition
Format: Hardcover

Five ships against hundreds - the fledgling American Navy versus the greatest naval force the world had ever seen ... America in 1775 was on the verge of revolution - or, more likely, disastrous defeat. After the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, England's King George sent hundreds...
Read More check catalog
 
 
My Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy's Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism

Ivan Backer · Skyhorse Publishing
Pages: 208
Format: Print book

The breathtaking memoir by a member of "Nicky's family," a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport project, My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former...
Read More check catalog
 
 
How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City

Joan DeJean · St Martins Pr
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Paris was known for isolated monuments but had not yet put its brand on urban space. Like other European cities, it was still emerging from its medieval past. But in a mere century Paris would be transformed into the modern and mythic city we know...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness

Craig Nelson · Scribner
Pages: 532
Format: Print book

Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed twentieth-century America - Pearl Harbor - based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times bestselling author.The America we live in today was born, not on July...
Read More check catalog
 
 
My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Jennifer Teege · The Experiment
Pages: 221
Format: Print book

The internationally bestselling memoir hailed as "haunting and unflinching" (Washington Post) , "unforgettable" (Publishers Weekly) , and "stunning" (BOOKLIST ) . When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happened to pluck a library book from the shelf,...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government

Fergus M Bordewich · Simon & Schuster
Pages: 396
Format: Print book

The little known story of perhaps the most productive Congress in US history, the First Federal Congress of 1789-1791.The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prizewinning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

Greg Grandin · Holt & Company, Henry
Pages: 360
Format: Hardcover

From the acclaimed author of Fordlandia, the story of a remarkable slave rebellion that illuminates America's struggle with slavery and freedom during the Age of Revolution and beyondOne morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Joe Gould's Teeth

Jill Lepore · Knopf Publishing Group
Pages: 256
Format: Print book

From New Yorker staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called "The Oral History of Our Time." Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions

Richard W Bulliet · Columbia University Press
Pages: 256
Format: Print book

In this book, Richard W. Bulliet focuses on three major phases in the evolution of the wheel and their relationship to the needs and ambitions of human society. He begins in 4000 B.C.E. with the first wheels affixed to axles. He then follows with the innovation of wheels turning independently...
Read More check catalog