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10 copies

America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan

James Graham Wilson

Jun 30 - Jul 31
4,682 entries
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In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life.

Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially with his withering criticism of Jimmy Carter during Carter's presidency. While Nitze is perhaps best known for leading the formulation of NSC-68, which Harry Truman signed in 1950, Wilson contends that Nitze's most significant contribution to American peace and security came in the painstaking work done in the 1980s to negotiate successful treaties with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons while simultaneously deflecting skeptics surrounding Ronald Reagan. America's Cold Warrior connects Nitze's career and concerns about strategic vulnerability to the post-9/11 era and the challenges of the 2020s, where the United States finds itself locked in geopolitical competition with the People's Republic of China and Russia.

Biography
History

20 copies

Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue

Sonia Purnell

Jul 15 - Aug 15
3,823 entries
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From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, a re-examination of one of the 20th century’s greatest unsung power players When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, obituaries that followed were predictably sexist. Written off as a party girl, courtesan and social climber, her real legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life spent in glittering, elite circles of power. That is, until with a wealth of new research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell is reclaiming her larger-than-life story of influence and power in full, spectacular depth for the first time. At age 20 Churchill’s beloved daughter-in-law became a “secret weapon” during World War II, wining, dining, and seducing diplomats and envoys to help win over American sentiment (and secrets) for the cause. She transformed Gianni Agnelli into a savvy businessman and heir to the Fiat empire, and after moving to the US brought a struggling Democratic party back to life, hand-picking Bill Clinton from obscurity and vaulting him to the presidency. Picked as Ambassador to France, she deployed her legendary quiet, subtle power to charm world leaders and broker an end to the conflict in Bosnia, in effect rehabilitating the reputation of the US on the world stage. There are few people in history with a greater scope of impact over as many decades and across continents, and there is no one in 20th Century politics, culture, and fashion whom she did not know, including Aly Khan, Kay Graham, Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Gloria Steinem, Ed Murrow, and Frank Sinatra among her friends and lovers. Written with the novelistic richness and investigative rigor that only Sonia Purnell could bring to this story full of sex, politics, yachts, and fabulous clothes, KINGMAKER re-asserts Harriman’s rightful place in history.

Biography
History

10 copies

Women Heroes of World War II―the Pacific Theater: 15 Stories of Resistance, Rescue, Sabotage, and Survival (Women of Action, #18)

Kathryn J. Atwood

Jul 22 - Aug 16
2,157 entries
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After glamorous American singer Claire Phillips opened her own night club in Manila, using the proceeds to secretly feed starving American POWs, she also began working as a spy, chatting up Japanese military men and passing their secrets along to local guerilla resistance fighters.

Australian Army nurse Vivian Bullwinkel, stationed in Singapore then shipwrecked in the Dutch East Indies, became the sole survivor of a horrible massacre by Japanese soldiers. She hid for days, tending to a seriously wounded British soldier while wounded herself. Humanitarian Elizabeth Choy lived the rest of her life hating only war, not her tormentors, after enduring six months of starvation and torture by the Japanese military police.

In these pages, readers will meet these and other courageous women and girls who risked their lives through their involvement in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. Fifteen suspense-filled stories unfold across China, Japan, Mayala, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, providing an inspiring reminder of women and girls’ refusal to sit on the sidelines around the world and throughout history.

These women — whose stories span from 1932 through 1945, the last year of the war, when U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima — served in dangerous roles as spies, medics, journalists, resisters, and saboteurs. Nine of the women were American; seven were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese, enduring brutal conditions.

Author Kathryn J. Atwood provides appropriate context and framing for teens 14 and up to grapple with these harsh realities of war. Discussion questions and a guide for further study assist readers and educators in learning about this important and often neglected period of history.

History
Biography

25 copies

The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker

Amy Reading

Jul 21 - Aug 5
1,401 entries
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A lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker editor Katharine S. White, who helped build the magazine’s prestigious legacy and transform the 20 th century literary landscape for women. In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker ’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent. She edited a young John Updike, to whom she sent seventeen rejections before a single acceptance, as well as Vladimir Nabokov, with whom she fought incessantly, urging that he drop needlessly obscure, confusing words. White’s biggest contribution, however, was her cultivation of women writers whose careers were made at The New Yorker —Janet Flanner, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Taylor, Emily Hahn, Kay Boyle, and more. She cleared their mental and financial obstacles, introduced them to each other, and helped them create now classic stories and essays. She propelled these women to great literary heights and, in the process, reinvented the role of the editor, transforming the relationship to be not just a way to improve a writer’s work but also their life. Based on years of scrupulous research, acclaimed author Amy Reading creates a rare and deeply intimate portrait of a prolific editor—through both her incredible tenure at The New Yorker , and her famous marriage to E.B. White—and reveals how she transformed our understanding of literary culture and community.

Non-fiction
Biography

5 copies

Dream House: The Home to Die For — The Kouri Richins Case

Kathleen McKenna Hewtson

Jul 18 - Jul 31
2,212 entries
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This is the story of the strange death and sad marriage of Eric Richins.

On the night of March 3-4, 2022, a young woman in Utah, Kouri Richins, called 911 saying, “my husband is cold.”

So began the mystery of Eric Richins.

The autopsy showed he died from a massive overdose of Fentanyl. His family and friends say he did not use drugs, and his beautiful young widow at first agreed. Then she was arrested for his murder, and her story changed.

Eric and Kouri were a young, healthy, wealthy couple, who had it beautiful children, a big house, plenty of money, and an “almost perfect marriage.”

Or did they? Because when there is an unexpected death, every secret thing comes to light. Infidelity, hidden trusts, stolen money and missing love.

But did she kill him?

Crime
Biography

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